Dave says: “It's more important than ever to integrate organic and paid search. There’s so much benefit there for both channels in regards to sharing information and sharing insights.

With SGE rolling out soon, it’s going to be more and more important to think about the whole funnel, and where those two different channels sit within that funnel to actually generate conversions and value.”

Is SGE your primary reason for thinking that SEOs should be learning to work more closely with paid search?

“It's something that these teams should be doing already, but too often they don’t. This is a great tip for any businesses out there who already have organic search and paid search teams but maybe they're working in silo or you've got two separate agencies for the two channels and you need to be the go between to make sure they're working together and sharing information. Or maybe you're only doing organic search, you're only doing paid search, and there's so many opportunities to make sure that they both work together.

You might think that organic search is the one that's where you should put all of your money and effort and paid search is a waste of money, but that's not actually the case. There's some things that paid is very good for and some things that organic is very good for, and they work best when they work together at different points in the funnel.”

Is the funnel changing now that we are likely to have SGE? And how does this change the way that SEOs should work with paid search?

“So the thing that's panicking a lot of people working in SEO and digital marketing is the fact that we're likely to see more 0-click searches. I believe that you can still optimize for SGE to show up as a source and to generate clicks, which is a whole other topic, but in those occasions where people are looking for an answer to a specific question. There's still a lot of value to showing up with organic as a source, especially in regards to building brand awareness.

Now, a lot of people are saying that SGE doesn't make sense for Google because they're going to lose out on a lot of ad revenue. That's one of the arguments that some people think it isn't going to roll out soon, but personal point of view is that that's not the case at all. Google actually showed us at the Google I/O event when they announced SGE a version of SGE which had Google Shopping ads integrated into it, and those were just traditional paid ads showing above SGE results.

The versions we've seen in labs haven't done that, but that doesn't mean that Google aren't working on it. It’s worth remembering that Google don't have to show SGE for every single search. They can show them for those ones where people aren't bidding on ads anyway, because they're in the upper funnel, which means that that's a good opportunity to get visibility there with organic because even if we're not getting clicks, we can still get brand awareness.

When you’re in your research phase, maybe you see a great result at the top of Google, click on that and that will take you to an article on a website which sells a product that you actually ended up wanting to buy once you finish your research and decide what it is you actually want.

Now Google is trying to keep you on the SERPs longer by giving you those answers and then allowing you to ask follow up questions. But eventually, you're going to get to that moment of decision, that moment of purchase, where you've done your research and you've decided that there is something that you need to buy or a service you're interested in or an inquiry you want to make. And at that point, that's where Google are going to be able to make some more money because they're going to have people who want to advertise at that point because it's basically a qualified lead because they've been through that research phase.

If you’ve had visibility all the way through as a trustworthy source for Google with your organic result, and then they see your page results, then they're much more likely to click on that result and they're much more likely to see you as a trusted brand, even if they didn't even know who you were before they started their research journey. Because if Google trusts you then you should be trustworthy, right?”

You started off talking about the importance of becoming an authoritative brand within your industry, so are you saying that you have to build that up within the realm of AI software and that you're not necessarily driving people to your website nowadays?

“I think that's going to be the reality in the future with SGE and other AI search engines. Things like Perplexity are gaining a lot of followers and a lot of people are starting to use AI tools that give you the answer.

We've already been saying for a long time that with featured snippets and more zero click searches, that we should obviously try to optimize for them because we think are going to generate traffic when people want click because they want to find out more. This means that maybe we're creating titles that are a little bit, almost click bait, so that people think that this is an article that I want to read more of. We can do that within SGE as well, but sometimes people do just want a quick answer because they want to go through a few steps in their research and get as quickly as possible to that point where they are actually making a purchase decision, or where they are ready to start getting in contact with companies they might want to work with.”

You teased us with a comment a few moments ago when you said that you believe that you will be able to actually receive traffic and measure traffic from SGE. But you also said that that was for another discussion, but maybe can you give us a flavor of what you mean by that?

“At the moment we're limited on visibility of traffic from any kind of AI tools, although OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot have recently enabled it. You can actually track referral traffic in your analytics for SGE at the moment, but only in labs, and we hope that when Google roll that out, they will also give us full access to where SGE showing? That way we can understand where we are showing as a source, and if we are getting clicks and traffic. However, it remains to be seen exactly what Google's is going to give us in that case.

But in terms of how we actually optimize for being a source, there are various ways that we do that. Once we're a source, it's then about making sure that that little kind of snippet of this is one of the sources that's been taken in that carousel, which is the current version is something that people are going to want to click on to find out more.

I think, particularly if people are researching the kind of topics that are things they're passionate about rather than something that's a bit boring, that they just want to kind of get an answer as quickly as possible. But if it's the kind of topics that are their hobbies and things they're passionate about, and you can put something like top 10 tips for this thing, then maybe that's the kind of thing that is going to be able to generate clicks. So you can still get organic traffic in that way.”

Going even further away from the intended core topic, how do you optimize your site to be an authoritative source for SGE?

“I think the best way to do that is to follow the basic principles of EEAT.

We’ve seen that a lot of the time the sources are those who have original data and original information that’s not available elsewhere. It’s seems to be quite good at picking the original source for information.

If you can create a kind of primary research, pack the thing in your content because that's something that Google is going to really like. It’s also a good thing to do because sites themselves often include sources of where they got information from and show themselves as being trustworthy in that way.

Of course, the old kind of ranking factors of links from authoritative websites is still a big thing. In some ways, it's also similar to what we do for featured snippets. So making sure we're signposting pieces of content and pages to which parts of the page answer which questions, making it very clear, this passage is about this topic and clear answer.

