Category: Google Ads, SEO Management
It’s a question that comes up more than you might think. If you spend money with Google on adverts, does Google quietly reward you with better positions in the free results? And the other side of the same coin: if you stop your ads, will your free listing drop?
The short answer to both is no. Google’s paid adverts and its organic (free) results are run by separate systems, and Google has been saying so, firmly and repeatedly, for over twenty years. Spending more on Google Ads won’t move your website up the free results, and pausing your ads won’t push it down.
That doesn’t mean the two have nothing to do with each other, though. There are some genuinely useful ways that running both can help, and some good reasons why so many business owners are convinced there’s a hidden link.
What Google says
Google is unusually clear on this one. On its own pages explaining how search works, it says advertisers can pay to appear in the clearly marked ad sections, but nobody can buy a better position in the search results themselves. It goes further, saying that advertisers and anyone else with a financial relationship with Google get no special treatment and no ranking boost, and have to use the same free tools as everyone else if something goes wrong.
You could be cynical and say of course Google would say that. And as we’ve written before about getting the most out of your PPC, Google’s advice isn’t always neutral, because Google makes money every time someone clicks your ad. But in this case the cynical view actually supports what Google says. Google’s whole business depends on people trusting its free results. If those results could be bought, people would stop trusting them, and then they’d stop seeing the ads too. Selling rankings would be a very short-term way to make money.
So why do so many people believe it?
Plenty of sensible business owners are sure they’ve seen it happen. Usually there’s a perfectly ordinary explanation.
The most common one is timing. A business starts running ads at the same time as it updates its website, gets a few new reviews or adds some new pages. Rankings improve a few weeks later and the ads get the credit. Or a business pauses its ads in the same month as one of Google’s regular updates, sees a dip, and assumes one caused the other.
Another is the way traffic is reported. If you look at your total visitors from Google without separating paid from organic, pausing your ads will obviously make the number fall. Your rankings haven’t moved; the paid visitors have simply stopped arriving.
Then there are the sales conversations. Some business owners have been told, by someone selling ads or by someone selling SEO, that the two are linked. Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding, and sometimes it’s a convenient story. Either way, if anyone tells you that spending more with Google will improve your free rankings, it’s worth asking them to show you where Google says so.
Finally, there’s the fact that both systems like the same things. Google Ads gives better positions and cheaper clicks to adverts that lead to pages that are useful, relevant and easy to use. Google’s organic results favour the same kind of page. So a business that improves its website for its ads will often see its organic results improve too. The better website is helping both, and the ads are getting the credit.
And if you stop your ads?
Your organic listing isn’t affected. It will carry on moving up or down for the same reasons it always has, such as your website, your reviews and what your competitors are doing.
What you will lose is the traffic the ads were bringing in, and this is where people sometimes get caught out. It’s tempting to think that if you already appear near the top of the free results for a search, the people who clicked your ad will simply click your free listing instead. Some will. But Google’s own research suggests most won’t. In a large study of paused ad campaigns, Google found that the great majority of clicks from ads, around 89 per cent on average, weren’t made up by extra organic clicks when the ads were switched off.
It’s worth taking that with a pinch of salt. It was Google’s research, it’s from 2011, and the search results page looks very different now. But the basic point still holds up. Turning off your ads and expecting your free listing to pick up all the slack is usually optimistic.
Where running both genuinely helps
So the ads don’t lift your rankings. But a business in Salisbury that runs Google Ads and works on its SEO at the same time does get some real benefits, as long as someone is joining the two up.
The biggest one is the search terms report. Your Google Ads account shows you the actual words people typed before they clicked your ad. For a local business that’s gold. You might find people in Amesbury searching for “emergency boiler repair” far more than “boiler service”, or customers looking for “garden rooms” when your website only ever says “garden offices”. Those real search terms can shape the pages you write and the words you use on them, which is exactly what helps organic rankings over time.
Ads are also a quick way to test what works. If you’re not sure whether people respond better to “same day call-outs” or “fixed prices”, you can try both in your ads and see which gets more clicks and enquiries within a few weeks. Waiting to find out the same thing from your organic results could take months.
Then there’s the space on the page. For a search like “roofer Salisbury”, a business that appears in the ads, the map results and the organic results takes up a lot more of the screen than one that only appears in one of them. That doesn’t change your rankings, but it does make it more likely the person picks you.
Ads can also fill the gap while SEO does its work. A new business, or one moving into a new area such as Downton or Wilton, might take months to build up organic rankings there. Ads can bring in enquiries in the meantime, and as the organic results improve you can reduce the ad spend for the searches where you’re already doing well.
One thing worth checking if you do run both is whether you’re paying for clicks on your own business name. If someone searches for your business by name and you already appear right at the top of the free results, paying for an ad as well isn’t always necessary. Sometimes it is worth it, for example if a competitor is bidding on your name. But it’s a decision to make on purpose, not something to leave running because it was there when the account was set up.
The honest answer
Paying for Google Ads won’t improve your organic rankings, and stopping won’t harm them. That part, at least, Google is very clear about.
What does make a difference is treating your ads and your SEO as two parts of the same job. The ads bring in enquiries now and tell you what your customers are really searching for. The SEO uses that knowledge to build up the free rankings that keep working when you’re not paying for every click.
If you’d like to know how that could work for your business, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital look after both search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area. Give us a call on 01722 320 500 and we’ll give you a straight answer.