This isn’t just another article on getting the dynamic duo of SEO and SEM to work together. It’s about giving you the tools to help your teams break down silos that quietly drain performance from your digital marketing department.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth.
In late 2025, AI Overviews appeared in up to 25% of US searches. That’s roughly 250 billion queries a year, where Google answers the question before anyone clicks. At the same time, ads are appearing at the top, middle, and bottom of the SERP, blending into organic results more than ever. Organic is getting pushed down. Paid is getting more competitive. And AI is reshaping the rules in real time.
If your SEO and SEM teams are still operating separately, you are leaving visibility, budget and conversions on the table.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- Why AI Overviews and AI Mode make a blended search strategy non-negotiable
- How to align SEO and SEM goals, reporting and incentives so teams actually collaborate
- Practical ways to divide keywords, share data and improve conversion rates
- How to use paid search insights to fuel organic growth, and vice versa
- What it takes to own more real estate on the SERP in 2026
We’ve spent years building integrated search strategies for clients across industries, and the pattern is clear. The businesses that treat SEO and SEM as a single growth engine consistently outperform those that don’t.
Search has changed. The SERP is crowded. AI is rewriting visibility.
The brands that win in 2026 will not choose between SEO or SEM. They will master both, together.
Prefer to watch? Video Summary
Why SEO and SEM must collaborate now
Increase in AI Overviews and AI Mode (get stats)
SEM Rush published data in late 2025 showing that Google’s AI Overviews appeared in up to 25% of US search queries. That’s around 250 billion searches a year that contain an AI Overview. In effect, AI Overviews have begun to dominate the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
As AI Overviews take up a prime spot at the top of the SERP, organic results get pushed down. However, when ads are triggered and an AI Overview is present, ads are prioritized at the top, and organic listings get pushed further down. For businesses, this means a mix of tactics is most likely to improve visibility.
Proliferation of ads on the SERP (top, mid and bottom)
Ads have also evolved. Most noticeable has been the inclusion of ads in different places on the SERP. You’ll now find ads at the top, middle and bottom of most Google searches. Additionally, whether it’s Google Maps, Gmail or YouTube, you can find ads anywhere Google exists.
Google has also made ads more seamless. While they still call out sponsored listings, the design of these directions blends into organic results. The proliferation and design changes of ads have made seeing (and clicking) on one guaranteed. This, of course, has helped Google grow. In 2025, their ad business generated about $296B in revenue, up around 11% year over year. An incredible feat for a mature business.
SEO has always been a brand channel
Recent Forbes commentary noted that marketers, especially search marketers, need to pay more attention to brand. We couldn’t agree more, but SEO has always been about brand. Securing a top placement requires relevance and authority.
Relevance is about aligning your content with the topic your audience is searching for. There’s a mathematical way to express this called cosine similarity. You can read more about cosine similarity in our article on how search engines work, but put simply, write content that matters to your audience.
For example, if you’re a digital marketing consultant, you’ll want to talk about Google search, Google Ads, analytics and customer acquisition. You might even venture into topics about business strategy. However, you should avoid topics like accounting and tax laws as these wouldn’t be relevant to your audience. What cosine similarity does is help quantify the distance between these topics.
Then there is authority. This is where brand becomes your friend. The more you are recognized, the more people will search for you and click on your listings, whether paid or organic. This is good for Google, and so you get a nice bump. However, Google will fine-tune its algorithm to ensure a balance between well-known brands with deep pockets and local businesses with smaller footprints. Variety keeps you engaged and coming back; however, all things equal, the bigger brand wins.
Still plenty of room for performance marketing
The Forbes article also argued that performance marketing will be limited in the future because LLM-enabled responses will provide only a single answer, leaving little room for ads. It’s incredibly dangerous to think that Google will kill off its largest revenue generator. In fact, in November 2025, Google started testing ads in AI Mode. Additionally, ChatGPT has started to implement ads on its platform.
While there are still hurdles to overcome, mainly related to transparency and control, there will be opportunities to use performance marketing in the foreseeable future.
Why SEO and SEM have always been partners
With the immediate needs out of the way, let’s look at a few other fundamental reasons SEO and SEM should be partners.
Budget efficiency
Combining the power of SEO and SEM helps you manage your budget more efficiently by choosing the right strategy for the job. For instance, SEM is good at bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) tactics that can be hard for SEO to implement. Tactics like remarketing are impossible with SEO. On the other hand, SEO excels at top-of-funnel (TOFU) tactics such as content marketing. Spending money to advertise informational content is wasteful.
With the one-two punch of SEO and SEM, you have the ability to generate interest and convert leads, but as you’ll see, there are further efficiencies gained by running these simultaneously.
People need exposure to your brand
Often cited is the fact that people need up to 7 exposures to your brand before they are ready to buy your product. Combining tactics like SEO, SEM, social media, email marketing, and TV and radio provides impressions of your brand. Each time someone hears or sees your business, it builds trust, and that’s one step closer to a purchase.
