Strategic SEO tip: optimizing conversions with Paid data

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Some purists will always say that SEM (Search Engine Marketing) encompasses both SEO and Paid Search, but in the industry, everything that is paid search is considered SEM. In many cases, there are projects that work on SEO strategies and SEM strategies, but they do so independently. From an SEO perspective, ignoring the data we are obtaining in Paid would be a mistake.

In this article we are going to show you a series of SEO tips using SEM data so that you can take them into account in your strategies.

Table of Contents
First step: extracting data
Second step: cross-referencing data
Step three: analyzing the data
Additional SEO Tips
Take advantage of landing pages
Perform A/B tests and analyze the competition
First step: extracting data
The first thing you need to do is extract keywords and a series of data from your Google Ads campaigns. The metrics that could be most useful to us would be: cost, impressions, clicks, conversion rate, conversion value, conversions, average CPC and cost per conversion. This will help us get a general idea of ​​how the conversions by keywords are working.

If we have access, to get this data we will have to go to the Google Ads panel, and in the left column, below, we will click on keywords. A table will be displayed with a series of metrics like the one we can see below:





If any of the metrics we are looking for are not there, we can add them from the “columns” button, in the upper right area of ​​the table.

Once we have checked that all the data is displayed, we export this content to a Google Sheets table. Here we must delete the columns that do not interest us.

Now, you will need to “clean” the keywords that, when extracted from Google Ads, will have brackets or signs like the “+”. Just press ctrl/command + F, then the three dots and a “Find and replace” box will open. Here you will include the brackets and the “+”, one by one, to clean the text of the keywords. You could also do it all at once using Regex, but we will leave that for another time:



After this, we go to the project panel in Google Search Console and, in “Performance” or “Search results”, we export the results of the last three months (to have more recent data). Remember to filter by the country in which the Paid campaigns have been run. It will be useless to extract data from campaigns in Spain if you then export data from Google Search Console that also includes other countries.

Dump this data into the same Google Sheets where the Google Ads export is located. Do this in another tab called GSC Data (or similar).

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Second step: cross-referencing data
What we will do now is cross-reference the data exported from Google Ads and Google Search Console, specifically the average position of the keyword. To do this, in a new column that we will call “Average organic position” (or similar) we insert the following formula: =IF.ERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,'GSC data'!$A$1:$BG$9999.5,FALSE),»not found»)

[SEO tip: IFERROR and VLOOKUP formulas are basic when working with data. Knowing them is a must if you want to expand your SEO skills] – [potential article on interesting formulas for SEO]

This formula does the following:

A2: Find the value found in column A;

'GSC Data': determines that the search will be done on that sheet;

!$A$1:$BG$9999: marks the range of data to be taken into account. In this case, a graphic design email address list very wide range has been specified to ensure that there is no error;

5: indicates that the value to be returned is in the fifth column (corresponding to the middle position). If it were in another column, such as D, for example, 4 would have to be indicated since D is the fourth column;

FALSE: indicates that an exact match is sought;

IFERROR(…; “not found”): If the VLOOKUP function results in an error (for example, if a match is not found), then instead of displaying an error, the formula will return “not found.”

We drag the formula in a cascade and we will have the average organic position of each keyword worked on in Google Ads.





We may encounter strange numbers, this may be due to the format in the GSC Data sheet being a date format. Clearing the format for the entire column should fix the problem:



Step three: analyzing the data
With this cross-referencing we can identify quick wins to work on in SEO for conversions. Let's look at specific cases:

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The keyword “gardening tools” has some interesting figures: a conversion rate of 3.78%, 324 conversions and an average CPC of 0.58. However, according to Google Search Console data, we can see that its average organic position is 11.3 in recent months. We therefore detect an opportunity for improvement in organic positioning that can have a very positive impact on organic conversions. In many cases, a high CPC can be indicative of a high conversion potential.

We can also identify optimizations for SEM. For example, on keywords where the average organic position is good (and we have good conversion figures), but the CPC is too high, we can reduce the investment for those keywords and redirect it towards keywords where SEO is not working as well. This can help balance the spending and improve the overall ROI.

Ultimately, all this identification of gaps and opportunities for keywords will undoubtedly serve to provide feedback to SEO and SEM strategies. In addition, if we want to take our strategy to another level and continue combining SEM and SEO data, we can follow the following tips.

Additional SEO Tips
With the data we have previously cross-referenced, we can draw many conclusions and propose various optimizations. However, if we want to continue taking advantage of SEM data, we can follow the following tips:

Take advantage of landing pages
There are many SEM campaigns that implement specific landing pages. Analyze whether these types of pages convert better and why and apply these learnings to pages that are more SEO-oriented. Following the example of the gardening sector: let's imagine that a new line of business has been opened in which online courses on gardening are offered. A paid campaign has been prepared and a landing page has been created for that campaign with a series of elements. Aspects such as specific courses that work well, CTAs, quality of content, etc., can serve as a reference when considering other strategies that are not paid.

Perform A/B tests and analyze the competition
Take advantage of SEM data and campaigns to optimize titles and meta descriptions. Analyze and test which versions are generating the highest CTR and apply the winners to your SEO strategy. This may also lead to an improvement in organic CTR.