Periodically this question comes up, as it did this time.
When in no less than two Facebook groups I belong to, within a few days, two different users asked exactly the same question: “Does doing Google Ads campaigns help SEO? If I invest in Pay per Click campaigns on Google, will I then be favored in organic visibility? And if not directly, will I indirectly get any benefit?”
That was pretty much the meaning of both questions.
And in today’s post I will try to answer this old question once and for all.
Direct SEO influence
Doing Google Ads does NOT help SEO in any direct way.
And it couldn’t be any other way.
As Google itself explains here, activating Google Ads campaigns, has NEVER affected SEO and NEVER will.
The reason is simple. Google owes its success to the fact that it “works.”
In the sense that it has always had as its primary goal to provide users with the most relevant result in response to search.
If it did not, it would not have become the monopolist of online searches and would not making the billions of dollars it does each year.
Google has been successful because it works organically and without “tricks.” If it started doping its organic (i.e., natural, non-paid) results with sponsored ads it would be short-lived, and that is why Google Ads, despite its performance, don’t affect SEO!
Indirect SEO influence
Then there is all the talk about the indirect influence and benefits that an Ads campaign can bring to SEO, which we can summarize in two points:
- Benefits on keyword selection
- Increased Brand Awareness (with spin-offs on organic traffic)
1. KEYWORD SELECTION
Since the end of 2013 on Google Analytics statistics, data on organic keyword usage has been blacked out.
Let me explain. Until that time, on the Analytics statistics of each site, ALL keywords that brought traffic and CONVERSIONS to the site itself were clearly visible.
Having this data gave a considerable advantage in the SEO optimization of websites, because you could see in a totally transparent way which keywords were converting better and which were converting worse and act accordingly, working on improving the organic positions of the most virtuous keywords.
Since the end of 2013, however, Google has closed the taps and in Analytics those data are NOT visible anymore.
So in that sense, doing an Ads campaign again allows you to get hold of that data, and see which keywords convert best, allowing you to make better thought-out decisions about which keywords to focus on and to position your site with.
2. INCREASED BRAND AWARENESS
The second indirect benefit that a Google Ads campaign can have on SEO concerns Brand Awareness.
In fact, many argue that activating Ads campaigns allows the company to become known to users who previously ignored it, leading them to return later to the site by searching directly for the brand name.
The cycle would be:
I search for a product/service on Google,
I click on a Google Ads sponsored ad,
I learn about that company promoting itself with Ads that I didn’t know about before,
It intrigues/convinces me with its proposition to the point that, after that first visit to the site generated by the Ad, I come back with a new visit by going through organic Google – this time looking directly for the company’s name…
…increasing through this process the organic traffic on that site and therefore the SEO.
So, the answer is, kinda.
The reasoning is right, but I find it a bit of a stretch and a bit risky.
I’ll explain why.
In this image, you will see Google Trend statistics on the keyword “burger king whopper”, which as you can see has had 3 big spikes in searches in the last 4 years.
What happened during that period?
Maybe you got there on your own… three different commercials were aired on TV and made a buzz.
And it just so happens that after that commercial, Google searches for “burger king whopper” had a spike upward. But after that, same as usual.
So can we say that TV commercials help SEO? No, evidently not. Which is why I would be very cautious about saying the same thing for Google Ads.
So, does doing Google Ads campaigns does NOT help SEO. Nope.
The only indirect benefit you get from it is in collecting data on keyword effectiveness, which is very accurate with Google Ads and can be leveraged for SEO.