The only caveat is that if you’re tracking many informational terms or thousands of keywords, you must pinpoint the top ones for your paid search focus.
Competitor visibility
Examine competitor rankings for important keywords to address their advantages through paid efforts.
Observing where competitors excel in paid search can offer valuable insights for SEO strategies.
Similarly, identifying keywords where competitors rank highly but you do not can reveal meaningful opportunities for your paid search team to target.
Dig deeper: 7 reports SEO and PPC can use to help each other succeed
Evaluating true ad incrementality
For keywords where the brand ranks in positions 1-3, the co-optimization process evaluates whether allocating additional ad spend would generate incremental ad clicks (based on Google’s old incrementality study).
Additionally, there may be opportunities to redirect paid spend in areas where organic rankings are already strong.
While these strategies may seem contradictory, they highlight the importance of continuous testing.
Although the Google study suggests spending on keywords you already rank for is highly effective, our data indicates that this is not always the case.
To address potential paid search cannibalization, we analyze situations where clients might be bidding on uncontested auctions – meaning they are the only ones paying for clicks, which would likely go to organic results anyway.
Dig deeper: Top 7 Google Ads and SEO synergies you should act upon
Going beyond keywords
Our standard SOP analysis for co-optimization focuses solely on keyword targets and the overlap in how we optimize for visibility.
That said, there are several other places that synergies exist between these two channels.
As you think about executing your own co-optimization auditing, here are some of the other areas you’ll want to consider.
Page-level optimizations
Incorporating your PPC campaign’s target terms directly onto the landing pages can significantly enhance performance.
Users expect a strong connection between their search query, the ad they click on and the page they land on.
Unfortunately, many PPC marketers focus solely on the platform and neglect to make necessary changes to the website.
This is where SEO plays a crucial role in ensuring that target keywords align with the content on the page.
In one experiment, which we turned into a case study, we hypothesized that aligning SEO and PPC keywords would improve ad quality scores and reduce cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
Although the quality scores remained unchanged, we observed substantial reductions in cost-per-click (CPC) for most aligned keywords, with some experiencing drops of 50-100%.
Despite the lack of impact on quality scores, this alignment effectively lowered overall campaign costs, helping us achieve broader objectives.
Conversion data
If you’ve been involved in SEO since before 2012, you likely remember when we had access to keyword-level data for every organic search term.
Unfortunately, that level of detail is no longer available to SEOs, but we can still turn to paid search for this valuable data.
In our co-optimization audit, we don’t focus on keywords that convert, as we address those earlier in our keyword research process.
However, it’s wise to analyze which keywords drive the most conversions in Google Ads and ensure that your SEO strategy prioritizes those keywords.
High CTR copy
You should be mining your PPC campaigns for high click-through rate (CTR) headlines and descriptions.
Apply these successful elements to your meta information to achieve higher CTRs, which, as you now know, can lead to improved rankings.
This is a straightforward yet impactful way to leverage PPC data for SEO success.
Don’t stop there
You can co-optimize and leverage data from both paid and organic search in countless ways. After all, it’s all about optimizing for the same SERPs.
Co-optimizing your paid and organic search efforts is not a one-time task; it’s an ongoing discovery and refinement process essential to a holistic search marketing strategy.
By consistently analyzing combined data, you can uncover trends, identify new opportunities and stay ahead in the ever-changing search landscape.
Keep testing, measuring and fine-tuning your approach to maximizing your keyword portfolio. The insights gained through co-optimization will enhance your search visibility and drive meaningful results for your business.
Dig deeper: 4 keys to SEO and PPC collaboration
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