Google don't want to be getting their information from pages which are written in a very wishy washy way and are a bit non-committal. They want to take and then repeat it to people within SGE.”

How can paid search make an SEOs life easier?

“There's a lot of basic things that organic and paid teams should be working on together which they're just not. We should talk a little bit about KPIs and how important setting the right KPIs is.

In terms of just some of the things that you should start thinking about, just think about how much data paid have. As SEOs, we like to complain about paid and say how easy their jobs are, because they've got all this perfect data, which tells me exactly which keywords are generating which sales, which ads are generating clicks, or conversions. But if their lives are easy, then let's make our lives easier by taking some of that data.

It's so much easier to test landing pages on which blank pages are converting in paid. Even doing things like A/B testing and testing endless different versions of a landing page to find the one that works. Generally, the one that works for paid is also going to be the one that works for organic, at least in terms of conversions.

Although at the same time, if we can see that the page that Google is picking as the one to show for a search term at the top is different to the one that the paid team are using, we can also give that information back to them and say, well, Google seem to think this is relevant, because Google are fantastic at understanding the intent behind search terms and showing the most relevant page and maybe paid assume that the intent behind the keyword is one thing as they've shown one landing page but actually, a different type of page with which answers a different intent is the one that should be showing. So it's a two-way kind of opportunity to share information.”

What are the key KPIs that are relevant for both SEOs and paid search teams?

“What happens a lot of the time is that the KPIs that are set are different. Maybe they're similar, but they're more like, which conversions are coming from paid search or which conversions are coming from organic search. If your KPIs are generating as many conversions as possible, then paid are trying to keep their return on investment as low as possible for paid and that incentivizes them to then go after stuff that maybe organic search is already doing quite well for. But if they can come in and put a paid ad, on top, where there's low competition, get a low cost per click for something they know is going to convert very well, then a lot of time, that's what happens in teams, and that's kind of teams not working together and deciding who owns which keywords, who's going to go after which keywords. Whereas if you have combined KPIs, then at least part of your KPIs will be what you are generating in terms of conversions, in terms of revenue, and return on investment.

People often think that organic is kind of free, but surely it requires putting a lot of time and effort into that. There's times where you may be thinking about creating a piece of content, and you found a keyword, which you think is going to be very highly relevant. But if it's only got 20-30 searches a month, the cost per click for paid to go after that is going to be relatively low, so maybe it doesn't make sense to create a piece of content. If it's going to take a copywriter a day to write, then it takes a long time to get a return on investment for that. Whereas paid can optimize and get visibility for that straight away. So by having these combined KPIs, particularly return on investment, which should consider the advertising costs for paid, but also the time cost for organic, I think you make much better decisions over what channel goes after what keywords and how to maximize your visibility.”

What can paid search learn from SEOs?

“Paid search can also learn a lot from SEOs in terms of how we go about optimizing pages. As SEOs we're very good at understanding intent and making sure that we're creating pages that meet the intent of the user, because we know otherwise Google nowadays just won't show us.

We can't just stuff keywords into a page and hope it's going to rank. We actually need to make sure it's a good page for users. That's something that to get the best result in paid is what you need to do, but a lot of the time, that's not what they're doing. They're just throwing traffic at a page.

Now I'm generalizing here and there are some great paid people out there who do understand these things as well. But I think there's a lot to learn just by looking at how we work in organic and the things we're focusing on for paid teams and vice versa.”

What's something that SEOs shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“Creating content for the sake of it is something that's a big mistake that a lot of SEOs make, particularly where it can be owned by paid. A lot of the time we'll go after keywords just because they have a high search volume without thinking about whether they're actually going to be valuable for us.

We need to understand that people can be searching for a term that's maybe related to our industry, but it's not related to a user journey that's going to end up with a sale, so that's not probably valuable for organic or for paid. SEOs can waste a lot of time and effort there.

Another area that can was time and effort is going after those keywords that maybe have a very high intent, but such low search volume that it's not a good investment to be creating pieces of content using our best copywriters, when there's probably better opportunities out there for them to work on.”

When it comes to search volume, how do you know when it's too little that you shouldn't be focusing on it?

“Firstly, if we just ran some paid advertising for that, what is the cost per click? So say there's 20 people searching a month, and maybe you can expect to rate of, let's say, 25%? If it’s 50 cents per click, then that is going to cost you only $1 or $2. The cost to you however is to the amount of time that it takes to write a piece of content to rank for that, which maybe it's going to take a day. So if you think about the day rate of your copywriters, then it's going to take you maybe 50 years to get a return on investment for that. That's what we need to kind of think about. How long is it going to take to get the return on investment based on the number of people? Alternatively, if there's something which doesn't need a longer piece of content, it just needs a quick piece of content with a definition, then that's going to take you less time.

If it costs a lot to bid on for paid, then that’s almost an indication that it's probably got a high conversion rate. If it's going to cost a lot and you know that it's likely to convert well, then maybe that's something you go after, even if it has a lower search volume. So it varies a little bit.

I'd say using a tool like SimilarWeb is very useful. If you don't understand if a keyword you might want to go after is actually valuable, you can actually use a tool to see for your competitors who may be already ranking for that keyword, is it valuable for them?

I think too often we go after keywords just because our competitors have created content for something and they've got visibility. So we assume it must be a good idea. But sometimes our competitors make mistakes as well. We can learn from their mistakes using those sorts of tools.”

Dave Cousin is Head of Organic at Oban International, you can find them over at ObanInternational.com.