Take a look at the following situations:
Small Company with one landing page: You may be thinking that the idea of creating separate landing pages for PPC and SEO is out of sorts. Perhaps you might be thinking that you cannot afford another page in a small budget. Or maybe, the idea of individual landing pages for same keyword is a waste of money. Why pay extra money for the same thing?
Large company with separate landing pages: But when it comes to large companies, they tend to have separate landing pages for SEO and PPC. They also have separate set of people doing things their own ways. So, you may be having SEO company Toronto run your organic search page and the other group that runs PPC landing page.
Both the above mentioned situations are quite different from each other. But is it a good idea? Does it really affect your numbers when you have separate pages or doing both things on the same landing page? Regardless of the fact that having two landing pages is an expensive option, the end results matter the most.
The only way to figure that out is try both options. But you have to consider these things:
- The content cost will be twice as much: Whenever you have to make changes in the content for a particular keyword, you have to make changes on two places. You know that this might not pay off. A combination of two landing pages will definitely save the cost. Then you have to pay for the coordination cost between the two groups; one responsible for SEO while the other one running your paid search page. Anyhow, the coordination cost will not be as high as the cost of having two content.
- Organic search also requires conversion: It’s obvious that the paid landing page takes more money than organic search page, and this is the reason why businesses tend to lose focus on organic search pages. What they don’t understand is, if SEO page doesn’t get conversions, it’ll waste your money too. If you combine the two pages in one, you don’t have to divide your attention. Plus, you’ll manage a combined page in the best possible manner.
- SEO techniques and paid landing pages: Search engines also examine the quality of paid landing pages, so SEO techniques are becoming more and more important for paid search as well. Now, you cannot just stuff the words in your paid search page. So, the best option to minimize your efforts and maximize the quality of pages is to combine the two pages in one platform. In this way, you will not only save your cost, but can maintain the quality of the pages for both, PPC and SEO.
As mentioned earlier, the work will not get easier after combining the two things at one place.
You have to work on the two teams and build coordination between them.The two teams have to compromise on certain points. Each team needs to realize the impact of the implementation on the other team.
Microsites: The situation may be different from the ones explained above, and may get worse. Both the searches go to entirely different sites, and one of them (PPC) being a microsite. It happens when the agency responsible for PPC campaign creates a new site to reflect performance. But microsites have a negative impact on organic search results, as explained by Nick Stamoulis.
Finally: What Should You Do?
With all things explained, here’s what you should do for better conversion:
- Combine both the landing pages for better conversion on SEO page and better quality for PPC page. It’s a lengthy process, but the results will be better than your expectations.
- You can always start with a few pages with combined PPC and SEO and few with separate searches. Then note down the results.
- If all the pages are separate, begin by combining two or three pages that are most important. Make sure that the SEO page has the basis, because changing URL for PPC landing page is much easier than changing SEO landing page.
- Examine the results and see whether you’re getting better or not. If you’re not getting better, there must be a problem with coordination or quality of pages.
- All your efforts will give you the results beyond your expectations.
