Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?
-
Here's the scenario. We're doing SEO for a national franchise business. We have over 60 location pages on the same domain, that we control. Another agency is doing PPC for the same business, except they're leading people to un-indexable landing pages off domain. Apparently they're also using location extensions for the businesses that have been set up improperly, at least according to the Account Strategists at Google that we work with.
We're having a real issue with these businesses ranking in the multi-point markets (where they have multiple locations in a city). See, the client wants all their location landing pages to rank organically for geolocated service queries in those cities (we'll say the query is "fridge repair"). We're trying to tell them that the PPC is having a negative effect on our SEO efforts, even though there shouldn't be any correlation between the two. I still think the PPC should be focused on their on-domain location landing pages (and so does our Google rep), because it shows consistency of brand, etc.
I'm getting a lot of pushback from the client and the other agency, of course. They say it shouldn't matter.
Has anyone here run into this? Any ammo to offer up to convince the client that having us work at "cross-purposes" is a bad idea? Thanks so much for any advice!
-
Please be careful invoking the names of Google employees, unless you can provide an exact quote or verifiable source. Many of us have contacts at Google, and it's easy to misinterpret what they say, either publicly or privately. A statement like "JM has told me personally..." creates an air of false credibility that can lead people to the wrong conclusions, especially when you're paraphrasing.
I do agree that cross-channel awareness is important and there are many indirect ways in which paid search campaigns can influence (both positively and negatively) organic campaigns, but I don't want people to read this as meaning that paying for ads automatically boosts your organic ranking. That's a myth that too many people rush to believe, IMO.
-
I can believe, in theory, that the location extension point is possible - even if the organic algo doesn't take your direct paid search data into account, they may share data sources, including location data (since that shared data doesn't bias one system based on the other). That said, I've met way too many AdWords reps that had no idea what they were talking about and yet, somehow, were happy to spout off misinformation. No offense to your particular rep, but again, I've had too many bad experiences. It's important, for many reasons, that your location data be consistent and accurate, but I don't think location extensions are a huge cause for concern.
There is an argument to be made, though, that working with the rep has benefits, even if the rep isn't always right. Reps tend to dig in, and if you aren't solving something they think is an issue, they may not help you get to other issues or positive traction. I recognize, though, that it can be hard to work across multiple parties, and your options aren't always ideal.
The off-domain landing page issue is a lot more complex. One common impact we see of paid search is the indirect boost it has on organic, based mostly on perception. If I see your brand in organic and the same brand in paid, and if the message is consistent (and, of course, appeals to me), my odds of clicking one or the other go up. This isn't an algorithmic bias, but a human one. Broadly, it also means that your paid ads are contributing to brand-building and name recognition.
If you're using a separate domain and if that domain is visible (and especially if it's confusing) to users, then you may be cannibalizing yourself. It's especially problematic if you've got two domains sharing a common message - this could confuse searchers about which domain is the "real" representative of your brand.
As Andy said, it also means that any links/mentions/etc. you might get to that secondary domain aren't helping you. In most cases, it's rare for ad landing pages to accrue links, but if a landing page is integrated into a site, then people are more likely to click through to other content, which might be shareable, linkable, etc.
Unfortunately, all of this is very speculative, without knowing more about your particular case. I think it's just important to note that there are many indirect interactions between paid and organic.
-
Some points not mentioned (I think) yet...
The number 1 way to get links to a website is traffic...the more people that see the site, the more chance of it getting links, social shares etc. If PPC traffic & organic traffic (& other types of traffic) are not going to the same domain they're likely to get less links per domain, which reduces their chance or ranking well organically, which is contradictory to what you are wanting to achieve. If I were the client and I were getting links to non indexable pages, I wouldn't be happy. I would investigate if those PPC landing pages actually do have links/shares and if so use that to support your case i.e. those links could have been pointed at the domain you are trying to improve organic rankings for.
Remarketing via PPC is a huge opportunity via display and especially RLSA. If I was running their PPC it would really annoy me that the audience that I could remarket to is reduced because the traffic is split over domains and not consolidated in 1.
Analytics is really messy. I'm a firm believer that any web reliant business needs to understand and use the data available to them in order to grow, especially if traffic/online revenue is significant. Splitting analytics (GA or otherwise) and KPI's over multiple sites, analytics accounts etc is not conducive to managing and benefiting from that data.