Since SEO and SEM play in the same channel, it’s a symbiotic way to get multiple impressions of your business. This happens because people will start their buying journey with some research. Typically, that means searching on Google, but it may also involve using an LLM or asking a friend for advice. The research stage will conclude, and they will move into a more targeted search for a specific product that solves their problem. If your brand is exposed during the research phase, when a person encounters it during the buying phase, they’ll be more likely to choose your business. The tag team strategy of SEO and SEM ensures your business shows up at every stage of the buying journey, making it more likely that a person will buy from you.
Better conversions rates
In our years of developing digital marketing strategies for clients across a wide variety of industries, we’ve found that businesses that consider their entire marketing funnel achieve the best conversion rates. SEO helps warm people up and start considering you, while SEM seeks to turn that awareness into a purchase. Working together helps maximize every visitor’s potential.
Getting alignment: How to get SEO and SEM to work together
Okay. You’re on board that SEO and SEM should be partners. How do you make it happen?
Organizations are run by humans (for now), so we need to consider the psychology of change. If your teams have been separate entities for a while, they’ve likely developed processes and habits that work well. The challenge is to build new habits and processes that bring both teams together.
Communication
The first thing you need to do as a manager is communicate the change. Never make a change before announcing it. This helps teams process the change in advance before implementation. But it also gives team members time to share ideas on how to implement the change, including getting their people and systems ready.
At your next team meeting, announce the change: “Hey guys, we’re seeing changes in the marketplace online. There are plenty of opportunities for our organic and paid search teams to take advantage of. Going forward, I want SEO and SEM to work closely together. I’ll have more details in the next few days and weeks, but for now, start collaborating with your partners in search.” This sets the tone and gets everyone pulling in the same direction.
Shared reporting and goals
Incentives are motivation. Get the incentives right and success is almost guaranteed.
To get the incentives right for combining SEO and SEM, you need shared goals and a unified reporting system. Start by working with your top performers to discuss the main KPIs to track. Once you’ve agreed on a set of metrics, set the standards. You can then build a dashboard to monitor progress. Additionally, have your teams report their progress at weekly team meetings.
Sit close to each other
Admittedly, in a remote workplace, this will be a challenge, but in the office, make sure your organic and paid search teams share the same space. Don’t have them sit in opposite areas of the building. While Slack channels can help, the closeness means members can overhear conversations and ask quick questions of their colleagues. However, the most important part of this setup means they’ll be building trust with each other.
Include in departmental meetings
Make sure that both organic and paid search teams are part of departmental meetings. If you’ve been running two separate meetings or, gasp, none at all, now is the time to set things up correctly. Get the groups together and get them talking.
Best ways to use SEO and SEM together
Keyword planning
Divide and conquer
One way to use SEO and SEM together is to analyze your target keywords and segment them into channels. Some keywords naturally work better for SEO, and others work better for SEM. Take your list of keywords and organize them by whether SEO or SEM should take them. Here’s an example for a digital marketing consultant
| Keyword | Channel |
| Digital marketing consultant near me | SEM |
| What do digital marketing consultants do? | SEO |
| How do I optimize my conversion rates? | SEO |
| How to hire a fractional CMO? | SEO or SEM |
Capture terms SEO can’t reach today
Let’s face it, some keywords are going to be too difficult or time-consuming to capture with SEO tactics. That doesn’t mean you should give up trying, but if you have the option, consider SEM as a way to circumvent the process. While SEO can take time, SEM can help you see more immediate results. Be aware, though, that competitive search terms can be expensive.
Consider owning the SERP for certain keywords
In some cases, you might have an opportunity to lock up the entire results page. For example, if you’re a local marketing consultant, the SERP might look something like this:
In this case, while there are no ads, a business could get an ad at the top of the page, in the map pack and an organic placement (which we do).
Using SEM to discover SEO keywords
If you run search campaigns in Google Ads, you should look at your search terms report regularly. In the search terms report, you will discover the queries people are typing into Google that trigger one of your ads.
For example, one of our e-commerce clients saw “Where to buy a pool table” in their search terms report, so we created a dedicated website page for it. Once we built out the content and launched it on their site, we started to see more organic traffic from this near-bottom-of-funnel query.
What’s also important is that answering these longtail queries is that they can help you land in AI Overviews, AI Mode and LLMs like ChatGPT. As consumers become more comfortable with LLMs and agentic shopping, being visible in these channels will become vital to your success.
Content
E-commerce descriptions
When you run shopping ads, Google uses the product description as a primary source for determining which keywords your product should appear for in sponsored areas. You can use the search terms report to refine your product descriptions for organic and paid placements.
For example, if you’re seeing irrelevant search terms in your search terms report for a particular product, then take a look at the product description in the merchant centre to make sure it’s accurate. Similarly, you can use this data to optimize organic search by identifying which search terms convert and optimizing your products for those terms.
Headlines and ad copy best practices
Unlike SEO, SEM allows you to A/B test headlines and ad copy in rapid succession. Making it easy for you to understand what works and what doesn’t. You can run a test in Google Ads and then apply it to your organic content. The only caveat is to make sure the updated headline is appropriate for organic search. You still need to follow the SEO best practices.
