Looking for a one-two punch that’ll knock your competition outta the way so you can claim — and keep — your spot at the top of your industry?
A dynamic search engine marketing (SEM) strategy built on PPC and SEO is the way to do it.
Pay-per-click (also called paid search or PPC) ads are one of the most effective digital strategies around – if you know what you’re doing. And search engine optimization (SEO) tactics are what’ll help you foster trust with your audience, position you as a thought leader, and set up your online presence for the long haul, rather than a flash in the pan.
If you’re not seeing the results you want from your current marketing efforts, need help scaling, or don’t know where to begin when it comes to building a competitive marketing plan, then an SEO and PPC agency with serious know-how in both methods might be just what you need to get on the fast track to success.
What’s the Difference Between PPC and SEO?
In practice, SEO and PPC marketing are approached quite differently. But it’s also true that they’re two sides of the same digital marketing coin.
Not only can one enhance the other, but when done in tandem, their results can often be greater than the sum of their parts, so to speak. (We’ll get into that more below.)
PPC is a type of online advertising that most often surfaces on search engine results pages (SERPs) based on the words a searcher uses in their query. As the name aptly suggests, pay-per-click refers to the fact that an advertiser only pays when someone clicks their ad. Ideally, this click will bring the user to a targeted, tailor-made landing page, and they’ll be guided down the sales funnel from there.
Paid search ads are often found above and/or below organic search results, and are tagged with a tasteful “ad” to subtly differentiate them from non-paid results. But they’re not limited to showing up on the SERP. Along with Google, Bing, and other search engines, PPC ads can be seen on websites, YouTube, and social media platforms as well. Basically, they’re kind of a big deal.
SEO, on the other hand, is all about helping your business rank on search engines without getting ads (and ad dollars) involved. Put simply, while PPC targets those coveted paid spots on the SERP, SEO aims for the organic rankings.
How does SEO work? Basically, it’s all about ensuring your website (the front end and back end), its content, and your online presence overall (think: your profiles on third-party review sites, your social profiles, etc.) are consistent, accurate, and properly reflect your brand.
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On-page (or on-site)
On-page SEO is just what it sounds like – it’s the actions you take to keep your website in tip-top shape, from content creation and optimization to internal linking and article headers.
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Off-page (or off-site)
Off-page SEO refers to efforts like link building, guest posting, content promotion, and other tactics that lead to better site reputation, authority, and high-quality backlinks.
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Technical
All of the back-end tasks fall under technical SEO – this includes meta data, structured data (or Schema) markup, and proper site architecture for a quality user experience (UX). It also involves making sure your site is mobile-friendly and that pages load speedily.
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Local
Nearly 50% of all online searches are locally based, which means local SEO can’t be underestimated. Keep yours in check by optimizing your site for local search results (like including your location and location-specific keywords in metadata), building out your Google Business Profile, and ensuring your exact address is consistent across the web.
As one of the nation’s leading recruiting firms, Career Group Companies deals with stiff competition and a rapidly evolving candidate market. Because of that, they partnered with HawkSEM to help orchestrate, align, and expand their SEO marketing efforts. By launching new content assets, expanding their target keyword portfolio, and implementing other SEO best practices, CGC saw a 43% increase in job listing page views from organic traffic and significant growth in their candidate pipeline year over year.
How Do SEO and Pay-Per-Click Advertising Benefit Your Business?
This is a big question, but it’s a crucial one. After all, knowing how these marketing methods can tangibly improve your bottom line is what can help you and your team create actionable goals, realistic KPIs, and a strategic overall online marketing plan.
For starters, PPC is one of the quickest and most results-driving marketing tactics around. It’s a surefire way to connect your company’s offerings to the people searching for your products or services online. Not only that, but these ad platforms often have advanced tools to help enhance budgeting, testing, targeting capabilities, and more. Rather than simply relying on the algorithm to serve up your pages in organic results, you can create optimized campaigns that can potentially skyrocket you to page 1 and have the right people clicking through.
Both PPC and SEO aid in attracting qualified traffic to your digital doorstep. And while PPC may get a lot of love for its often speedy results, SEO is instrumental to its success. Think about it: Even the most eye-catching ads won’t bring about the best possible return on investment (ROI) if they lead the potential customer to a clunky, unappealing website. What’s more, it’s search engine optimization that helps build brand authority and trustworthiness, which can help boost your biz when people compare you to your competitors.