Sub domains - might not be relevant, based on why they want to use off domain pages but could you suggest they use sub domains instead of different domains? This way they can still promote/operate separate sites but you'd have the advantages of 1) capturing link equity 2) increasing your remarketing audience 3) having all your analytics in 1 place.
-
Thanks to all for your responses! It really is fascinating to see the exchange, and now I have a chance to offer more context.
Interestingly, prior to working with our Google rep on PPC account optimization, I would not have said that PPC had any effect on SEO. But in the above case, our rep is adamant that incorrect location extensions are affecting the locations' placement in the Google My Business results, (the 3-pack) thereby impacting the organic webpage performance of those locations.
The Google rep also states that by not targeting the company domain with PPC, we miss out on all of the engagement metrics that could be gathered from those sessions. Google maintains that PPC does not “drive” ranking, but what PPC does drive (hopefully) is users to a website. If those users have a positive experience on the site, (time on page, conversions) then that can ultimately increase trust, and even if it’s only in a general sense, potentially improve ranking over the long term. Is that not the case?
There’s a lot of back story with this client. They’ve got franchises with external websites, some running their own PPC, multiple variations of business names… it’s a bit of a mess. We’ve worked very hard to bring everything up to par by claiming, branding and categorizing all of their GMB pages, as well as steadily working on organic ranking for all of their locations for their “money terms”, both geolocated and geomodified versions.
The locations in question are in multi-point markets, where the business is essentially in competition with itself. In all the other single point markets where this business has a franchise, the main website’s location pages are ranking #1 for geolocated as well as geomodified queries for… “fridge repair” (ahem). However, in multi-point markets, we’re suddenly having problems with the locations organically ranking for their money keywords. The domain is still ranking #1 for the term, though it’s an article page, not the location pages for that city.
In looking for answers as to why this might be happening, among other people, I also queried our Google rep. The external PPC was mentioned as a potential serious issue. We even arranged a Hangout with the client where the rep could explain the issue to the end client. I have to say, I was convinced that it could be an issue. But no one—not the client or my agency—is convinced that it’s the only issue.
So, I posted the question here to promote discussion. I know that holistically, PPC does not affect SEO. But the comment regarding GMB location extensions coming directly from a Google Rep made me curious enough to bring it up.
Additional thoughts?
Thanks again for everyone’s input! I don’t weigh in as often as I should be, but I truly value the community and Moz as a resource.
-
Josh,
Please do not throw TAGFEE around without fully understanding its meaning. It is fine to have a disagreement, and for the most part this is a wonderful discussion. You however are being quite condescending and not empathetic to others. I've warned you in the past, and this is a final warning.
Jen
-
Josh,
To prevent this thread getting out of control and getting to the point where everyone is name calling, let's step back and clarify a few things. While I respect your opinion that paid search could influence traffic from a personalization standpoint, your explanation leaves too many questions unanswered. I personally won't trust anything someone says without a valid explanation WHY they have the position they have. If you can produce a few links/references so we can take a closer look at what you're talking about, that would benefit this discussion way more than simply saying "because I talked with X, and they said it's true." Sharing more information can help educate everyone here, and help us all grow as professionals.
I really don't care who feeds information to whom; the only thing I care about is the fact. The fact is (according to my knowledge) Google has stated paid search (Adwords) does not directly affect organic rankings.
Google Forum thread disputing that PPC influences rank: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/tN5pIG8Qy0I
Google's Search Console Help: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en - "Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results."
I agree that promoting your site through a variety of mediums will send a signal of trust that your site is legitimate, but that would be a macro view that everything helps a little bit. The question to this thread is, "Do you really think that them pointing their ads to the actual domain is going to increase your rankings?"
That answer is No. Pointing ads to the actual domain will not directly increase your organic rankings. Will it help with branding and trust, sure. But that's not the question we're trying to answer.
Now... If you have evidence that contradicts my points, I'd be more than happy to discuss and debate. I think opposing viewpoints are important to the development of the community/industry, and is really what makes it exciting. However, if the only thing anyone has to say is "I heard it from so and so" then this thread deserves to be closed if there's no additional facts to support an argument one way or another.
-
Yikes man. I'm not saying you're lying or an idiot. I'm saying I think you may have made the wrong conclusions from what you were told. On top of that, it seems like you are incorrectly applying them here. That advice might be fine in other situations, but it didn't seem to actually address the original question here.
You don't have to be so defensive when somebody disagrees with you. I put scare quotes around "JM" and "personally" because for one, with just initials it's not fair for me to conclude you're saying John Mueller (though that seems to be what you're implying), and secondly, with the "personally" thrown in there that seemed like kind of silly name dropping.
