How SEO And PPC Work Together In 2026

About This Episode

Organic usually gets the first touch. Paid almost always gets the credit. That gap is why most agencies still run SEO and PPC like separate businesses.

In this episode of SEO On-Air, host Koa Kauwe sits down with Greta Iverson (Youtech) and Stefanie Cash (Think Integrated) to discuss how paid and organic now feed each other, and what breaks when teams keep them apart.

The panel explores the convergence from both sides. Greta points out that strong organic performance pushes paid media costs down, and that organic earns the first touch while paid takes the last, which makes defending top of funnel work harder than it should be. Stefanie argues AI in paid search was never new, since broad match and responsive ads were always AI, it just became the default.

They also discuss the zero click black hole and what to report when impressions climb but clicks fall, the client whose AI written content had to be fact checked against their own services, why Performance Max struggles on lead generation, and why brand mentions are becoming what SEO delivers and paid converts.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

– How strong SEO performance lowers your paid media costs

– Why broad match pushed PPC into SEO territory

– Why AI in paid search was never actually new

– How to report on SEO when clicks stop telling the story

– Why organic gets the first touch and paid takes the credit

– Why high volume AI content behaves like an old content mill

– What to check before publishing client written AI content

– Why Performance Max struggles on lead generation

– What paid advertising inside LLMs might look like

– Why brand mentions are becoming SEO’s real deliverable

Whether you’re an agency owner, paid media manager, SEO specialist, or the person signing off on both budgets, this episode provides actionable insights into mapping where the two channels overlap, reporting honestly on attribution gaps, and defending the work that has no clean last click.

Because the channel that gets credit for the conversion won’t be the one that started the journey.

It will be the one that happened to be there when it ended.

⏱️ Chapters

 00:00 Introduction to SEO On-Air & Meet the Guests

06:52 Why Broad Match Made PPC Look More Like SEO

09:12 The Zero Click Problem & Where the Data Disappears

10:02 Impressions Up, Clicks Down: What Do You Report?

12:48 When Clients Write Their Own AI Content

17:11 Why AI Content Behaves Like the Old Content Mills

20:36 The AI Mistake That Could Have Cost a Clinic Thousands

23:31 The Trouble With Performance Max on Lead Gen

27:40 Where SEO & PPC Are Actually Converging

29:04 Entity Dominance & Semantic Matching

39:42 Why Organic Is the First Touch & Paid Gets the Last

Fifteen years in paid, fifteen in organic, one shared conclusion.