If you buy Google Ads, can you get special treatment?
Google has long said that buying AdWords ads doesn’t help your rankings in the search results. But someone recently asked why his AdWords rep couldn’t help answer some questions about his organic rankings.
Many people I talk to are interested in learning some SEO secrets. Keyword density — link counts — meta tags — online reviews — blog comments — the list goes on and on.
But the sad truth that no one seems to want to hear is that there areno SEO secrets. There’s no magic number of times to use a keyword on a page or in your meta tags. There’s no threshold number of inbound links that will guarantee you first-page rankings.
SEO Magic
Despite the name of our company, SEO isn’t “magic”.
We might make it feel like magic, but it isn’t. In fact, when we work with a client they end up actually understanding their SEO. They know what’s being done and why.
And the biggest “secret” I can offer — the ultimate SEO secret — is to stop worrying about what Google thinks and focus on what potential customers think when they’re on your website.
Search engines want to display the best possible web pages to their searchers. If you make your pages the best possible pages, you’re a shoe-in for great rankings.
Does participating in Google Ads (Google’s Pay Per Click or PPC program) help your non-PPC rankings?
The corollary to that is the question:
Does Google punish sites that don’t pay them for for Google Ads by lowering their rankings, thus encouraging participation in Ads where Google makes money?
The answer is No. Always has been and always will. The simple reason is that doing this would reduce the relevance of Google’s main organic rankings. Consequently, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or another search engine would unseat them as the Big Dog of search.
More savvy searchers typically skip over the PPC ads because they understand the sponsored links up top aren’t there because they’re the most relevant match for your search. Those top-ranking PPC links are there largely because the advertiser is willing to pay more than others for your click.
A blog post over at WSI said it well:
Doing AdWords does NOT directly help or effect rankings. Integrity in this area is a cornerstone of Google’s business. If this were violated it would damage Google beyond repair, not to mention a slew of legal actions. Google would never risk those consequences. Google has stated over and over that AdWords advertising will not affect rankings. I don’t always believe Google but….
I have been managing Adwords and doing search engine optimization for my clients for many years. I have managed every combination of clients that do or don’t do AdWords combined with SEO. There have also been cases where SEO clients stop doing AdWords, or start doing AdWords. I can say that I have never seen anything that indicated that AdWords affected rankings.
There are a number of reputable SEO research firms that study this issue and every one of them has come to the same conclusion: AdWords does not affect rankings.
My experience is completely in agreement with that assessment.
There’s a place for Google Ads, of course. And it’s true that if you show up in both the ads and the organic results on the first page it super-validates you as a site that searchers will want to click on first. But Google Ads itself has no impact on how highly you rank in the organic results.
Bottom Line: Google Ads won’t help your organic rankings. Only SEO can do that.
Bill provides an excellent service. He is very knowledgeable and very thorough with his SEO audits and he gives clear instructions on how to improve your SEO rankings. Bill is very detail oriented and also very easy to work with. I highly recommend him for SEO services.
Rank Magic
Thanks for your kind words, Dr. S. I'm looking forward to continued improvement in your visibility, traffic, and patient growth.
April 3, 2024
Phil C
Bill Treloar is very knowledgeable about SEO topics. He gave me a ton of information and a To-Do list to make my website better.
Rank Magic
Thanks, Phil. I'm glad you found our conversation helpful. Please reach out with any further questions.
May 24, 2023
Jackie Z
Bill and his team are awesome very thorough and efficient and great following up /customer service.
Rank Magic
Thanks, Jackie. I'm looking forward to more and more success for your visibility.
April 5, 2023
Karen M.
As a website designer, I value the depth and breadth of knowledge Rank Magic offers to give a client the very best Search Engine Optimization results. They not only know this field inside and out but are a pleasure to work with!!
Rank Magic
Thanks for your kind words, Karen. I'm looking forward to our collaboration for your client.
January 16, 2023
Jamie F
Amazing Service! Bill and rank magic took my business to the next level by cleaning up my business information across the internet. My google search referrals went up 39 percent in just months of using RanK Magic!
Rank Magic
Thanks, Jamie. I'm thrilled, too, with your results so far. I look forward to continued improvement.
