Have SEO in place to see returns on paid media campaigns

William says: “Now, and in the future, SEOs need to focus on how we communicate across different channels. An omnichannel approach will be important. Any media dollars you put into your strategy will fail if SEO is not performing as it should.”

Is SEO the first channel?

“SEO is the first channel if you consider it a preparation for what’s ahead of the media plan, rather than a reactive approach. That way, you will see better outcomes.

Clients typically fall into different challenges - how to sell, getting rid of bad reviews, driving more visits to the store, etc. Then, they start spending more on immediate paid media channels. That fails because Google has become more sophisticated regarding what they expect websites to offer their visitors. This makes the cost much higher when your content, user experience, and page performance are not where they should be.

In the past, we discussed those issues in isolation, and we could tackle them through SEO. If you had an SEO foundation from the beginning, the rest of the channels would perform better because they see the results of those efforts.”

If you’re doing paid marketing, what pages should you be targeting?

“There are many approaches there. From a quality perspective, you will be doubling your work if you are targeting two pages instead of having one landing page that covers all the requirements of paid search.

Instead, you could consolidate your efforts in one single landing place that accomplishes everything. You would then have the data you need to better inform the strategy, rather than having different landing pages in isolation. That works especially if you’re tackling or targeting similar products or the same product.”

What if the paid search team doesn’t want something the other team wants, like header navigation, one call to action, etc.?

“That is usually the case with certain strategies. However, the recent requirements of Google and large eCommerce platforms - like Walmart and Amazon - have to do with offering more information. The simplicity of just having a ‘buy’ button, a key message, and a headline is not applicable anymore. There must be other elements essential to users for them to become customers.

Offering more validation from the tools and more support from testimonials will have a better impact on the quality scores of the landing page. It will result in lower-cost, positive performance on organic search and, of course, good performance on that channel you’re paying for. It also helps with programming and email marketing efforts.

When you are using SEO as the main driver for traffic, you’re also facilitating the collection of first-hand data from the users. This data is tremendously important for brands today. There were some challenges in acquiring consumers in the past, when we used tools like Google and Facebook, etc. That approach is shifting, little by little, and brand results have been incredible.”

If you have a single call to action and people don’t find the answer they are looking for immediately, they are less likely to come back, but if you provide other options and a great brand experience are they more likely to return?

“If you pay attention to what Google, in particular, has been doing with their paid products - you’ll see that they’ve been learning from our wars on organic search. They accommodate that in their algorithms and in how they score their paid campaigns through the use of site links that provide more information. They learned from us that it is beneficial to put this information in paid search.

The ability to use answers that inform certain queries on organic is something they are considering more for paid search campaigns now as well. There’s proof that there are more elements from organic search that worked well on paid media than elements that worked on paid media that are coming into search. We have been able to contribute more as an industry, which is helping other channels as well.”

What aspects of SEO do you need to get in place before focusing on paid media?

“SERPs are quite diverse today, and they look more like an interactive magazine. If you want to secure visibility, you’ll see that there are elements like video, direct answers, and rich snippets. That makes it impossible to track quarterly changes because Google brings a new format every day, and they’re running many experiments. There are interesting visual elements, where you must identify the right types of elements to produce to gain space across the board.

If we learn from that, we’ll understand the content landscape better, and immediately trigger content types and formats that can produce greater visibility.

With Google, it’s now a game where, if you can’t produce content in any of the emerging formats they offer (like Google discover), you are behind. You need to learn continuously. That also comes from knowing what’s happening on paid media channels, and how you can inform those paid media channels about what you’re doing in terms of SEO. You should be telling them what content is successful and what converts well, and they can use this information to inform creation in the channels where you have to pay to perform.

It’s about content and how you make it more dynamic and adaptable. We have seen many brands that have become great content producers. On the other hand, those still lacking in resources are not participating in this content game. You need to have a good and solid content framework in place to have a presence on the Google of today.”

What can SEOs learn from paid search?

“The dynamic aspect of paid search makes it easier to test and make page changes. Some areas of the business can have legal and compliance implications, which means that they cannot immediately implement learnings from paid search. Plus, it can take us much longer cycles to validate these things, get approval, and bring it live on the website.

Paid search helps with that because they can change a lot without scrutiny on what’s being put up on the website. That works well as a proxy to ensure that what we want to produce for the long term will not change so frequently.”

How would collaboration with paid search in that way work in practice?

“It depends. One example is the use of images for jewellery. Recently, we started testing different models for luxury jewellery. We discovered, after optimisation, that audiences were responding in different ways to the different images of models wearing the pieces. We could then inform the organic search about the images that were getting the most positive responses. The ones with low approval were ditched and replaced on the paid campaign, both on Google and the Google Merchant Centre.

In the end, we produced better images with higher click-through rates and conversions, which could work as permanent placements on the landing pages for organic search.

Content marketers generally pick images based on what looks nice, but don’t necessarily think it impacts ongoing conversion rates. If you’re selling a phone, you might have six different angles but never consider which side the viewers want to see. We don’t test that on organic search.”

What shouldn’t SEOs be doing in 2023? What is seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive?

“We know that SEO today differs from what we did 10-15 years ago. Now, the way Google is scoring content has a major impact. They have become more strict and more sophisticated with their use of Artificial Intelligence to weed out everything that is not unique, high quality, or doesn’t represent the business well.

For instance, if you’re using and reusing images from the same database - you’re not showing interest in increasing the authority and quality of your content pages. The same applies if you’re using content brokers, churning out content en-masse just to fill up pages. All that will fail.

That is why we are seeing better results today in businesses that have become more aware of the importance of hiring the right talent to produce the right content. SEOs will have to react to the trend and start finding ways to bring content that answers user questions in a personalised way.

Some consultants still advise clients to check out the SERPS and produce something better. We should stop doing that; it is basically using shortcuts just to fill out your pages. This strategy will not work anymore because the latest Google algorithm update is tackling that.”

William Álvarez is the director of Organic Search at Catalyst Digital, and you can find him over at catalystdigital.com.