Also, this is up for debate but I don't think John Mueller has reached a level of recognition that we can just call him JM and assume everybody knows what we're all talking about. Even if you said RF in here I'm not sure we'd know who you're talking about.
I think, like Eric said, rather than mentioning Mueller has personally given you some inside secrets that is counter to Google's public statements on the topic, it would be nice to provide a link to a study that supports the claim, because it is counter to what most of the community believes.
-
Yeah, I'm with you on this Eric.
It seemed to me he was talking about their PPC efforts—in particular where they host their landing pages—affecting their rankings across all their franchises on the whole.
We could possibly factor in how PPC affects organic CTRs here, but there have been a few studies that show PPC can actually benefit organic CTRs when the ad and organic result are both on the first page... and at any rate he didn't single out overlapping paid search ads and organic listings. He specifically focused on where the landing pages were hosted. Also, to my knowledge, CTR as a signal isn't going to be so significant it would cause problems for the franchise to underperform across multiple locations.
It also sounds like Josh here may have misinterpreted what "JM" "personally" told him. Paying attention to traffic on all your channels ≠ Google takes PPC signals into account in their organic algos. Sure, PPC can affect traffic from organic. Does it directly affect your rankings? No.
Another consideration here: Is that competitive ad space, i.e., are there multiple ads on those keywords? If that's the case then why vacate that space?
And again, I can't reiterate this enough, who would really think changing the domain of PPC landing pages is going to be the magic solution for the SEO campaign?
-
Paid traffic does not directly affect organic ranking. Those two elements are mutually exclusive when it comes to search. Click patterns will affect personalized results for the individual, but not as a whole. You're looking at this at a micro level, but I think (correct me if i'm wrong) Kevin is looking at this from a macro perspective to see how the two directly influence each other.
If you're suggesting that pointing an Adwords destination URL to any particular domain will positively impact organic ranking, then i'd like to see the proof. Making a blanket statement to say Paid does influence organic is sending an incorrect message. If you have evidence to support that claim then I'm sure this and many other communities would love to see it, but I stand by Google's official position that those two mediums do not directly influence each other.
-
PPC will not effect SEO efforts. The biggest reason I would suggest sending someone to the actual domain is because the user would be more likely to return and convert later. It usually takes a few visits to convert (PPC > Organic > Direct, or some mix of those), so that would be a good reason to try to keep it within the same domain.
However... If these landing pages cannot be imported to the current website CMS, and the external landing pages are converting, then it would be negligent to cut those out of PPC. You could really hurt the business if they stop getting leads. I would first try to see if the landing pages can be created on the client's domain, and A/B test. PPC does not affect SEO, and SEO does not affect PPC. It's all based on bidding, and quality score of the ads. If the client is getting business out of the current PPC work, don't kill it without testing and being absolutely sure you have a solid game plan. You don't want to get caught in a scenario where you could be fired if the client stops seeing leads.
-
There's absolutely no reason their PPC efforts—as described—should have a "negative effect" on your organic rankings.
Are you right about staying on brand? Almost definitely. Would it be better for visitors to know what the actual domain is so they're more likely to become repeat converters down the line? Probably. Is it easier for customers to refer your client when they know the name/actual domain? Totally.
But would sending paid search visits to an off-site landing page have a negative effect on your rankings? Nope. As long as they're out of the index, no.
Maybe those landing pages on an external domain convert better than sending them to their usual domain though. What happens if the client follows your advice and the phone stops ringing from PPC and you're still not getting rankings? Are you comfortable with that?
Do you really think that them pointing their ads to the actual domain is going to increase your rankings? There's no way.
TBH I think it's pretty fair for the PPC agency to push back on this. I would.