The recent Penguin update to the Google ranking algorithm has lots of website owners, webmasters and SEOs concerned about”over-optimization”. Some forms of overly aggressive optimization have worked in the past to gain rankings that are undeserved. That’s one of the main things the Penguin algorithm was designed to correct. And I’d be surprised if Yahoo and Bing weren’t paying attention to over-optimization as well.
What is over-optimization?
But just what constitutes over-optimization? How do you know if you’ve over-optimized your site? Hannah Howard has outlined 10 ways you may have done that in a post at LonghornLeads.com. She goes into more detail than I will here, but this may tell you pretty much all you need. Here’s the list:
Keyword stuffing — “If you’re looking for red widgets, you’ve come to the right red widget place because we’re the red widget experts. When it comes to red widgets …” You get the idea. Don’t do it.
Hidden text — This is an old technique I’m surprised to see some people still try to get away with: white text on a white background that’s just repeated keywords. It becomes visible only if you sweep your mouse over it. This will hurt you.
Over-use of backlinks — too many low value or worthless backlinks can hurt you. (Yes, you can have too many links, if they’re crappy links.) Your important link popularity is based on the number and quality of your backlinks.
Weak links — Too many reciprocal links above the fold on your content pages to help rankings of a partner or another website of yours is another red flag for the Penguin update.
Forcing what should come naturally — The practice of creating many mini-sites to feed links to your main site or creating large blog networks to drive links is one that’s become too obvious to do any good and Google will catch you.
Content that’s too keyword-driven — Content should be keyword driven to a point; you need to be aware of what keywords your visitors will be searching for. But focusing too much on that brings you close to keyword stuffing. If your text reads awkwardly because of your attempt to incorporate keywords, you’re over-optimizing.
Too much keyword-rich anchor text on inbound links — This is a relatively new one. Most people link to websites unthinkingly by making the anchor text (the clickable text in the link) simply be the name of the company or even the URL. For SEO, we hope to get keyword-rich links. But if too many of your inbound links have keywords in them, it doesn’t look natural, and is a symptom of link over-optimization. Many of those people are linking to you, not spontaneously because you have great content they want to share, but because you or someone on your behalf has asked them to. Google may de-value those links.
Doorway pages — This got some BMW and Ricoh sites completely banned from Google for more than six months a few years ago. People still try this technique, and the Penguin update will get them.
Paid ads: too many or too prominent — Yes, it’s legitimate for some kinds of websites to have some ads that generate revenue, but if you overdo it, or if the ads are irrelevant to what you’re discussing on a given page, that may earn you a Penguin update slap-down.
Duplicate content — I see this too often — a company that does, say housecleaning, creates a page for every town in their coverage area. And the content on all those pages is bound to be awfully similar. In some cases the content is identical except for the town name. Penguin will jump on that with both feet. Don’t do it.
Have you over-optimized your site?
Have you done any of these things? Most of us have, more or less, at one time or another. And over-optimizing your site is as bad as — or worse than — not optimizing it at all. Take a good, honest look at your site with these transgressions in mind and fix any you may have inadvertently committed.
Google’s Matt Cutts recently addressed a question about what the ideal keyword density is. He refers to the diminishing return of repeated keyword usage and the danger of keyword stuffing which can earn you an over-optimization penalty.
Matt says it best, so take a look at the video.
Increasingly employing variations on a keyword phrase rather than strict repetitions of a verbatim phrase seem to work best.
SEO SecretsDoing AdWords does NOT directly help or effect rankings. Integrity in this area is a cornerstone of Google’s business. If this were violated it would damage Google beyond repair, not to mention a slew of legal actions. Google would never risk those consequences. Google has stated over and over that AdWords advertising will not affect rankings. I don’t always believe Google but….
Doorway pages — This got some BMW and Ricoh sites completely banned from Google for more than six months a few years ago. People still try this technique, and the Penguin update will get them.
The answer is No. Always has been and always will. The simple reason is that doing this would reduce the relevance of Google’s main organic rankings. Consequently, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or another search engine would unseat them as the Big Dog of search.