Serge says: “For my additional insight, I will start with a story: a dream.

I've been doing PPC for 15 years and, over all those 15 years, it has been a big dream to make SEO and PPC work, but I must reckon that never happened. So, the insight I'm bringing in 2025 would be a big dream – the sort of Martin Luther King, ‘I have a dream’.

I have a dream that, in 2025, SEO and PPC will be hand in hand working together to really harness the power of synergy. I will develop that a bit more.”

Harness the power of synergy.

You also talk about crafting your brand story with precision and impact using both SEO and PPC. How do both different marketing mediums assist with crafting your brand story?

“On that one, I think we need to really start with focusing on Google. They have 92% of the search market. So, what does Google want to achieve? What's Google's mission?

Google's number 1 mission (and that's why they are so successful), is to really make sure that they provide the best search service in the world – to provide searchers with the most relevant information they are searching for.

They are even reminding us of this whenever they do algorithm updates. They really remind us that they work to improve the quality of the search results by showing content that people will find genuinely useful, and that's really important: content that people will find genuinely useful. That is how a brand can command itself to be authentic.

So, how do you present yourself? There are multiple choices. How do you stand out? That brings in what I'm talking about with being original in how you present yourself to the user.”

By being original, does this mean that you need to ensure that your PPC ads are original and different as well, and that they align with what you're trying to achieve/what you publish on your organic pages?

“With this, it really starts with defining your value as a brand. What do you stand for? And also, identifying your user. What's your ideal persona? What do you want them to remember you for?”

Okay, that's two massive steps there.

You run your own PPC agency. When you have a conversation with a brand initially, do you first of all ask them, ‘What is your brand value?’ and, if they look at you strangely and can't answer that question, how do you deal with that?

“Yeah, absolutely. That's a conversation that we are having. They will still say something because it's really a powerful question, to try to understand what a brand stands for.

They will say something and, if they ever look at me strangely, then I will guide them.”

How do you guide them? What questions do you ask them?

“When we are out there, we are competing against others, so guiding them is to really make them aware that it's starting from them but it's not about them – it's about the user. How are they perceived out there?

It’s a kind of reverse psychology. What do you want to be remembered for?”

If a brand isn't that aware of how they're perceived, do you do some audience research to begin with? Do you do some competitor research? Do you see what review sites are saying about the brand before putting together your PPC strategy?

“Yeah, exactly. Before getting into the technicality of PPC, we need to have that right. Otherwise, who would we be advertising for? That's really coming back to what I can do if they are ever struggling. Usually, I would ask them, ‘Could you, by order of importance, choose 20 keywords you would like to be in the top position for?’

When they come up with those keywords, I can run my keyword research and identify who their competitors are, and what they are offering. Then I will present that back to them.

I will tell them, ‘You might not know but, for the keywords you want to be in the top position for, this is the reality on the search result page.’ Then, they could use competition as inspiration. That's how competition could also essentially be used to empower a brand.”

That's a good point. A client may wish to be appearing for certain keyword phrases, both organically and using paid search, but they're not necessarily selecting the right keyword phrases that are most appropriate for them and the keyword phrases that are right for their brand.

Then, you use their opinion as a starting point for discussion to determine what the keywords actually should be – and they're not necessarily going to be the keywords that the client provided to you to begin with.

“Yes, exactly. Again, it's really important to define what they stand for and also who they are targeting. That's a prerequisite for a successful PPC campaign, or even a marketing campaign.

Because, once we have it right, we know, ‘Okay, this is what we stand for. This is who we want to target.’ Then it makes it easy to build a bridge and reach out to the right audience. That will also be, as we go forward, minimising all the wastage on spend.”

What's the difference between doing keyword research for paid search versus keyword research for SEO?

“With this one, they will be serving the same purpose. Because, at the end of the day, it's a matter of reaching out to the right audience.”

Do you want to try and use the same landing pages, then, for paid search and SEO?

“Sometimes, that could be the case. Not necessarily. In some instances, we would recommend having a specific landing page for paid. And there again, it will depend on the strategy, at which phase they are, and what they want to do.

If we come back into the awareness phase, for example, at this point, we are not trying to convert. We just want the user to remember us later on when they are in a position to make a decision. For that, I would recommend using the same landing page, and even the same keyword, to make sure that if, organically, we are not high on the ranking, we use PPC, which is fairly quick, to be on top.

Also, combining and winning more real estate because, at the end of the day, people are clicking what they prominently see.”

Can you talk a little bit about the software/tools that you use to do what you do?

“To do what I do, Google is quite developed – Google and Bing, but let's focus on Google. They have the Keyword Planner, which they have revamped recently.

Keyword Planner is fairly good for really knowing about a website. You can use it at a URL level or with a few semantics, and it will come up with all the possibilities of keywords. Now, if you want to go more granular, we have AnswerThePublic, and there are a few other tools. In all fairness,

I'm not making it too complicated. Google is so vastly rich with their tools. It's more than enough to start from.”

What lessons can SEOs learn from PPC?

“It's about collaboration between the two because, when we look at how it's working, it's about the user experience. That user experience, if it has a common goal, it will be powerful for the marketing as a whole.

The two channels are different. SEO is really there to set the foundation, and PPC is fairly quick because you pay and then, for whichever keyword you decide to advertise on, you can win the top position.

The learning between the two channels would be for SEO to give room for PPC to boost wherever they are weak. If the competition is high on certain keywords, they can use PPC.”

Okay, so that's where collaboration is key: knowing where organic can rank and where it can't.

Does this mean, when organic is ranking position number 1, paid search shouldn't be bidding on those keywords?

“It could be. When they’re working together, if the two channels are not communicating, that means you could be really high organically and also spending quite a lot on PPC.

The only instance this could be relevant is for brand terms because, for your brand, you want to really make sure you have 100% of the real estate on search result pages. That means you will want to be high organically and you want also to be high on PPC.

However, apart from that scenario, it will be about being efficient with your investment. PPC would be more useful to complement where SEO is struggling. We know that SEO takes longer to have the results we want them to achieve. That can only be possible if the two channels are communicating.”

Is it reasonable to say something like, ‘We're not ranking organically for these keyword phrases. We'll give this campaign to PPC for 6 months and then, after that, we'll have a 6-month strategy to build up our organic position for these terms, and then take a view to switch off the paid campaign after that.’?

“100%, David. Yeah, that's a way to go. Again, as I'm saying, it's not SEO against PPC or PPC against SEO. It is really, as a brand, where do we want to go?

If we are just starting, of course, we won't be ranking high. So there, PPC would help us to gather more data. It could be a strategic investment.

With PPC, we have more users coming to the website, and that would inform us across all the divisions of the brand. That means, when those users are coming, how are they behaving on the landing page? After a certain period (let's say 3 to 6 months) we will analyse all that data and really map out the user journey.

From that point, it will be possible to craft a proper strategy and even review the website according to the data we are gathering and how users are behaving when they come on the website.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest, working with PPC, in 2025?

“With this, one thing they could stop doing is really focusing on keyword stuffing – for 2 reasons.

The first 1 is that this is really outdated. Google’s search engine algorithms are so powerful, and they can detect that, so it's a pure waste of time. Secondly, with AI and the way people are searching online having massively developed, long tail keywords are the norm – and even conversational queries are the norm with AI.

People are not necessarily typing old-fashioned one-word keywords, or maximum 2. It's conversational. That means you need to really focus on user intent, rather than on keywords only.”

Serge Nguele is Founder at Your PPC Doctor, and you can find him over at YourPPCDoctor.com.