Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How Google Adwords Can Impact SEO Ranking ?
-
Hi SEO Gurus, I have a question.
How Google Adwords Can Impact SEO Ranking ?
Positive , negative or neutral impact?I will appreciate if you will provide detailed answer
Thank you for your time
webdeal
-
I'm also wondering at the confident boasts in the various responses...
I actually came to this page because I have the same question "How Google Adwords Can Impact SEO Ranking ?" My interest came up as I was looking at the "landing page experience" part of the Quality Score.
The section on Google's support page (https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2404197) seems to imply that Google crawls and checks/indexes the landingpage to score it. I'm wondering if these pages are added to your indexed pages as reported in Webmaster Tools? Is Google taking this page into account for organic results? If the page was already indexed for SEO, does this 'second' scan impact the your SEO performance of the page. Or if the page is for SEA only; how do you prevent it from being indexed for organic results?
-
Google wants there to be a completely fair way to bid on keywords that you are not SEO-perfect for. CPC can be used as a general indicator for competitiveness of the industry, but it's not directly considered when ranking.
-
I'm amazed at the confidence on this post. Why wouldn't Google use quality score on CPC keywords as a factor in organic results for the targeted page? It's real-world input from actual people via click-through rate.
-
The roi value of doing ppc for seo is often not their. Most ppc is sales targeted and that doesnt help seo which is what others where trying to say.
My comment was just saying that at times if you know what your doing it can help seo but its not cheap and often not worth it.
-
Correct
In short - Yes it could help seo but not because google favors ppc - Targeted traffic to quality materia can l= links and shares
-
Dana,
I can understand your point....but David Konigsberg his answer below, says that the Adwords can help....His point is valuable too.
I am confused...
Dmitriy
-
Basically you want to say that the Adwords can be a "tool" for improving link sharing ....
-
I totally agree with you Naina....although I don't practice what I preach,yet. I firmly believe that it is in your own (or your clent's) best interest, for both cost and results, to create completely separate pages for PPC and for organic SEO.
-
AdWords can improve SEO if you are sending traffic to your guides and link bait which gets links and shares
-
I totally agree with you and have seen the same thing myself.
The other positive aspect of running PPC ads is that it increases your exposure (both search and display), and leads to a rise in branded searches. Branded searches, like direct traffic, often convert pretty nicely, and helps to send more signals to Google that you're a brand and should the lovely treatment they often provide to brands. So I do think there are residual benefits to ppc advertising for SEO.
-
I have noticed a very strange thing through my research for around two months. It is that Adwords can harm your normal SEO if you are not playing it intelligent. Let me tell you what I did to find it out.
I took a website and started Adwords campaign with it. Soon I noticed that the main keywords of the campaign did not have good Quality Scores. I tried and tested with multiple Ad Texts, increased the budget, and changed keywords' match cases. It worked as it normally does with Adwords campaign, but did not bring the Quality Score past 5.
I now took the different approach, I started optimizing the landing page. Optimized page load time, images, links and various other things. Brought the page load time to 3 seconds - it was indeed impressive. But, it did not do much with the quality scores, it was around 7 now.
Finally, I started working with landing page keyword placements. Many changes, not frequent, i took at least 4 days to makes changes. Now, I placed keywords in all areas, it was not overly done. But yes, it was more than the usual density. I was aware that it could make the page invite Penguin. But, to my surprise, the quality score on ads lifted up to 9 and even 10 on many keywords. it was great as I was now paying less for each keyword on Adwords. But, you know what! It was caught by Penguin finally. It was to happen, I knew it.
Now see, while an overly optimized page started doing well with Google's Paid search - Adwords, it fell a prey to Penguin in Organic searches.
What I learned? I learned not to use your existing website page as Adwords landing page. Create new ones for Adwords separately.
So to your question, Adwords do not help SEO, rather it harms it.
Thanks
-
BOTTOM LINE: Adwords has NO effect on Ranking.
You can use Adwords to find better converting keywords and THEN target those keywords in SEO.
-
I agree completely with Marie. However, I do think that Google Adwords ads can have a positive impact on how much revenue your good organic rankings produce. In terms of dominating Page 1 results, if you have good organic ranking (say, in the top 5) and you also have excellent paid placement (in the top 3 od paid ads), and you are ranking for images, and you are ranking for videos, and you are ranking in Google shopping....all of this is going to have a collective effect.
If you have that kind of presence, you are bound to gain aggregate value for your organic listings because, if you are marketing well, your traffic will go up, click-through rate will go up and your conversion rate will go up. I firmly believe that if you are improving those things, your rankings will improve also.
That being said, PPC, if it's really well done, can augment your results and could possibly have a residual effect that does benefit your SEO
One other consideration is that any advertising you do, whether it's PPC or print or radio or TV ads, it augments Direct traffic. Direct traffic, in my mind is the golden ticket. Anyone directly typing your URL into their search bar is already your friend. If you can increase your direct traffic pool via PPC, then it's worth every penny.
Hope this is helpful!
Dana
P.S. My statements are based on years of observation. When we've advertised on Google Adwords our visits from organic and direct traffic increased. When we didn't, it decreased....Keep in mind, this was for keywords for which we ranked on the same page for organic and paid results. Sounds like fuel for a future blog post for me!
-
Adwords really don't have any effect on your site's rankings at all. The links that come from the ads are nofollowed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does sharing same Business Name affect Google ranking?
Hey guys, We have been working for a client who is offering graphic design work almost 2 months. It is a new business and let's say the business name is ABC Graphic Design. So far all the pages are indexed, we built natural links through local directories, blog postings on relevant niche blogs and social media. We optimised the content and meta tags like we always do. However, none of the target keywords appear on the first 10 pages. This is quite odd considering we had a client who was doing the same business and we managed to show some progress in the first 2 months. We did some research and noticed that there are 2 ABC design websites with similar domain names and offering same services. They have nothing to do with my client and they are located in overseas. When i search ABC Graphic Design, the results show other companies instead of my client. My question is whether having a similar business name would affect the ranking. Obviously the other 2 websites have longer history and better ranking. Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | owengna0 -
Domain name suffix impact on SEO
Hello there, We are about to launch a new website and were wondering what impact a specific suffix would have from an SEO point of view. We were thinking about going for a domain which ends in .london as oppose to .com We are based in London and sell world wide via our website. We are suggesting www.domain.london as oppose to www.domain.com I would appreciate your views... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Would changing the file name of an image (not the alt attribute) have an effect of on seo / ranking of that image and thus the site?
Would changing the file name of image, not the alt attribute nor the image itself (so it would be exactly the same but just a name change) have any effect on : a) A sites seo ranking b) the individual images seo ranking (although i guess if b) would be true it would have an effect on a) although potentially small.) This is the sort of change i would be thinking of making : ![Red ford truck](2554.jpg) changed to ![Red ford truck](6842.jpg)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam-P0 -
404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
SEO impact difference between a URL Rewrite and 301 redirect
Hi guys and girls! Just putting a new site live, we changed the URL from one thing to another and I created a 301 file redirecting the urls like for like. The developer installing it has created a different file with columns like: RewriteRule ^page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^/page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] What's the difference? The page redirects but is there a difference between the 301 redirect and this URL rewrite in terms of SEO and link value?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-2945840 -
Moving blog to a subdomain, how can I help it rank?
Hi all, We recently moved our blog to a sub-domain where it is hosted on Wordpress. It was very recent and we're actively working on the SEO, but any pointers on getting the subdomain to rank higher than the old blog posts would be terrific. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DigitalMoz0 -
Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/ Does anyone have any experience of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0