The integration of Paid Media and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) teams is becoming an essential strategy for both marketing and business success. The traditional approach of managing these teams separately has often resulted in missed opportunities and inefficiencies. Bringing them together creates a comprehensive holistic strategy that optimises short-term wins and accelerates long term growth objectives.
It’s becoming common industry practice to create synergy and alignment between these teams. It’s a topic of discussion, not only within marketing agencies, but for in-house teams also. We’re seeing it come up more and more across social media, conferences, network events and even industry WhatsApp groups.
This article explores how your Paid Media and SEO teams can begin to achieve this integration and why it is crucial in today’s evolving digital landscape.
Why Integration Matters
Over the past decade, the digital marketing landscape has changed dramatically. Search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated, and the competitive environment has intensified. Both SEO and Paid Media strategies need constant adjustment to stay effective, much like a sports team adapting its formation based on the opponent’s strategy.
Combining these disciplines ensures that teams work in tandem to achieve a shared objective or marketing KPI, rather than operating in silos. It creates an agile marketing environment where insights from one area can inform and improve the other. This results in more effective campaigns, improved return on investment (ROI), and maximised organic visibility.
Six Steps for Integrating Paid Media and SEO Teams
1. Align Keyword Strategies
This may sound obvious, but aligning keyword strategies is a crucial element many teams still fail to achieve. Using the same set of keywords and targeting across both teams ensures consistent messaging and amplifies the impact of campaigns. When a keyword performs well in a Paid Media campaign, it can indicate an opportunity for SEO to target the same term organically. Conversely, high-ranking organic keywords that are not converting well can be used to refine Paid Media targeting to boost engagement.
Additionally, Paid Media can be used to target competitive or hard-to-reach keywords where it’s proving challenging to rank organically. This allows companies to stay visible in the search results while the SEO team works on improving the organic ranking. The speed of testing keywords through Paid Media should also not be under-estimated.
2. Make use of Retargeting Lists and Audiences
Integrating Paid Media with SEO also enables you to leverage retargeting lists and audience data. Retargeting visitors who have already interacted with the site organically through Paid Media campaigns can help bring them back into the conversion funnel. The SEO team can help the Paid Media team identify which organic users to focus on and inform which of those are already familiar with the brand.
Gone are the days when Paid Media was solely about keywords. In today’s world, many of your go-to Paid Search and Paid Social platforms offer advanced targeting capabilities, including persona-based targeting. SEO, PR and Content teams can all benefit from these insights, especially when it comes to ensuring content strategies are targeting the right persona with the right messaging.
3. Leverage Data for Insights
A key benefit of integrating Paid Media and SEO teams is the ability to share data for more comprehensive insights. Analysing both paid and organic data can reveal valuable information such as:
- Which pages have the highest engagement.
- Where traffic converts at a higher rate.
- Which content may need additional paid support.
- Competitor strategies that impact both paid and organic efforts.
By combining data from both areas, teams can make more informed decisions about where to allocate budgets and focus optimisation efforts. This results in more strategic use of resources.
Key resources which SEO and wider teams may not be privy to are the Google and Meta transparency libraries. These are a great starting point, providing the SEO team with the latest competitor messaging and creative.
4. Dominate the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
Achieving the top organic search ranking is no longer the only goal. Paid ads, featured snippets, shopping results and AI-generated overviews now occupy significant real estate on search engine results pages (SERPs). To maintain visibility, brands should aim to dominate as much of the SERP as possible through a blend of Paid Media and SEO.
There is evidence to suggest an increase in paid search activity can also have a positive effect on organic performance. For instance, brands that ramp up their paid search investment often see an uplift in organic traffic within the same time period. Whilst there’s no concrete evidence as to why this is, I believe that it stems from the increased exposure and brand recognition that comes from appearing prominently in multiple search formats.
5. Enhance Content Strategies
Content that performs well in Paid Media can also inform SEO strategies. High-performing ad copy, for example, can be adapted to improve meta titles and descriptions for organic pages. Paid Media allows teams to test different messaging quickly, providing insights into what resonates best with the target audience.
It’s also important to consider how AI-powered search features impact content strategies. The most noteworthy statement from the latest Google hosted Marketing Live event was ‘We’re gonna match ads not only to the query context but also to the information in AI Overview.’ Contextual data is going to become even more important in the coming years. The technology sitting behind the bidding structure of paid search environments is going to evolve to match the content on your website to user queries and AI Overviews. Based on that, I’d recommend you get your Paid Media, SEO and Content team in a room to ensure landing page content is fully aligned!
6. Technical SEO Considerations
A website’s technical performance impacts both organic and paid efforts. SEO teams can collaborate with Paid Media specialists to ensure that the site meets the technical requirements for both search engine ranking and ad performance. Site speed, mobile responsiveness, and user experience all influence how well a site performs in organic search and how effectively it supports Paid Media campaigns.
Technical SEO efforts such as optimising Core Web Vitals, implementing schema markup, and ensuring a secure browsing experience can also benefit Paid Media campaigns by providing a smoother user journey and potentially reducing bounce rates. It’s worth checking out what Google has to say regarding a landing page’s technical score!
Integrating Paid Media and SEO teams should no longer be merely a consideration; it’s now essential for maximising digital marketing success in an ever-changing landscape. By aligning keyword strategies, sharing data, dominating the SERPs, enhancing content, leveraging audience data, optimising technical elements and adapting swiftly to changes, marketing teams and businesses can create a unified strategy that drives better results and higher ROI.
Marketing leaders should champion this collaboration to ensure that their teams work as a cohesive unit to optimise results. This integrated strategy can position brands ahead of the competition, making them more agile and better equipped to meet the challenges of the digital marketing world.