And it sets your site up to stand the test of time – not to mention those pesky-yet- inevitable algorithm shakeups. Investing in SEO is hugely beneficial due to the fact that a polished website with high-quality content will always be in style, no matter the latest trendy marketing methods.
Results are everything
HawkSEM in 90 seconds
How Do PPC and SEO Work Together?
It may seem like PPC and SEO efforts work in silos. And while they can, you’ll be better on track to hit your goals if you have them working in tandem. Here’s why.
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1.
Since PPC ads take less time to gauge their effectiveness (usually weeks rather than months), this means you can use ad campaign data to inform which keywords do and don’t belong in your long-term SEO plans. And vice-versa: If a keyword is garnering your business the coveted Featured Snippets slots on the SERP, you can explore targeting these keywords with ad campaigns. The result: search results domination.
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2.
Both PPC and SEO produce helpful data and insights. Because of this, it can be helpful to cross-analyze these metrics for more informed A/B testing and better audience targeting. Both tactics can offer a window into user behaviors like time spent on site, click-through rate (CTR), and conversion rate.
Bonus: Coordinated SEO and PPC campaigns can help ensure your website is compliant with the latest data and privacy guidelines.
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3.
Along with keywords, ad campaign copy may help drive the kind of SEO-minded content marketing that resonates most with your intended audience. From the content itself to the headlines, title tags, and meta descriptions, you can use top-performing ad verbiage to help you craft high-quality content that appeals to your ideal client personas.
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4.
Along with saving time and effort, synching your SEO and paid search plans can allow you to save marketing budget dollars too. By knowing what keywords to target, you can save money on content that isn’t poised to provide much value. You can also use PPC as a revenue generator while more long-same SEO strategies ramp up. Lastly, SEO and PPC data can help you optimize your landing pages for higher conversions.
Results From Our Clients
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60% / 7x
Real Health Products increased lead volume by 60% and gained more than 7x their previous click-through rate (CTR)
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562%
686 increased their year-over-year search engine marketing (SEM) revenue by a whopping 562% while cutting cost per conversion (CPC) by 67%
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260%
Eczema Honey saw monthly CPC decrease by 40% while conversion volume increased by 260%
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7.5x
Campaign Living increased online revenue 7.5x year over year while reducing overall digital costs by 68%
What Does a PPC & SEO Agency Do?
An easier question might be: what doesn’t a PPC & SEO agency do?
On a serious note, a digital marketing agency like this (sometimes also referred to as “full-service” depending on what else they offer) is generally tasked with taking the reins on a company’s digital marketing strategy, campaigns, and optimization efforts.
While some may simply draw up an action plan and hand it over to you to execute, the best ones will work with you in a more direct, one-on-one capacity to help you build, launch, and fine-tune your initiatives, all the while conducting research, suggesting strategies and channels you may not have considered, and testing different elements to see what performs best.
An agency may offer a slew of SEO services that include:
- Organic traffic goal assessment to estimate what’s possible (and reasonable)
- Keyword analysis and recommendations to help you target the right keywords (and avoid the wrong ones) to boost brand awareness
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics assessment so you can move forward on these platforms confident that everything is set up and tracking properly
- Schema markup implementation so search bots can easily crawl your pages
- Link building to help encourage high-authority sites to link back to you
- Backlink audit, cleanup, and monitoring so you know the sites linking to you are credible in the eyes of Google and not spammy
- Error identification, resolution, and redirects to avoid dead-end or outdated pages
- Algorithm impact analysis and resolution to better understand search engines
- Content analysis, strategy, and development to ensure the content you’re publishing is authoritative, accurate, and up-to-date
- A page title and meta description optimization plan to help you maximize the reach of your web pages through the inclusion of keywords
- Page speed and site architecture analysis to ensure your UX is on point
Meet The Team
As far as paid search goes, here are some PPC services you can expect from an agency partnership:
- Current PPC advertising campaign audit to get a feel for your current status
- A review of conversions and goal tracking to ensure everything is set up properly
- Building out your PPC strategy (with elements like budget, bid type, optimization objective, and creative recommendations) with your target audience and current budget in mind
- Customized reports to keep everyone in the loop when it comes to campaign performance and progress to goals.
