Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?

[Treefrog_SEO]

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!

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[AndyMacLean]

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.

[Treefrog_SEO]

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.

[jennita]

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

[Eric_Rohrback]

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.

[garfield_disliker]

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.

[garfield_disliker]

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?

[Eric_Rohrback]

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.

[Eric_Rohrback]

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.

[garfield_disliker]

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.