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You don’t need to pick a side in the paid vs organic debate, not if you're serious about sustainable growth.
In reality, your most efficient acquisition strategy happens when your paid and organic search data work together. Not in silos. Not in competition. Together.
This post unpacks how to actually use insights from both paid and organic channels to drive better decisions across content, bidding, keyword prioritisation, and ROI forecasting.
The Old Mistake: Treating Paid and Organic Like Separate Teams
Paid search is fast and measurable. Organic is slow but scalable. So companies put them in different departments or worse, hire separate digital marketing agencies.
What happens next:
- Paid runs on expensive keywords while organic doesn’t support them
- Organic ranks for terms no one converts on
- Insights get buried in channel-specific dashboards
The fix? Cross-pollination.
1. Use Paid Search to Test Content Viability
Not sure which blog topic to prioritise? Run a £200 Google Ads campaign on a few headline variants and landing pages.
Metrics to track:
- CTR: Are people clicking?
- Bounce rate/time on page: Are they sticking around?
- Conversion rate: Are they acting?
If paid traffic performs well, you’ve got proof the topic is worth investing in for further SEO content.
2. Let Organic Rankings Inform Paid Strategy. But Don’t Assume Duplication Is Waste
There’s nuance to balancing your paid and organic efforts. Rather than thinking in binary terms paid or organic, consider how they work in tandem.
- If you’re ranking in positions 1–3 for a high-intent term, assess whether your paid listing is adding incremental value (extra visibility, click share, competitor defence).
- For terms sitting in positions 6–20, paid can help capture traffic while you climb the organic ladder, but only if the page experience matches intent.
Think of it less as avoiding overlap, and more as reinforcing visibility where it counts most. Especially on commercial intent queries, where owning the SERP twice can edge out your competitors entirely.
3. Share Search Term Data Across Channels
Google Ads gives you real-time search term data — often weeks or months before SEO tools catch up.
Use this to:
- Spot rising trends
- Uncover new pain points or language
- Build better blog topics and product messaging
Bonus: export your top converting search terms and map them to current content. Where’s the gap?
4. Track Combined ROI, Not Just Channel-Specific Metrics
This is key if your marketing and SEO teams report into different functions.
Instead of just measuring:
- Paid: cost per lead
- Organic: sessions and rankings
Track:
- Assisted conversions (via GA4)
- Multi-touch attribution
- First vs last-click source comparisons
This helps you understand how often organic creates demand that paid captures - or vice versa.
5. Use Paid Landing Page Tests to Optimise Organic UX
Paid landing pages are goldmines for CRO data:
- CTA performance
- Scroll depth
- Form friction
Use this to:
- Optimise organic landing pages
- Reduce bounce on SEO blog posts
- Improve internal linking structure based on user flow
TL;DR: Smart Marketers Blur the Lines
The best B2B ppc agencies aren’t asking “paid vs organic.” They’re asking:
- What can we test fast in paid to inform long-term SEO?
- What organic terms should we defend or double-down on in PPC?
- Where are we seeing demand that our content doesn’t yet serve?
When both sides share data, you stop making assumptions and start making progress.
Need a strategy that connects your paid and organic search into a single source of truth?
We’re a ppc agency helping B2B teams turn siloed insights into high-performing strategies.
Explore our PPC Strategy, B2B SEO, and Google Ads Management services.
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