A search starts with : A USER, A QUERY, A RESULTS PAGE.

Both Paid Search and Organic Search target the same audience (user) and keywords(queries) in the same environment (result page), which often results in search cannibalization.

So what is the difference from a user perspective? Not a big difference. The user searches for a query and receives a list of results to choose from. The user doesn't distinguish the difference between organic and paid search, he only wants to see a relevant response to its query, and most of the times he clicks on top results. Not all queries are clicked or even scrolled to the bottom of the first page of SERP (Search Engine Result Page). More than 90% of the results that are not listed in the first page do not even get an impression.

From a brand perspective, they have different budgets, different teams and different strategies to cover both parts, Paid and Organic Search. This is why it is very important to know how to leverage SEO and PPC synergy to increase ROI. If your SEA and SEO teams are misaligned you might be losing visibility, clicks, users on site, transactions, revenue, leads or other type of conversions that you optimize for.

From Google’s perspective, they have to respond with a relevant result no matter if it is a Paid or Organic result. Of course, first you’ll see the Paid results, then the Organic ones. Google says search should “Deliver the most relevant and reliable information available” and “Present information in the most useful way”.

These are two channels that respond to the same user interest at the same time. Each time a user searches, there is a sorting algorithm that decides which is number 1,2 and so on for the organic slots and for the paid slots in the Search Engine Results Page(SERP). 

If your goal is to maximize your visibility and presence you should claim as many slots as possible. But, if your strategy is to maximize your ROI you can consider reducing cannibalization effects and distributing budgets as efficiently as possible.

In any case, you should definitely align the language you use in Paid Search with the language you use in your landing pages, compare organic and paid landing pages performance and semantic.

You should also start defining your strategy after your business and marketing objectives are clear. With the end goal in mind it will be easier to understand how search can help you reach your goals, where you have potential, where your visibility is at the maximum potential and where you still have space to grow.

When you join organic and paid data together you start getting very interesting insights. SEA and SEO teams may not have time to join data and dig for insights, but they sure can benefit from ready to use visualizations and insights such as the ready to use dashboards in ClimbinSearch.

They can also use free tools such as Looker Studio to combine data, but that implies time and effort. It’s all about the time and resources the SEA-SEO teams have and their commitment to make the most out of the SEA & SEO budgets.

You can activate Paid Search anytime and have immediate results if you allocate a budget. Paid Search is a paid channel and can be used very specifically with bidding strategies that optimize for conversions, target CPA, conversion value, target ROAS, clicks, target CPC or target impression share.

Organic Search relies on authority and relevance, it takes time to optimize a website to get rankings for competitive queries.  Organic Search is an earned channel.

Organic Search is earned in time, it is the recognition of trust, authority and relevance and you can rely on constant traffic and results. It is a long term investment and it is worth it, unlike Paid Search where you have results as long as you have budgets to invest.

Both SEA and SEO are responsible to make the brand visibile in Google Search and make sure to answer queries and provide relevant answers for users when their intent is relevant for the business. Search is where users find answers and is the best channel to respond and listen to what users have to say, want to find, intent to do or buy.

This also applies for research purposes, better content, better communication strategy online and offline. Google Search exhaustive study specific for your brand's category reveals lots of interesting insights statistically relevant for the market about the consumers and their intents and interests.

People search all kind of things on Google, you can be aware or not.

The best choice is to understand the search universe and the queries, create ads for the most important queries, prioritizing the ones that bring ROI and develop original and useful content for the organic strategy.

You can enhance the visibility by taking over slots in paid and organic, by minimizing cannibalization between the two channels to maximize search visibility and bring incremental results.

You can also use paid search insights like conversion rate and ROI at a query level to make sure the organic strategy is on the right track, or organic insights to enrich your paid search campaigns.

There may be many implications, but there is no direct relation between paid search campaigns and ranking.

Indirect, having paid search visibility and bringing people on your website, you may increase your brand awareness and people may start searching for your brand, or your products online. Also, knowing conversion rates and revenues at search query level can provide valuable insights in terms of what topics to prioritize in your SEO strategy.

On the other hand, having paid search on top of top organic rankings will decrease your organic CTR. The expected organic CTR will be higher, but you need to be aware that it won’t compensate for 2 slots in organic and paid. It may be a very good strategy for incremental growth to redirect the budgets from some of the top organic queries to other queries with similar paid search performance results. You can do this manually or try the automation for paid-organic cannibalization you find in ClimbinSearch.

Usually the SEO team optimizes for technical health, on-page relevance and off-page authority. The technical optimizations for speed, mobile usability and other types of optimizations have a huge impact on all the channels performance in the mix. The on-page relevance has an impact on the user experience and the conversion rates for all the channels performance in the mix.

In terms of direct impact on Google Ads, SEO teams look at expected Landing Page experience and can improve the indicator significantly. This has a direct impact on the Quality Score and on the Paid Search efficiency.