Dear Kalena…
I was wondering if you have an active ppc program if this hurts you in natural search optimization since your paying for keyword placement. Why would Google/Yahoo rank you high if your already paying them lots of money. I tested this by pausing my Yahoo ad for 1 month and sure enough my keywords are all on front page when beforehand they were are pages 3-5. Too nervous to do with Google since we spend a lot per month.
Billy
Hi Billy,
This is a topic which has been much debated over the years, but the short answer is No, running a PPC Campaign will have no “direct” impact on your rankings.
People have speculated that using PPC might improve your rankings (as a reward by the search engine) or – as you’ve have suggested – decrease your rankings (presumably to encourage people to click on the ads).
It should be very easy to test, and many people have tried to prove it one way or the other – but I am unaware of any conclusive proof. Even though your test seems to suggest a correlation between your PPC and organic rankings, you only appear to have done a part of the test. In order to prove the correlation you would need to turn on and off your PPC campaign over an extended period and track this against changes in your rankings.
In my opening sentence above, I emphasized that there is no “direct” effect, because running an aggressive PPC campaign could in fact have an indirect impact on your organic rankings – in a couple of different ways :
- By running PPC you will get extra traffic in a shorter amount of time, and the data that this generates can help you to tweak and improve factors that can influence your organic rankings. For example, through using a broad range of keyword phrases on your campaigns – and by looking at the impressions you get, you will get an idea of which phrases are being searched most often. You should also be able to determine which keywords are converting better. By focusing your optimisation efforts on high volume and higher converting phrases, you will boost your rankings and your sales or enquiries.
- Running PPC will also raise the visibility of your brand and your site. You will be getting extra visitors – and if they like what they see they are likely to link to your site. This in itself will also improve your organic rankings.
Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing
I’m not convinced a PPC will have any effect on natural rankings – positive or negative. The apparent results from the Yahoo test could be from any number of reasons – seasonal demand changes, server issues, small sample size, economic forecasts, and probably many others.
I am similarly convinced SEO will improve PPC results (at least in Google). Let me explain.
Google ranks all bidders for a keyword by calculating the bid price by the page value. The top bidders (i.e. with the highest calculated number [bid x value]) will be successful. Any combination of higher bid or better page value will improve the chances of being in the top 10. The actual click price is the minimum price required when multiplied by the page value to still be ahead of the next highest bidder.
Improving page value will provide more clicks for the same daily spend or the same number of clicks can be produced by a lower daily budget.
So how does SEO come into this equation? The page value is based on the same factors that determine the site’s position in organic results – basically relevance of keyword to page theme. Back in SEO 101 I learned to use keywords in title, heading tags, etc; to use keyword rich link text (internal and inbound); not to hide text in images or Flash; and to provide good internal navigation to show Google the theme of my pages. In short SEO techniques improve PPC page value.
Thanks Chris,
Yes, using traditional SEO techniques on a PPC landing page may help to improve the Quality Score – which in turn could reduce the Cost per Click and/or improve the rankings of you PPC Ad.
Ensuring that the landing page is relevant to the Keywords and wording of the PPC Ad is likely to have a bigger impact on Quality Score.
Hi All,
I work in the PPC area at work and have completed my Google exam on Adwords Campaigns as a result. Your PPC campaign in no way affects the organic listing of your website as organic listings and Sponsored link campaigns run off different algorithms. The position of a PPC ad is determined by this equation: Max CPC x Quality Score. The quality score is mainly made up of how high your CTR (Click through rate) is and the rest is the relevancy of the page the ad is linked to, the wording of the ad and the quality of the content on the linked page. Having a good and relevant website can partially assist with the sponsored link quality score but a top three position ad doesnt affect the organic listing postion in any way. I hope this helps
I can only speak from my direct November 2011 testing and from my own websites I haves tested the results on. I tested it on a few different adwords campaigns. Depending where I set my country and cities too it has an immediate impact on my google organic ranking positions.
Campaign 1
countries USA/Canada
Campaign 2
ONLY a handful of targeted cities within USA/Canada
When I pause campaign 1 and run campaign 2 my organic listings drop.
2 days later I pause Campaign 2 and run campaign 1
within the hour the keyword jumps up the organic rankings again.
3 days later I pause Campaign 1 again and run campaign 2
there’s another drop in my organic rankings
1 day later I pause campaign 2 and run campaign 1 again and within the 1hr my rankings jump up again.
For this particular test it has a direct impact.
Tested Nov 2011
I just recently tested the affects of turning PPC off and saw my organic plumit. How can this be.
This was done in two differant sites and both had instant negative organic effects….