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
-
SEO Company wants to rebuild site
Hello Community, I am a designer and web developer and I mostly work with squarespace. Squarespace has SEO best practices built into the platform, as well as developer modes for inserting custom code when necessary. I recently built a beautiful website for a Hail Repair Company and referred them to several companies to help them with SEO and paid search. Several of these companies have told this client that in order to do any kind of SEO, they'll need to completely rebuild the site. I've seen some of the sites these companies have built, and they are tacky, over crowded and hard to use. My client is now thinking they need to have their site rebuilt. Is there any merit to this idea? Or are these companies just using the knowledge gap to swindle people into buying more services? The current site is : https://www.denverautohailspecialists.com/ Any advice would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | arzawacki2 -
Google showing 3 different results for homepage
Hello All! First post in this community. I hope someone can help with an issue I'm having with my website, 3vdental.com. 1. When I Google my brand name, 3V Dental Associates, I see one result on the front page. This result shows ONLY my brand name as the title tag... See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/Vwq4l2Lrn 2. When I Google my domain name, 3vdental.com, I see a second result, that still only shows my brand name as the title tag, but with sitelinks showing in the results... See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/L37hxZ8rd1xp 3. Both results above are not ideal, as they are not displaying the correct title and meta tags set within the Yoast SEO plugin. Here's a front-end view of the site displaying the correct title and meta tags.. See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/CZS3CBja4m Is there any way to correct this so that Google displays my preferred tags when my website is displayed? Thanks for your help in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Visionisto0 -
Google can't discern the identity of my site
I have a website, http://NewYorkJazzEvents.com, that promotes jazz bands that are available for brides looking to hire a jazz band to perform at their wedding, or event planners looking to hire a jazz band to perform for a corporate event, etc. This identity, that my site is an Entertainment Agency, is made clear by all of the content on my site, as well as all of the content on its associated sites (such as its linked Facebook, YouTube, and Google Business pages, and many local citations). Yet, contrary to all of this data, the mere presence of the word "events" in my URL and business name has led Google to believe that my site is a Live Jazz Guide, i.e., a site that lists public performances of jazz groups in New York City. The problem, then, is that Google displays the site when people search for local events listings, and not when they search for jazz bands to contract for private events. For example, do a search for "jazz bands new york" and up pops the listings for sites catering to searchers looking to hire bands for private events, like Gigmasters, Gigsalad, right at the top of the list, followed by lots of individual bands. My site is buried (in my results, anyway), on the middle of page 2. (My paid Adwords ad, on the other hand, shows up at the top of paid ads.): https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv4we4gvnb6wkyb/Screenshot%202016-04-11%2019.22.40.png?dl=0 Now do a search for "new york jazz events." Boom! I'm #1 in the natural results, and, unlike in the search for "new york jazz band," my Google plus page and map (or is it the "knowledge graph"?) display right at the top of the right column: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nob24x1b8u1g4or/Screenshot%202016-04-11%2019.18.49.png?dl=0. (Pretty useless to people searching for live jazz listings in New York, though.) (This, by the way, is an additional related frustration: why does Google display all of its local information (its map, links to my Google reviews, etc.) next to my site listing when people are searching for events, but but hides this valuable information next to my site listing when people are search for jazz bands (when my site comes up on page 2)?) For a further confirmation of Google's confusion, see this data from Google that indicates the top search queries that it is using to display my site are centered around searches for local live jazz listings: Google Search Console > Search Traffic > Search Analytics > Queries: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t8blxv6a077iuw6/Screenshot%202016-03-07%2012.28.38.png?dl=0 See also see this data from Google that indicates that it see "events" (which it understands as local live jazz listings) rather than "new york jazz bands" as the essential keyword describing the identity of the site: Google Search Console > Google Index > Content Keywords: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6nk6skfgx9zjzgc/Screenshot%202016-03-07%2012.46.04.png?dl=0 It's been this way for several years. I thought Google was supposed to be smart, but it's pretty dumb in this case (all the other search engines, including Bing, are quite a bit more intelligent). All this trouble, essentially from a word within a URL? Does anyone have an idea of the cause of this issue, and any potential cures? What can I do to clear up Google's confusion?