- Competitive analysis to see what others in your industry are doing
- Keyword research and development to modify, expand, and build out your keyword list (including negative keywords)
- Ad copy and creative buildout, including custom audiences and optimized landing pages
- Market research to better understand your particular landscape and audience
- Pinpointing key opportunities and platforms you may not have explored (or may not be optimizing)
- A/B testing that includes tests for headlines, imagery, landing page design, ad copy, etc., then optimizing campaigns accordingly (once sufficient data has been gathered and assessed, of course)
Customized reports, you say?
If you like the idea of tailor-made reporting that’s easy to gather and analyze, then you’ll love ConversionIQ. This unique technology from the HawkSEM team not only offers a robust reporting dashboard for all your KPIs, but it also helps you capture more qualified leads, attribute them properly, and avoid wasted ad spend in the process. Actionable data in one sleek, easy-to-use platform? That’s ConversionIQ.
If you opt to work with a full-service agency, they may offer to handle even more than SEO and PPC. Here are some additional digital marketing services you can possibly expect and take advantage of:
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Paid search (aka pay-per-click or PPC)
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Paid social media marketing
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Landing page and web design
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Email marketing
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Performance display ads
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Conversion rate optimization
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Ecommerce shopping feed management
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Remarketing and retargeting
HawkSEM has been hand-selected as a Google Premier Partner and Microsoft Advertising Partner
We make things happen …but don’t take our word for it:
CSUN
Patch Of Land
Google Partner
Google Premier Agency
When is It Time to Partner with An Agency for PPC and SEO?
Does all of the above have your wheels turning about potentially partnering with a digital marketing agency — or, if you’re already working with one, switching to one that better suits your needs?
Whether you’re considering a first-time agency partnership to help you scale or are looking for a change of pace, here are some signs that now’s the time:
- You want improved marketing campaign performance
- You simply don’t have the resources (or team members) to DIY
- You’re having trouble taking your lead generation efforts to the next level
- Your last partnership didn’t work out, and you’re looking for a better fit
- Your internal team is wonderful — and at capacity
- Your company is growing and you need a new-and-improved digital strategy to match
If any of this resonates, let’s talk about it.
DIRECTV came to HawkSEM after severing ties with their previous agency. They needed a new team to get up to speed quickly and help them achieve their goal of increasing subscribers through targeted campaigns. Through a deft mix of real-time bidding, dynamic campaigns, and creative program approaches, we helped their team increase impressions ten-fold while achieving 7 times the conversions.
Questions to Ask a Potential SEO and PPC Company
Once you’ve decided to move forward with an agency and have amassed a list of those you’re considering working with, you can set up a few exploratory calls or video chats to vet them.
Along with having an idea of what you want to accomplish with your strategy as far as marketing channels and goals, it helps to have some questions prepped in advance as well.
The Qs you ask will depend on your specific business needs, but here are some that could helpful to include:
- Have you worked with clients in my industry before?
- What does the onboarding process look like for new clients?
- What are some high-level ways you think you could improve our account?
- Does your team have significant experience in both SEO and PPC management?
- How do you measure success?
- Do you have case studies, client testimonials, or past customers you could connect me with?
- How would you describe your team’s communication style?
- Does your team have Google Ads (FKA Google Adwords) certifications? What about other certifications?
- How hands-on would you say your approach is to account management?
- What is your pricing model?
- How do you handle addressing an error, mistake, or misstep?
The Bottom Line
If you’ve made it this far, then you’re probably serious about partnering with an agency for your PPC and SEO needs.
The good news: You’ve come to the right place. HawkSEM is an award-winning agency you can trust to get the job done. We’ve helped clients across dozens of industries improve their digital marketing efforts and increase their return on ad spend (ROAS) exponentially, often while actually saving money in the process. We know it’s not just about sheer growth, but about growing thoughtfully and manageably, so there’s no limit to what you can achieve.
We’re in the top 3% of agencies in the country according to Google’s Premier Partners network, and have been hand-selected as a Microsoft Advertising Partner.
Not only that, but we have a 98% retention rate, and our clients average a 4.5X ROI. Could your search for the perfect agency partner be over? Let’s chat about your goals to find out.
Request a Free Consultation
No BS, just results. Average clients see a 4.5x ROI
- Dramatically improve ROI
- Outperform the competition
- Increase conversion volume
- Better track ROI
- Reduce cost per acquisition
- Improve lead quality