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Paid Advertising: Do Paid Ads Influence Organic SEO Results?

Editorial Staff December 04, 2018

6-minute read

As we have seen in a previous post, SEO and paid advertising are two different tools you can use in order to reach the same goal: to get more traffic and also increase conversions on your website.

Although they work differently, can they influence each other’s results?

One theory suggests that the use of paid advertising may directly influence your rank in organic searches. This is based on the logic that Google would give extra encouragement and then boost those websites who also pay them through the Google Ads service. Yet, that link between paid and organic marketing is not that straightforward. It also goes against the principles that make Google the unbiased search engine that it is today. In an article on their official ads platform, Google explains this thoroughly.

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How Paid Advertising Influences SEO

That being said, there are certainly other obvious inter-connections between paid advertising and organic search rank, due to the factors these tools work with.

1. Increased CTR (Click-through-rate)

Firstly, the click rate is a measure of relevance and one of the most important factors in search engine algorithms. Having ads with high CTR will help increase the general click rates for your landing pages, which can then marginally raise their rankings in SERP (Search Engine Results Page). If your website is fairly new and little known, struggling somewhere on the second page of the SERP, it is difficult for it to get clicks from searches. That sucks, right?

But if you are simultaneously running a paid advertising campaign that gets you on the first page, and your ads are also well written and also relevant for the search queries, you may well get some clicks. Furthermore, if, subsequently, the users tend to spend some time on your page and, maybe, look around, this sends a message that your page is relevant. This will positively impact the rank of your page and domain.

Therefore, you can indirectly help organic results through paid ads, if you manage to get good CTRs.

2. Paid Ads Can Increase Trustworthiness

When you are trying to promote your website, you are in the process of building trust, not just rankings. When users do a search query and see that your website shows up in both the paid area of the SERP and the organic area, it sends the message that your presence there is not an accident and also that the website is trustworthy. So, having paid advertising can also increase trust and clicks for your organic link.

3. Later engagement

According to this post from MOZ, there is a higher chance for users who have seen an ad at a given time to return later to the initial search and engage with an organic link:

“So if you see that many people have searched in the past, they have clicked on a paid advertising post, and then later in the organic results they see that same brand ranking, they might be more likely and more inclined to click it, more inclined to engage with it, more inclined actually to convert on that page, to click that Buy button generally because the brand association is stronger. If it is the first time you heard of a new brand, a new company, a new website, you are less likely to click as a result, less likely to engage, less likely to buy, which is why some paid exposure prior to organic exposure can be good, even for the organic exposure.”

4. Changing the Area Above the Fold

Finally, the content above the fold is what users see on their screens before starting to scroll. This area is different, depending on the size and resolution of the device used to browse. The above the fold is, of course, smaller on smartphones and larger on desktop screens. This is important, so try to remember this when deciding where to place your paid advertising on webpages.

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That's Paid Advertising and SEO in a Nutshell!

As you can see, paid advertising can certainly influence your SEO score when done in the right way.

Of course, you need analytics to ascertain your success.

So sign up to TWIPLA and get the insights you need to get your paid ads soaring!

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