Does Running Google Ads Help SEO?

Does running Google Ads help SEO? That’s an important question that many people have been asking over the years. The short answer is NO. Google Ads advertising doesn’t help Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Running campaigns and ads in your Google Ads account, that appear on Google, will not help you rank higher for your keywords naturally in the SEO listings.

Unfortunately many businesses have been misled by some agencies regarding the benefits of advertising on Google and how it helps with boosting natural search results. And they do that to sell more services to their clients.

As you may be aware, Google Ads is a pay per click (PPC) advertising platform, so you pay for every click that you get on your ads. And it’s also Google’s primary revenue driver bringing in over 80% of revenue in 2021 at about $209 billion.

But this is different for SEO, which drives free traffic to your website. So you’re not charged when people click your Organic listings.

Both are very important to your marketing strategy, but they differ in many ways like costs, setup, time frames, targeting, control and more.

Why some people believe Google Ads helps SEO:

1. Some notice an increase in organic traffic

Some people have noticed an increase in their organic traffic after having advertised for some time.

This is because advertising in Google Ads helps to increase brand awareness and so many people will start searching with the brand name and domain name on Google and then click the organic listings.

And Google does not show search results for organic clicks and so it’s not always clear which searches are driving these clicks.

2. Both are Google platforms

Naturally a lot of people believe that Google Ads does help SEO because both appear in the search engine results and are sometimes ranked on similar factors like keywords and relevance.

The ads appear at the top of the SEO listings and some will be at the bottom. And many people cannot tell the difference between the two.

But the ads are labelled ‘ads’ or ‘sponsored’ and are never included with SEO listings. They are always separate as described above.

3. Both use keywords

Keyword research is an important part of advertising in the Google ad results and also to appear in the SEO results.

So, many people think they are very similar because of this, and that they work in the same way except one is paid and the other is not.

But Google Ads and SEO are very different when you look behind the scenes to see how you can rank on both. The former is an auction system with advertisers bidding for positions and paying for clicks. Whereas with SEO you have to optimise your website and acquire links to appear at the top for your chosen keywords.

Also, with Google Ads you need to create an account to create adverts and bid on keywords in campaigns you create. With SEO there is no account to create, and instead, you only work on your website to optimise your pages and also acquire relevant links through off-page optimisation.

Conclusion

Google Ads and SEO are different channels and neither impacts the other. So, creating a Google Ads account and advertising will not help your SEO efforts. But both are important for your search engine marketing strategy and you should work on both.

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I’m a Google Ads specialist and PPC expert with over 13 years experience setting up and managing PPC campaigns. Contact me below to find out about my services and for recommendations on how to implement an SEO strategy too.