9/19/2024
Digital advertising is a no-brainer when it comes to generating brand awareness and website traffic, but cannot be your only strategy. Let's consider the pros and cons, and how SEO functions as the other side of the coin.
Before diving into any advertising opportunity, think critically about both your short- and long-term goals.
Increasing sales, building a following, and re-engaging existing customers can all be accomplished with a strategic digital ad platform. With the plethora of targeting capabilities and tactical insights at your finger-tips, these platforms can generate some serious bang for your buck, and they can do so relatively quickly - this is your short-term play.
Just don't forget: as soon as the algorithms take a left turn, your budget gets cut, or you elect to change course for whatever reason, you may be left dead in the water. When you shut off the nozzle here, this channel dries up.
Enter: SEO, or search engine optimization. Tactics in this space support your long-term success online; results that don't depend on fluctuating PPC budgets. Work done now can pay dividends for years to come if you play your cards right, funneling intent-driven, highly qualified traffic to your site.
So, which route do you go?
(That's a trick question. The answer is both.)
At the end of the day, your goal is to understand who your audience is, what keeps them up at night, and how you can help them solve real problems. These same principles should be driving your entire marketing strategy, including both PPC and SEO.
Let's take a look at the factors that platforms like Google, Facebook, and Bing look for when determining what content to deliver to users.
Quality Score is a primary tool used by Google to determine ad quality in relation to other advertisers (Facebook and Bing have similar tools).
A higher score is achieved by providing relevant and helpful content to users; a lower score means people are probably not finding what they're looking for, and are turning elsewhere for answers.
A strong quality score will result in higher placement, lower cost-per-click, and other benefits.
When it comes to SEO, the name of the game is user experience. Is your site easy to find online? Does it load quickly? Is it intuitive and stupid-easy to navigate? Is your content structured in a way that addresses the needs of the user?
There are over 200 factors that go into how well you're going to rank in search engines, but there's good news: Many of the quality score indicators on the digital advertising side overlap best practices for SEO tactics.
At the end of the day, if you're providing the best experience you can when people engage with your digital content, you can win across channels.
Practically speaking, while there are hundreds of data points and technical requirements, your primary concern needs to be creating unique, relevant, and helpful content, and building platforms that are insanely accessible across all devices. If you can win here, you'll have all of the platforms singing your praises, rewarding you with views and clicks for days.
We know. It's a lot.
We also know that all that matters are results. Trust us when we say, stop thinking about your PPC efforts in a vacuum. Instead, prepare a cohesive strategy for your digital game, win over the algorithms, and start reaping the rewards.
Let us know how we can help.
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