There is often an assumption that SEO and Pay Per Click are not connected when it comes to your online marketing efforts, but this thought is totally wrong, as the data you get from your PPC campaign can be a massive driver towards where you should be focusing your SEO efforts, which is why the partnership between the two is so important.

The data and information that you can gain from your Pay Per Click campaign is far more important than you might think, and rather than just using it to decide on your budget and the next batch of negative keywords, you should in fact be using this goldmine of information to help form your SEO strategy. Google Ads is basically a reflection on the overall search, albeit paid or organic, so if you are getting 10 clicks from one keyword on Google Ads, you could realistically be getting 50 or more if you were also on the front page of Google organically.

This is why the data you can pull from your Google Ads campaign is not something you should overlook, and indeed, is actually something you should embrace and analyse, as it holds more information than you might think that should be playing some part in your SEO efforts.

So, what data is really important?

Conversions

Depending on the products or services your business offers, you may find that one area may lead to more sales and conversions than others, which is why if you hit on a keyword that delivers a solid amount of conversions during your PPC campaign, then it makes perfect sense that from an SEO point of view, you should be targeting the very same keyword / phrase as well. As we know, only around 12% of searchers click onto the paid results, so if you’re seeing good conversions from paid, imagine how good your organic and natural conversion could be if you hit front page organically.

Competition

Paid traffic generally follows organic traffic when we look at competition, so if you find some keywords cost you a fortune due to high competition, you can guarantee this is going to be the same for natural searches and SEO as well. Therefore, if you turn this on its head and look for keywords that are still very relevant to your business but have less competition in your Google Ads campaign, then you can quickly increase your SEO efforts on these keywords, as it should be easier to get front page for keywords that have less competition, but could still deliver sales, enquiries and conversions for your company.

Traffic

Maybe not as important as the conversion data, but if you can find keywords that you might not have considered that have decent traffic, then these should become part of your SEO campaign thought process. Of course, you should only be considering relevance when it comes to keywords, as you only want traffic and visitors that have a chance of converting, but generally, you might get some data that shows you are getting quite a few decent clicks on keywords that you are not ranking for organically, and then put some effort into these.

Keyword Variations

You might have a base idea of the keywords that you think you want to / need to rank for, but by using the phrase match feature on Google Ads, or indeed the keyword planner, you can really expand these to allow you to find other keywords that could, if you factored them into your SEO campaign, have a major impact for your business. For example, you may just be targeting 10 keywords, but if you started working on longer tail keywords and phrases or variations of the stem keywords, then you will not only increase your potential SEO success, but you could find gaps that your competitors are really not exploiting.

And, of course, the data you get from Google Analytics regarding how your PPC traffic interacts and uses your website should then lead you down the path of making sure your website is set up for conversions. If you get tons of clicks and yet few enquiries or sales, and you are sure your campaign is spot on, this should then lead you to think about how your website is really working for your visitors and whether you need to optimise it for conversions, which is something your PPC traffic can really help to showcase and help you to tweak for improvements.