Too often in the world of online marketing PPC and SEO are pitched against each other. Whether it is a fight for budgets and resources or being managed by separate teams who themselves might be competing for performance. These two lynchpins of any successful digital marketing strategy are best served when integrated into a cohesive approach. In this article we’re going to delve deeper into how SEO practices enhance your Paid Search activity, leading to greater marketing impact on and offline, engagement across the marketing funnel and ultimately more profitable online interactions.
SEO Practices to Improve Quality Score Enhancement
Google tells us that Quality Score is, “a diagnostic tool meant to give you a sense of how well your ad quality compares to other advertisers […] higher Quality Score means that your ad and landing page are more relevant and useful to someone searching for your keyword.” What this translates to is that the higher your Quality Score, the less you’ll pay for a click via PPC. And if you’re paying less for a click, it means your conversions become more profitable… and in turn, scalable.
With that in mind, here’s several ways that SEO can improve your Quality Score and lower your PPC spend without hurting traffic volumes or quality
Mobile Optimization
- Responsive Design: Ensure your site’s design adjusts smoothly to different screen sizes. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites, and a responsive design is fundamental to providing a good mobile user experience.
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Implementing AMP can dramatically improve loading times on mobile devices. While not a direct ranking factor for desktop searches, AMP pages can contribute to a faster, smoother mobile experience, indirectly influencing Quality Score.
Improving Page Speed
- Image Optimization: Compress images without losing quality to reduce load times. Tools like Google’s Squoosh can help significantly reduce image file sizes.
- Leverage Browser Caching: By storing elements of your site in visitors’ browsers, you can speed up subsequent page loads. This involves setting appropriate times for your content to be cached via .htaccess file.
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML: Removing unnecessary characters from these files (like spaces, comments, etc.) can speed up your site. Tools like UglifyJS for JavaScript and CSSNano for CSS can automate this process.
Content and On-Page SEO Enhancements
- Keyword Research and Optimization: Conduct thorough keyword research to identify terms your target audience is searching for. Use these keywords judiciously in your ad copy, landing page titles, headers, and content to ensure relevance to user queries.
- High-Quality Content: Develop content that addresses the user’s intent behind their search query. Content should provide value, answer questions, and guide users toward taking a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up for more information.
- Structured Data Markup: Implementing structured data (schema markup) helps search engines understand the content of your pages better. This can improve the way your pages are represented in SERPs, potentially increasing CTR and positively impacting your Quality Score.
Landing Page Optimization
- Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Your landing pages should have a clear, compelling CTA that guides users on what to do next. A/B testing different CTAs can help identify what works best for your audience.
- User Experience (UX): Ensure your landing pages are easy to navigate, with intuitive layout and design. High bounce rates can negatively affect your Quality Score, so focus on keeping users engaged. A better user experience will also increase your conversion rate and lead to your paid ad clicks leading to sales more often. This naturally increases your return on ad spend (ROAS) through improving usability.
- Relevance to Ad Copy: The content on your landing page should closely match the promise made in your ad copy. Google evaluates the relevance of your landing page to the keywords you bid on and the message in your ads.
Implementing SEO for Google Ads Success
The integration of these advanced SEO practices using both technical and content driven SEO into your website, will positively influence your Google Ads strategy and can lead to a substantial improvement in your Quality Score. This, in turn will reduce your cost per click (CPC), improve ad placement, and enhance overall campaign performance. It’s important to remember that SEO and PPC are not isolated channels but interdependent components of a comprehensive search marketing strategy. By optimizing for both, you can leverage the effect of both to maximise visibility, engagement, and conversions across your digital presence.
If you’re ready to start taking integrated marketing seriously, to stop siloing your digital marketing output and to begin building the foundations for profitable, scalable digital revenue then please reach out to us here at Onefeed. There isn’t a one-size fits all solution so our preferred way of working is to offer businesses a free audit of their existing digital landscape and then provide a bespoke set of recommendations. When you’re ready to take the next step, we’re here to help. I hope we speak soon!
