Does PPC Improve Organic Performance?

It is hotly debated how much impact a PPC campaign will have on organic performance, with many marketers believing that it will help, and just as many saying it won’t make much difference. This is because your organic performance is influenced by a plethora of factors, such as how mobile friendly your website is, page speeds, domain authority, links and more.

However, there are ways for PPC to influence your organic performance and boost your organic performance. 

Keyword Relevance

The first is keyword relevance. As with any PPC campaign, your keywords will likely be targeted to a niche group of users who would typically show interest in your business. These users are picked up through short and long tail keywords targeted in PPC campaigns, which in turn drive high value, relevant users to your website. 

If these users were to complete a goal on your website, you can track which keywords they used to find you and add them into your on page content. This could boost rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPS) for these queries as the page will be deemed more relevant. 

It’s important that this content is not just thrown onto a page, but actually holds value, otherwise users will bounce from your site and you’ll lose page relevance. Providing the users are relevant, they will likely spend more time on your website, visiting multiple pages, reducing your website’s bounce rate and improving your organic ranking.

Quality Score

You can also use this method to test keyword quality scores (QS) and how your landing page performs. Google Ads for example, will tell you if a keyword has a low QS, indicating you may need to improve your webpage content around that keyword if it’s something you want to organically target.

These can be tested over a period of time within PPC campaigns and used to influence on page content for your website. Overtime, updating pages with high quality keywords will benefit your organic rankings.

Data Collection

Traffic from PPC campaigns can also speed up your data collection, especially if you have a new website or you have a low volume of organic traffic. 

The increased traffic of targeted users will allow you to make more informed decisions about organic content on your website quickly, in turn improving your organic performance. 

Brand Recognition

PPC campaigns can be a great way to increase brand recognition. Once users recognise a brand as a leader in its field, they are more likely to return organically, boosting website performance.

 Remarketing campaigns can also encourage continued engagement for visitors who do bounce without completing any goals.

To conclude

PPC does influence your organic performance to a degree. While it is less powerful than SEO optimisation, it can produce a more immediate improvement to traffic volumes and organic rankings. Of course, you are paying for this improvement, so it may not be a sustainable solution to long term improved rankings. A mixed blend of SEO optimisation and PPC focused on relevant search terms is the best way to improve your organic rankings.