Product-led PPC and SEO: Solving the Paid vs. Organic Dilemma

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PLM Paid & Organic

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I’m Myriam Jessier 👋 Co-founder of NeuroSpicy Agency & PRAGM agency

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We’re Playing on Hard Mode THE CIRCUMSTANCES

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THE ONE MARKETING ASSET WE ALL HAVE: OUR PRODUCT

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I like this ONE feature I have a job to do I want a solution to my problem I want to improve the quality of my work/life What it means in practice for marketing

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Launching in a new market 01/ Building a new product feature 02/ Pivoting to a new segment 03/ Situational awareness for your backlog 04/

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The nice way to get Product + Stakeholders To give a sh*t

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Product-led Search SEO + PPC

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Unified Search Track 01/

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Symbiosis SEO & PPC have a close & interdependent relationship. That’s what we call symbiosis. It doesn’t mean what you think it means...

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Symbiosis can mean Mutualism Both benefit from each other Commensalism One benefits while the other is unaffected. Parasitism 01/ 02/ 03/ One benefits at the expense of the other.

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Mutualism = solving joint problems.

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WE GET LESS TRAFFIC FOR OUR MONEY

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Penalties & Core Updates PPC can help maintain traffic during SEO penalties or core updates until recovery.

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Penalties & Core Updates INSPIRED BY NAVAH HOPKINS Core updates cause fluctuations in organic rankings and user behavior, which could affect ad relevance and placements.

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Google Ads Blues Google faces pressure to increase ad revenue. Also known as Q4 publicly traded company requiring green arrows

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PPC & SEO BOTH SUFFER FROM DEFAULT CHANNEL GROUPINGS!

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Joint Problem: Branding Paid Search: treating it as a single channel can obscure valuable insights. "Paid Search Brand," "Paid Search Shopping," and "Paid Search Other." should be distinct channels. LUKAS OLDENBURG

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Joint Problem: Branding Similarly, organic search traffic should be segmented into "Organic Search Brand" and "Organic Search Non-Brand" to better understand the effectiveness of SEO efforts. LUKAS OLDENBURG

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How do you handle a CPC surge? Do you involve SEO?

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No you don’t. Distributed accountability means responsibility for outcomes is shared. That’s the key to success.

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Distributed Accountability Empowering teams with shared accountability. Fostering a culture of experimentation and learning. Building a Product- Led Unified Search Track.

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New-market launch PPC should answer the question: are we getting the types of results we expect and want? SCENARIO

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Market Research Global Baseline Evaluate the baseline performance metrics as a global average 01/ Market Baseline Evaluate a baseline for each big market (EMEA, America, etc.) 02/ Country Baseline Evaluate a baseline for each country 03/ Click Yield How many of these clicks lead to freemium signup, conversions, demo requests. 04/

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How do you plan to overcome channel silos? Are you focused on product-led marketing? How do you incentivize shared goals? How do you establish feedback loops? Ask yourself the hard questions Get buy-in for this transformation Measure things that matter in a unified manner What it means in practice

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Occupation Rate Tracking rented units in GA4 Use the metric to optimize Google Ads Use it to check vs indexation for SEO HERE’S A CONCRETE EXAMPLE

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We need to quantify the true, additional contribution PPC & SEO drives above the baseline. How do we measure incrementality

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There is a solution: Robyn “ ”

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Real-talk The lo-fi way is to turn on or turn off campaigns in specific markets/localities to see if organic conversions are impacted (going up, down, lower quality, etc.). GUERILLA TESTING

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Technical Standards 02/

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Metrics affecting both SEO and PPC “ ”

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Did you know this?

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Web Vitals This includes layout shifts, rendering efficiency, and server response times which impact search visibility and performance. CORE WEB VITALS

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These metrics are weighed by Google.

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PPC: CLS has an impact on performance. Engineering: offers a clear set of metrics to monitor & improve. SEO: rankings are impacted search vitals. It aligns dev efforts with marketing objectives. These metrics impact SEO and PPC to varying degrees.

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Create a modified weighed system to reflect a combined SEO & PPC baseline

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Here’s an MVP

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Before SEOs grumble... “All of your PPC-only landing pages are affecting the CWV of your whole site (and, Google's default assumptions for all of your URLs that don't have enough traffic to calculate), and thus f*ck with your SEO”

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Quality Score for SEO Measures expected CTR User intent fit Easy scale of 1-10 SHARING LANDING PAGES

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Consider the page type as part of the scoring system Handle overlapping metrics between the subscores Have sub scores: trial, demo, usage, etc. It has to be simple a simple score for all teams Create your own company quality score for pages to incentivize optimization.

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Give a comprehensive view across channels “ ”

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Display + SEO Metric Measure how many clicks are generated per 1,000 impressions "Click Per Thousand Impressions" or "CPTI"

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Reverse CPM INSPIRED BY NAVAH HOPKINS Figure out how long until the content “is paid for”, when it reaches ROI. Example: if an article triggers 1 million impressions in a month, we would expect it to deliver 1000+ clicks.

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Feedback Loops 03/

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Did you know this?

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Did you know this?

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Search intent feedback loop “ ”

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Placement of top ads may change based on the user’s search.

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SEO keyword research uncovers search intent & content type.

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Identify emerging keywords Search Intent Changing Behind a Query Interpret differences in keyword popularity by region Seasonal Reoccurring Keywords Map how search volume correlates with factors like social media mentions Intext Proximity: related queries can reveal user intent paths. Keyword Trendspotting

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SEO longtail uncovers emerging search intent There’s been a core update with shifting search intents. Focus on format aligning with intent Tracking of SERP features signaling search intent PPC can capitalize on the intent, content, and competitor intelligence surfaced by SEO.

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PPC has viable keywords SEO is not prioritizing with proper content.

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Even more... PPC test of the best approach while building the proper SEO assets. How do we deal with a CPC surge? SAVE TIME & MONEY

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Market Research Test Line by Line You can test images, angles, headlines to see how they do in PPC. 01/ Approved Brand Terms What are some approved brand abbreviations and others terms detected by search teams? 02/ Psychographics Create variable lists and test demographics against these. 03/ Test Adjectives Test features, test benefits, test qualifiers, etc. Test safety words, test activator words. 04/

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PPC for quick insights on keyword performance to respond to market trends faster.

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Google is testing out a feature which impacts SEO rankings & traffic There are dead PPC keywords that will never convert PPC competitors are bidding on brand keywords Product manager wants to gain insights regarding new features PPC data provides insights into which product messaging, features, or offers resonate with users Merchant Center data joined to Google Search Console data in BigQuery is fantastic. Feedback Loops