Should PPC ads be run alongside high SEO rankings?

A common question from Google Ads (AdWords) / PPC advertisers is whether they should still run their paid ads alongside search terms that also rank well in the main search results, due to the SEO on their website. A recent study by Google may help to answer this.

Google’s report concluded that paid search ads can give advertisers an 89% lift in site visitors above that which would normally be expected from organic listings. This is a very high increase and poses the question of whether or not the study is biased, considering Google is commenting about its own search properties (and again, trying to get more advertisers to pay for an AdWords listing).

Independent views, however, support the search industry’s opinion that it’s important to manage and bid on brand name terms in paid search ads when you already have good organic positions, even if it’s to keep your competitors from dominating the paid ad spots. Using paid search ads in addition to the organic listings can compliment those with brand building and controlling messages, that aren’t so easy to portray within the organic listings.

However, there may also be benefits from running simulataneous adverts alongside natural SEO rankings for more generic terms, since 2 listings in the search results can support the brand awareness for a business, increase the likelihood of a click, and block another advertiser from appearing in the results. Ultimately, though, the activity for a search term through PPC advertising has to remain cost-effective.

Coming back to the Google study, the main result of more visitors – as defined by their research – can be enhanced with sensible brand building through PPC adverts. The 89% increase in visits can be treated sceptically though, as the research was conducted on US AdWords campaigns in the holiday period, so that the figure is not likely to be as impressive if the research was conducted over the period of a full year.

The most definitive way to test the findings would be to stop a currently running brand-building AdWords campaign that your business is running and see what impact that has on traffic and conversions. The likelihood, however, is that many businesses that rely upon this method of paying for clicks in addition to the free ones from the organic listings would not be willing to trial this. This indicates that the additional clicks and brand awareness that the PPC ads create do support Google’s finding that it’s worth running PPC and organic campaigns concurrently with the same keywords.

To find out more about the cost-effectiveness of running a PPC advertising campaign alongside an SEO strategy, please contact us now.

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