Local Website Optimization | | ChuckBraman0 -
International SEO Difficulty With Hreflang
Hi, It seems that multilingual sites can be very tricky sometimes. This is the second problem we are facing with a client this month... A company which already has a presence in Spain wants to expand now in Portugal, Brazil and Argentina. There are some linguistic differences between Spain Spanish and Argentina Spanish so we will have a slightly different content but same url (check below) We will also cover the linguistic differences between Portuguese and Brazilian but with different urls, so we will have 4 pages serving the same content in 3 ( technically 4 ) different languages: company.com/idioma -> (original Spain Spanish page - url stays the same.) company.com/es-ar/idioma (Argentina url) company.com/pt-pt/idioma (Portugal url) company.com/pt-br/lingua (Brazil url) Normally we know we should use alternate hreflang to all 4 pages, but now that the url changes, e.g between Argentina and Brazil, the case is the same or we can omit it for these two countries? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Tz_Seo0 -
Local SEO HELP for Franchise SAB Business
This all began when I was asked to develop experiment parameters for our content protocol & strategy. It should be simple right? I've reviewed A/B testing tips for days now, from Moz and other sources.I'm totally amped and ready to begin testing in Google Analytics. Say we have a restoration service franchise with over 40 franchises we perform SEO for. They are all over the US. Every franchise has their own local website. Example restorationcompanylosangeles.com Every franchise purchases territories in which they want to rank in. Some service over 100 cities. Most franchises also have PPC campaigns. As a part of our strategy we incorporate the location reach data from Adwords to focus on their high reach locations first. We have 'power pages' which include 5 high reach branch preferences (areas in which the owners prefer to target) and 5 non branch preference high reach locations. We are working heavily on our National brand presence & working with PR and local news companies to build relationships for natural backlinks. We are developing a strategy for social media for national brand outlets and local outlets. We are using major aggregators to distribute our local citation for our branch offices. We make sure all NAP is consistent across all citations. We are partners with Google so we work with them on new branches that are developing to create their Google listings (MyBusiness & G+). We use local business schema markup for all pages. Our content protocol encompasses all the needed onsite optimization tactics; meta, titles, schema, placement of keywords, semantic Q&A & internal linking strategies etc. Our leads are calls and form submissions. We use several call tracking services to monitor calls, caller's location etc. We are testing Callrail to start monitoring landing pages and keywords that generating our leads. Parts that I want to change: Some of the local sites have over 100 pages targeted for 'water damage + city ' aka what Moz would call "Doorway pages. " These pages have 600-1000 words all talking about services we provide. Although our writers (4 of them) manipulate them in a way so that they aren't duplicate pages. They add about 100 words about the city location. This is the only unique variable. We pump out about 10 new local pages a month per site - so yes - over 300 local pages a month. Traffic to the local sites is very scarce. Content protocol / strategy is only tested based on ranking! We have a tool that monitors ranking on all domains. This does not count for mobile, local, nor user based preference searching like Google Now. My team is deeply attached to basing our metrics solely on ranking. The logic behind this is that if there is no local city page existing for a targeted location, there is less likelihood of ranking for that location. If you are not seen then you will not get traffic nor leads. Ranking for power locations is poor - while less competitive low reach locations rank ok. We are updating content protocol by tweaking small things (multiple variants at a time). They will check ranking everyday for about a week to determine whether that experiment was a success or not. What I need: Internal duplicate content analyzer - to prove that writing over 400 pages a month about water damage + city IS duplicate content. Unique content for 'Power pages' - I know based on dozens of chats here on the community and in MOZ blogs that we can only truly create quality content for 5-10 pages. Meaning we need to narrow down what locations are most important to us and beef them up. Creating blog content for non 'power' locations. Develop new experiment protocol based on metrics like traffic, impressions, bounce rate landing page analysis, domain authority etc. Dig deeper into call metrics and their sources. Now I am at a roadblock because I cannot develop valid content experimenting parameters based on ranking. I know that a/b testing requires testing two pages that are same except the one variable. We'd either non index these or canonicalize.. both are not in favor of testing ranking for the same term. Questions: Are all these local pages duplicate content? Is there a such thing as content experiments based solely on ranking? Any other suggestions for this scenario?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA1 -
Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO
Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller
Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
SEO: .com vs .org vs .travel Domain
Hi there, I am new to MOZ Q&A and first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better. My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO. Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best. discoveratlanta.org
Local Website Optimization | | kinimod
atlantaguide.org
atlanta.travel
atlantamag.com Looking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain. I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well. Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)? I really appreciate your response to my question! Best,
kinimod0 -
How slow can a website be, but still be ok for visitors and seo?
Hello to all, my site http://www.allspecialtybuildings.com is a barn construction site. Our visitors are usually local. I am worried about page speed. I have been using Google Page Insight, and Gtmetrix. Although I cannot figure out browser leveraging, I have a 79 / 93 google score and for gtmetrix 98/87 score. Load times vary between 2.13 secs to 2.54 secs What is acceptable? I want to make sure I get Google love for a decent page speed, but for me these times are great. Bad times are like 7 seconds and higher. I have thought about a CDN, yet I have read horror stories too. I have ZERO idea of how to use a CDN, or if I need it. I just want a fast site that is both user and Google speed friendly. So my question is, what is a slow speed for a website? Is under 3 seconds considered ok? or bad for seo? But any advice is greatly appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0