Many SEO experts purport that Google Ads can directly impact your SEO and, thus your organic growth but Google has stated clearly that that is simply not the case. Google has even been forced to comment on this issue by saying “…a Google Ads campaign does not help your SEO rankings”.
Despite this being the case, you can use paid ads to generate positive user experiences on your site, which is going to have a potential impact on your SEO. Another thing to consider when investing in Google Ads is that PPC data allows you to get insights quickly that you can incorporate into your SEO strategy which will help with organic search. Here is our take on how Google Ads can help your SEO, albeit not directly.
Google Ads and Your Search Performance
We have already established that Google Ads cannot directly impact your SEO but there is a loose relationship between the two. That being said, it should be noted that this relationship can’t guarantee an improvement in your SERPs.
Both Google Ads and SEO have two, independent roles when it comes to driving traffic to your site. Being keenly aware of this will ensure that you don’t neglect either and ensure that you give due attention to both fields for your site’s success.
Using Google Ads Data
When crafting SEO strategies, one of the first things that are usually done is assessing keyword opportunities for content. Many companies use a variety of tools and programs to help them achieve this like SEMrush or Ahrefs. When creating a strategy, marketers focus on high search volume with low competition keywords but this doesn’t always deliver results.
Using this strategy is definitely an intelligent way of garnering traffic, but it doesn’t guarantee conversions. Utilising data that you have gleaned from your PPC campaigns allows you to see what content is converting for you. By learning from this, you will be able to take the best performing content and transform it into a highly effective strategy that converts for you.
How to Utilise Google Ads for Organic Growth
While we have confirmed that Google does not directly link organic growth to PPC campaigns, there is plenty we can learn from these efforts to ensure potential prospects become conversions. By assessing these, you will be able to grow your business and deliver a better SEO strategy for better results.
Google Ads Click-Through Rates
Click-through rates or CTRs is one of the most definitive ways of assessing if you have written an effective advertising campaign. CTRs are the percentage of people that have engaged with your ad via clicking on it.
Using CTRs to influence your strategy can directly help your organic growth as CTRs are one of the ways Google determines whether your site should have better rankings. This is done through their algorithm ‘Rank Brain’ which will crawl and assess PPC campaigns. Using data from Google Adwords will help you with existing ranking and with continued organic growth.
While CTRs obviously hold great importance, bounce rate and dwell time shouldn’t be neglected at its expense. Running more than one PPC ad at a time allows you to run split tests, enabling you to see what your audience responds to. This then helps you craft benefits and headlines that help with organic growth.
Setting up a Google Adwords account for this is integral if you want to find patterns and trends in your CTR ads. Test and put into action keywords that you glean from it. This can be put into action with your on-page SEO as follows:
Ad Headlines or Title Tags
Knowing what headlines your audience responds to takes trial and error, and they may prefer certain wording or be more likely to engage with a different phrase. When you’ve found titles that work, you can replicate these into the meta title tags of your site to increase the organic search CTR.
Ad Descriptions or Meta Descriptions
Again, reviewing your data can help you see what ad descriptions are performing the best in CTRs. You can review what selling points people are drawn to and what sentences they respond to the best. You can take these patterns and then replicate them within your meta descriptions.
Keywords or On-Page Keywords
Something that is integral to good SEO is having strong ranking keywords. Using impressions, conversion rates, and CTRs, you can identify what keywords are used most often by your target audience.
You’re not always going to have the budget to test conversion rates but looking at the CPC of each keyword can help distinguish what high and low intent keywords are present in your content. You are then able to implement this in different user journeys to great effect, knowing what will deliver with content creation and even in optimisation.
These can be utilised organically by using conversion optimised landing pages with high intent keywords for an audience that is ready to purchase. Low intent keywords can be used in long-form blog posts to educate potential customers to the brand or business that you are promoting.
Remarketing
Remarketing is where targeted ads are shown to users who have previously visited your site or have engaged with your brand on email or through social media. This is an incredible tool to utilise as it brings people who may be interested back to your site, converting prospects who are already familiar with what you can offer.
Your SEO can be improved through remarketing as you can learn more about potential customers. This is through learning more about their long-term interests and what they are actually looking for (in-market audience category).
Understanding this allows you to condense the types of content and keywords you should be using and deliver them effectively to the right audience. To utilise this, you can go to your Adwords account and click on the shared library before hitting ‘Audience Manager’. From here, you will be able to get ‘Audience Insights’ to help with your remarketing.
Getting people to interact with your site isn’t always instantaneous and takes hard work and dedication to ensure conversions. It is important you know how to recapture your audience that hasn’t converted.
According to Entrepreneur, it takes around five brand impressions before someone makes a purchase. Remarketing allows for businesses or brands to aid prospects back to their site in a cost-effective and simple manner.
This helps with organic visitors as you create a brand presence. This helps with brand recall and creates authority and trust meaning that your audience is more likely to return organically to your site at a later date. They will also be more likely to trust your content which can be shared on their socials leading, eventually to more backlinks.
Geographic Performance
Another factor to consider when using Google Ads to help with SEO performance is local SEO. This is where you target an audience that is geographically close to you and your business.
In the digital age, people are reliant on their technology to direct them to services and information, and having good local SEO can ensure that you are attracting people who are close to you. This is particularly useful if you have a physical location that you want people to enter or attend.
Even if you don’t have a physical presence, local SEO can be used to enhance your regional profile and aid your nationwide campaigns. You should look at your conversions in relation to the area and see what is converting in each specific space. You can also analyse clicks and impressions and see what geographical area is responding best to your ads.
With this information, you will be able to see what phrasing people resonate with most and how people are engaging or talking about your product or service. You will be able to take this information and utilise it for your on-page SEO and update your keyword strategy with new target keywords.
Search Terms Report
People utilise Google Adwords to target keywords, but running a search terms report lets you analyse what people are actually typing into search engines. Analysing these phrases will help you see what exact phrases are being searched for and that are involving your ads. From here, you can employ these same key phrases to deliver content that is rich for your SEO.
If there are certain phrases or words that are receiving lots of attention or impressions, you will be able to incorporate them into your on-page SEO. This will achieve organic growth as you are able to see what is bringing people to your website and supporting any conversions that may occur.
Delivering an effective SEO strategy employs user intent, not just the volume of keywords, so using Google Ads to really focus on what is effective will produce results. Using more specific keywords rather than high volume singular words will see searches actually clicking through to your site and converting leads into purchases.
Refining Your SEO Strategy with Google Ads
SEO is something that is a long-term game – you learn while you do it and it constantly has to be reviewed and measured. That being said, analysing and taking notes from your PPC campaigns allows you to implement organic SEO strategies when you are aware of trends and data.
PPC and SEO are incredibly important for your business and website but they are also highly specialised and technical. Knowing where to begin and how to implement strategies that benefit your business can be tricky. Get in touch with ProfileTree today to see how we can aid you with your SEO and PPC.