Topic planning for SEO content
Another effective way to leverage SEM for SEO is topic planning. Since the search terms report shows you the exact phrase someone used when your ads were triggered, you get to see what your potential customers are looking for. Your job then becomes analyzing the data and identifying themes that you can turn into content.
For example, if you run Google Ads as a digital marketing agency, you might find these search terms:
- Marketing agency near me
- Google ads specialist
- How do I lower the cost of my Google Ads
- Can you build custom audiences in Google Ads
- What is dynamic remarketing
The last three items are excellent candidates for developing into organic content. We’d also recommend creating content that ranks for bottom-of-funnel keywords.
Data sharing
Data sharing between SEO and SEM teams is the most potent way for your combined teams to work together. SEM data can help inform SEO campaigns, and SEO data can help SEM specialists accelerate results.
SEO to SEM
Here’s one way you can go from SEO data to SEM insights.
- Jump into your Google Search Console (GSC).
- Review your queries report and look for high-impression, low-rank terms, especially those ranking on the second page (positions 11-20).
- Now filter them for bottom-of-the-funnel keywords.
These are good candidates for an SEM campaign, as they show commercial intent, whereas your SEO campaigns might not be able to secure the top spot immediately.
SEM to SEO
Going the other way, we can look out for what we call assisting pages. These are pages that don’t convert but help along the way. Often, these are about pages or other helpful content on your website.
- Log in to your Google Analytics account.
- Go to the Explore section and open a new report.
- Set up a session segment that captures people who have converted. This will vary by business, but for an e-commerce site, you’ll set it up for the purchase event; most other sites use the form_fill event.
- In dimensions, add “landing page,” “page path + query string,” + “session default channel group.”
- For metrics, add “views” and “average engagement time.”
- Add all the parameters to the report.
- Create two versions of the report: one that looks at landing pages and the other at page paths.
Here’s what your setting should look like.
CRO
Conversion rate optimization is the process of optimizing your website to convert as many people as possible. When you combine SEO and SEM with the data from each, you have tremendous power to discover what works and what doesn’t.
SEM will often bring you lots of targeted visitors. You can use that volume to fine-tune and tweak your landing pages. At the same time, SEO can be tweaked to get your landing pages higher in the organic search results. Higher search results plus optimized landing pages equals a winning formula that generates leads efficiently.
Inventory
For e-commerce businesses, the search terms report can be a valuable tool for understanding which products to keep in your inventory. There are two ways this report helps.
First, use the search terms report to gauge demand. The more impressions and clicks a product name receives, the more likely there is demand for the product. Of course, if there are only a few impressions, this suggests the product might not be valuable. Use your best judgment, as this is industry-specific. Niche products will naturally have fewer searches.
Second, Google often shows your product alongside similar products in a category. The search terms report will show you the exact-match searches of adjacent products, which you can analyze to identify other products you might want to carry. Often, these are variants of products you already sell, making them natural extensions of your product line.
How are AI Overviews changing click-through rates for organic and paid search results?
AI Overviews are reducing click-through rates (CTR) for both organic and paid results by surfacing summarized answers directly on the search page. Organic CTRs have dropped by as much as 18–30%, while paid ads also see reduced engagement due to lower visibility beneath the AI-generated content.
Should brands bid on keywords they already rank for organically?
Brands should bid on keywords they rank for organically to protect SERP visibility, block competitors, and increase total click share. Paid ads combined with organic listings can boost brand presence and capture more traffic, especially for high-converting or branded terms.
What role does first-party data play in aligning SEO and SEM strategies?
First-party data aligns SEO and SEM strategies by revealing user behaviour, preferences, and conversion paths. It enables precise audience targeting, improves keyword strategies, and helps unify messaging across paid and organic channels to boost ROI and relevance.
How should businesses measure blended performance across paid and organic search?
Businesses should measure blended performance by tracking total impressions, combined click-through rates, and overall conversions from both paid and organic search. Use attribution models and unified dashboards to evaluate channel overlap, incremental lift, and true ROI across the full search funnel.
Wrapping up
The search landscape in 2026 demands integration. AI Overviews, evolving ad placements, and shifting user behaviour have blurred the lines between organic and paid. Treating SEO and SEM as separate tactics is no longer just inefficient. It’s risky. The brands that win will align teams, unify reporting, share data, and strategically dominate the SERP from multiple angles. When SEO builds authority and intent, and SEM captures and accelerates demand, the result is compounding growth.
If your teams are still operating in silos, now is the time to change that. The opportunity isn’t simply to “do both.” It’s to connect them in a way that improves visibility, reduces wasted spend, and drives measurable revenue. A blended search strategy isn’t a trend — it’s the operating system for modern digital marketing.
Ready to unify your search strategy and own more real estate on the SERP? Contact us to start building an integrated SEO and SEM engine designed for 2026 and beyond.