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The best online marketing campaigns use complimentary short- and long-term online marketing strategies together: PPC and SEO. It is reasonable to say this with almost no regard for a business’ size and type, if its goal is to increase online exposure, create a larger customer base, and ultimately establish healthier profits. Pay Per Click marketing is the easy-to-manipulate strategy that produces immediate results and measurable data, while Search Engine Optimization takes time to effectively develop and launch, as well as to begin to show any quantifiable results. So for companies preparing to invest in a more robust SEO and PPC management strategy, it makes sense to get one firm that can do both and will approach the two as synergistic, complimentary components of one campaign.

The truth is that it is possible to enjoy a decent return on investment with either one of these online marketing strategies without employing the other. For one thing, they have fundamentally different goals because of their time frame, the way they generate traffic, and their cost structure, so companies with narrow goals may only need one of the two strategies. However, they both are also built on the pillar of search keyword phrase generated traffic, with SEO using natural or “organic” search traffic and PPC capitalizing on paid traffic based on those same search terms. Getting the right keyword phrase is essential to generating profitable traffic, regardless of whether the short term goal is just to generate interest or if it’s to make an online sale right away. This means that testing for the best keyword phrases will improve both.

Fortunately, the response timeline for PPC ads makes testing keywords very easy. This information can be incorporated into the SEO changes before any data from SEO improvements is even ready. And good SEO will also produce more effective landing pages, as well as make it easier for second-time searchers to find the site without using the PPC ad, converting a searcher to a purchase for “free” and possible solidifying that person as a repeat customer. Even from this basic analysis it is clear that effectively paired PPC and SEO strategies support each other.

Lastly, by integrating the two in such a way that search traffic data can be aggregated, or using one online marketing firm that can aggregate that data for the company, it is possible to conduct far more thorough analysis of the performance of the investment relative to a number of other variables. And in marketing, the ability to collect data and respond to it is the difference between efficiency and waste, the difference between synergized PPC and SEO on one hand, and a lack of interest in coordinating the two on the other.

Ryan Michael Farrell is a Los Angeles based search engine optimization specialist who works as a copywriter for various tech and business blogs