Welcome to an insightful conversation with Milena Traikovich, a seasoned Demand Gen expert who has dedicated her career to helping businesses craft powerful campaigns that attract high-quality leads. With a deep background in analytics, performance optimization, and lead generation, Milena offers a wealth of knowledge on how to master search marketing. In this interview, we dive into the dynamic world of search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, exploring how these strategies work together to boost visibility, drive traffic, and lower acquisition costs. We’ll also uncover practical tips for building authority, navigating modern search engine result pages, and adapting to emerging trends like AI-driven search features.
How would you define search marketing in a way that anyone can understand, and why does it matter so much for businesses today?
Search marketing is all about getting your business noticed on search engines like Google through a mix of unpaid efforts, which we call SEO, and paid advertising, known as PPC. It’s like having a storefront on the busiest street in town—search engines are where most people start when they’re looking for products, services, or answers. It matters because a huge chunk of web traffic—nearly 70%—comes from search. If you’re not showing up there, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to connect with potential customers right when they’re looking for what you offer.
What’s the biggest advantage of blending SEO and PPC into a single strategy rather than treating them as separate efforts?
The real power comes from how they complement each other. SEO builds long-term trust and authority with organic rankings, but it takes time. PPC, on the other hand, gets you instant visibility with ads, letting you capture demand right away. When you combine them, you’re covering all bases—grabbing attention at the top of the results page with ads while building a sustainable presence with organic content. Plus, data from PPC can show you which keywords convert best, guiding your SEO focus, and SEO insights can help you spend your ad budget smarter. It’s a win-win that often cuts down on overall costs per customer.
Can you share an example of a business you’ve seen excelling at search marketing by dominating both paid and organic results?
I’ve always been impressed by companies that manage to own the search results page across multiple touchpoints. Think of a business in the software space that shows up in sponsored ads, organic listings, and even featured snippets for terms related to their product. They’re visible whether someone’s just browsing for solutions or ready to buy. This kind of presence builds instant recognition and trust—searchers start seeing them as the go-to option because they’re everywhere on the page. It’s a great lesson in using every available spot to reinforce your brand.
Let’s dive into SEO. What makes it such a high-return investment for businesses over time?
SEO’s biggest strength is its ability to deliver ongoing value without ongoing costs per click. Once you rank well for a valuable keyword, you’re getting qualified traffic day after day, month after month, without paying for each visitor like you do with ads. Over time, as your rankings solidify, your cost to acquire each customer drops significantly. It’s like planting a tree—there’s work upfront, but the shade and fruit keep coming for years. Plus, organic results often carry more trust with users, which can lead to better engagement and conversions.
What are the core elements of technical SEO that businesses should prioritize to ensure search engines can find and understand their site?
Technical SEO is the foundation—it’s about making sure your website is easy for search engines to crawl and interpret. First, focus on crawlability: fix broken links, ensure your site map is updated, and check that nothing’s blocking search bots. Then, look at site speed—faster pages not only rank better but also convert better because users don’t bounce. Things like compressing images and using a content delivery network can make a big difference. Lastly, structured data, or schema markup, helps search engines understand your content’s context, which can land you in rich results like featured snippets. Get these right, and you’ve got a solid base for everything else.
When it comes to PPC, why do you think it’s often faster to see results compared to SEO?
PPC is all about speed because you’re paying for placement. The moment your campaign goes live, your ads can appear at the top of search results, capturing clicks from people actively searching for your offerings. There’s no waiting for content to rank or authority to build like with SEO, which can take months. With PPC, you can test keywords, messaging, and audiences in real-time, tweak things on the fly, and see measurable outcomes—like clicks or conversions—within days or even hours. It’s a direct line to visibility and results.
How do you recommend businesses choose the right bidding strategy for their PPC campaigns to maximize their budget?
Choosing a bidding strategy depends on your goals and how much data you have to work with. If you’re just starting, manual bidding gives you control to test the waters—set higher bids for high-value keywords and lower ones for experimental terms. Once you’ve got conversion data, something like Target CPA can be powerful; it uses machine learning to optimize bids for a specific cost per acquisition. For broader campaigns focused on volume, Maximize Conversions can work well, but always set a cap on cost per click to avoid overspending. The key is to match your strategy to your campaign’s maturity and keep testing to see what delivers the best return.
Why is it so critical for businesses to integrate their SEO and PPC efforts rather than running them in isolation?
Running SEO and PPC separately is like using only half your toolbox—you’re missing out on huge opportunities. When they’re integrated, you can use PPC data to spot high-converting keywords and feed those into your SEO content plan. Meanwhile, SEO can uncover high-volume terms that are tough to rank for, so PPC can step in to cover that ground instantly. Plus, showing up in both paid and organic spots on the same page makes your brand look dominant to searchers. Siloed efforts waste budget and miss synergies; a unified approach amplifies impact and often lowers costs across the board.
What’s your forecast for the future of search marketing, especially with the rise of AI-driven features like overviews and conversational search?
I think search marketing is heading toward an even more complex and dynamic landscape with AI at the forefront. Features like AI Overviews are already changing how results are displayed, often answering queries directly on the page, which means fewer clicks to websites. But this isn’t the end—it’s a new opportunity. Brands that create concise, authoritative content tailored to user intent will get cited in these AI responses, building mindshare even without direct traffic. Conversational and multi-part queries will grow, so content needs to adapt to natural language and question clusters. My forecast is that success will hinge on blending traditional SEO and PPC with AI optimization, ensuring visibility across classic listings, ads, and AI surfaces. It’s about being everywhere intent shows up.
