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BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

who clicks on an ad. Google does not reveal exact- 3. Rapid market launch of new topics and pages:
ly which components it is calculated from. Howev- It usually takes several months for new pages to
er, the search engine provides clues, for example, develop their full SEO power and have a chance
it takes into account whether the content of the of gaining top positions. This can be too long if a
landing page matches the advertised keyword. Us- company wants to communicate an important,
ability elements and loading times also play a role. current topic, but could be white spots, e.g., topics
In short, the landing page experience is a useful for which there is high demand but little competi-
metric to rank the accessibility and quality of a tion on the search engines. Large brands in partic-
landing page in relation to a particular keyword. ular can benefit here, as they can displace small
Not to mention that the user experience is an indi- domains that already deal with the topic due to the
cation that also helps the SEO team with page op- trust of their pages.
timization – long before the success of a page can
be reliably evaluated via the ranking. Because the The monitoring of SEO and SEA rankings naturally
better the content of a page is tailored to specific takes place using different tools. In the Google cosmos,
user needs, the higher the likelihood of a better for example, SEOs work with the Search Console to
user experience and a higher quality score, which monitor organic success, the SEA specialists, on the
in turn can have a positive effect on the click costs other hand, use Google Ads. To bring both results to-
in search engine advertising gether, and to keep an eye on the rankings efficiently,
new solutions are needed, and one option is to export
All parties benefit from strong websites: the organic the data via an API interface. SEA and SEO key figures
ranking (SEO), the performance of campaigns (SEA) are then combined and visualized, for example, using
and especially the user. The interactions mentioned Google Data Studio. In this way, the results can be
result in three strategies for holistic search marketing. quickly viewed on automated dashboards and connec-
tions can be tracked without constantly switching back
1. Standing out with strong SEA & SEO: With stra- and forth between the two systems. Because with all
tegically important keywords, it makes sense to the advantages that arise from the holistic approach,
show presence in both the organic and the paid the coordination work between SEO and SEA teams
ranking as users won’t be able to ignore the obviously also costs time. Which brings us back to the
brand's offer and competition is defied. That’s cer- initial question of whether holistic search marketing is
tainly an ideal scenario, which unfortunately takes worthwhile – and the answer is yes. However, how the
time (resources in SEO) and money (advertising benefit is reflected for companies depends heavily on
budget in SEA). However, as described, both the respective situation: depending on the objective,
measures can benefit from each other and companies can expand their dominance on search en-
achieve better results more quickly in holistic pro- gine search results pages, improve overall visibility
cessing than in isolated execution. across all product areas or even allocate budgets more
efficiently.
2. SEA cost savings through strong SEO: In the
second scenario, SEA costs can be saved for key- However, it is questionable whether, in times when or-
words where a brand has a strong organic rank- ganic results on mobile devices are increasingly shifting
ing. The idea behind this is that the paid traffic "below the fold", SEA should be avoided for cost rea-
shifts to the prominent, organic entry, which is an sons. It usually makes more sense to combine the skills
exciting thought, but unfortunately not always fea- and knowledge from both departments to achieve opti-
sible, since competitors can siphon off users via mal results in each case. If we combine our knowledge
paid entries. Because the belief that users con- and reliable data from both disciplines to achieve the
sciously avoid paid results and wait for the first common goal, the result is an optimal user experience.
organic entry usually does not stand up to harsh Holistic search marketing then leads to high-quality
reality. Especially in the mobile area, organic re- pages and campaigns that satisfy a clear user need –
sults are increasingly found “below the fold”, re- which has a positive effect on the organic rankings and
quiring scrolling to find the first organic entry. The the performance of the SEA campaigns. ◊
convenience causes many users to avoid this and
click on the ads – especially since searchers prob- By Daniela La Marca
ably do not even know the difference between
paid and organic listings.

July 2022: Search Marketing 19