SEO-SEM Collaboration | TechnicalSEO.com

Informational Queries & SEO Strategy:

Integrated teams can leverage various skillsets to benefit other channels with which they work. Specifically, teams can jointly contribute to projects related to messaging, on-page content / searcher intent, user experience, and optimizing SEO and SEM channels from a technical perspective.

Content & Messaging: Use Holistic Team Insights to Understand & Optimize for Search Intent

Holistic Search Strategy for Targeting Transactional Queries

Engines are looking for users to want to click through on ads and have a good experience. If an advertiser has a higher landing page experience (i.e., it is relevant for the searcher and the query), then the quality score of that ad will be higher and contribute to cost-per-click (CPC) savings compared to competitors. In SEO, ranking relevancy is determined by having a useful on-site experience, clearly relevant to the original query. Similarly, regular search query monitoring and negative query additions are important in SEM. They block irrelevant traffic from matching against ads, which both increases the conversion rate of traffic that does get through to site and helps to rank higher in auctions via increased quality score, without increasing bids.

SEM has evolved a lot over the years, from historically onlygoing after terms that drive the best last-click ROI to now seeing the value inbeing present on less conversion-focused queries for the purpose of filling thefunnel. In a world with many different attribution models available, we now havemore flexibility to distribute conversion credit to informational queries when aportion of that traffic comes back and converts via another interaction. Forthis, we recommend one of the following attribution models:

• Data-driven attribution
• Time decay
• Linear

For these types of queries, traffic is best matched to long-form content (typically blog) pages built out by SEO teams. Within SEM, this traffic is best acquired via running either text ads, which target keyword-matched queries to chosen landing pages, or Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs), which target relevant queries to designated types of landing pages. For SEM, the agreed upon goals of this traffic and the volume of traffic coming through these terms will help determine which ad format is best for running support. For clients just starting out in advertising on informational queries, we recommend starting with DSA targeting on a smaller budget and an automated bid strategy focused on driving traffic. From there, begin breaking out either more granular DSA targets or stand-alone text ads for high-volume terms, as well as testing into more conversion-focused bid strategies.

From an SEO perspective, crawling and navigation are keyconsiderations that impact page discovery for crawlers. Alternately, SEMresults are based on a bid, but also on the relevancy and expected CTR of thatproduct or group of products in context of both the user’s query and what thesearch engine knows about that user and his or her online behavior.

In an integrated environment, SEM and SEO teams can collaborate, learn from each other, and provide incremental benefits, which include:

1. Keeping one another informed of quickly changing business plans and respond with urgency.
2. Ensuring consistent messaging in the SERP, contributing to a seamless user experience for customers.
3. Uncovering patterns, anomalies, and opportunities that are more difficult for a single channel team to identify on their own. By having a larger team working regularly with a website, the collective knowledge of the business grows, offering greater fluency for understanding requests, and anticipating business needs.

Transactional Queries & SEM Strategy:

As with cross-channel collaboration of any kind, the goal isto create a seamless experience for consumers, no matter how they’reinteracting with your brand. Outside of the above examples, have SEM and SEOteams meet regularly to discuss what they’re working on and their channel goals.This will result in interesting collaborations. It will help search teams tospeak one another’s language and recognize situations where one opinion orperspective could create additional value for another business or businesspartner.

When given similar bids, the SEM team can see whatindividual products the search engines see as winners on the SERP and whatproducts will stand out against the competition, get traffic onto the client’ssite, and drive conversions. As a pull marketing channel, product traffic andsales trends are typically very reflective of seasonal demands across theentire product catalog. Using SEM data to our advantage, we can look at product-levelreporting and see what products over index in sales via SEM compared to non-SEMall-site sales. Narrowing to the top outlier products reveals interestingimplications to begin answering broader questions, such as: “Which productsshould we pin to show at the top of a category page?” “What products would bewinners, in that they had more visibility?” “Which products should be moved toclearance, given that they convert poorly even with a lot of highly relevanttraffic?” In these instances, SEM product performance can help us make moreinformed assumptions about what appeals to a business’s user base on-site and acrosschannels.

For many brands, it can be difficult to justify the SEM expense of targeting informational queries, as it is typically a higher funnel strategy or branding play. However, by leveraging SEM data, SEO can use paid insights to understand where there is more ROI to be had for informational content. This creates a win-win situation for the brand, which can more easily justify the expense of creating the content.

Use Cases: Technical SEO + Technical SEM

Organic Merchant Center Programs

Holistic Search Strategy for Targeting Informational Queries

Transactional Queries & SEO Strategy:

Staying siloed in either an SEO or SEM context can feelcomfortable for those who have never worked in integrated search. Whilestepping outside of established routines to try new cross-channel techniquesmay feel intimidating, communication is the essential first step to creating amore collaborative strategy.

Most retail SEM programs heavily weigh ad support towardtransactional queries, as they often have a stronger return on investment(ROI). Besides the keyword/target bid, search engines weigh an ad’s qualityscore to determine rank. Quality score is an aggregated view of how well the adexperience matches the users’ queries. Quality score is composed of:

• Expected click-through rate (CTR)
• Ad relevance to the query
• Landing page experience

Searcher intent typically falls into one of two categories. The first category is transactional, where searchers are looking to purchase an item. The second category is informational, where searchers are looking to learn something. Both scenarios have different outcomes and require each team to adjust its content and messaging strategy to meet user needs and best utilize SERP features.

Transactional Searcher Intent