SDS London

Most agencies run SEO and paid search as rivals. Different teams, different targets, different reporting. The result is two channels competing for the same clicks while the client pays for both.

The problem nobody names

Paid search can quietly cannibalise organic traffic, and Performance Max makes it worse. The algorithm chases the lowest hanging fruit, which usually means buying clicks the brand was already winning for free.

So the question was not whether to run both. It was how to divide the ground between them.

What we did

We engineered the split rather than simply combining the channels.

PPC was focused on Shopping rather than broad search, because Shopping gives far more control over which terms you appear for. We then excluded every keyword SEO was already ranking for. No overlap, no paying twice for the same visitor.

From there the division was clean. PPC owned transactional intent. SEO covered both informational and transactional search, building visibility that compounds. Anyone arriving at the top of the funnel was picked up again through retargeting on social and lower funnel paid channels, so interest created organically was not left to go cold.

Shared keyword data, aligned strategy, one system rather than two.

The result

£134,000 added to online revenue, from a single ideation session and a structure that stopped the two channels bidding against each other.

In their words

Simon Ayers, Managing Director, SDS London