Google Ads vs SEO: Crafting a Winning Strategy
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Pathlabs Marketing |
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May 7th, 2024 |
At Pathlabs, we are known for our expertise in executing paid digital media campaigns, making us no strangers to Google Ads.
But, an occasional error one can make is thinking that executing Google Ads campaigns has anything to do with performing search engine optimization (SEO) – they are quite different activities.
This blog aims to clarify the differences between Google Ads campaigns and performing SEO. We will also detail the few cases where they overlap.
Google Ads vs SEO - Let’s Compare
Core Definitions
Advertising on Google Ads involves executing paid media campaigns using the Google Ads platform interface (formerly Google AdWords) and serving ads on web locations owned or affiliated with Google.
Performing SEO refers to developing a brand’s website content to enhance its likelihood of appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs). This blog predominantly focuses on on-page SEO and optimizing websites for the Google Search Engine.
Core Execution Activities
Google Ads execution activities encompass the planning, building, launching, optimizing, and reporting on any of the following types of campaigns (using the Google Ads platform interface):
Paid Search: Creating ads that appear within the Google Search Network, Google Play, Maps, and Search Partners. Advertisers bid on keywords, and the ads appear when those keywords are used in a Google Search, charging the advertiser only when these ads are clicked, otherwise known as a pay-per-click (PPC) model.
Shopping: Displaying ads next to products within Google’s shopping section and other affiliated inventory locations.
YouTube: Placing ads before, during, or after YouTube videos or alongside related YouTube content.
Display: Showcasing display ads across the Google Display Network, including over two million websites and over 650,000 apps.
App: Advertising apps across various Google locations mentioned above.
Search engine optimization activities include:
Developing websites with SEO-friendly titles, meta tags, and headers.
Crafting website content with clear language and keywords relevant to user search queries.
Implementing internal linking strategies, regularly updating website content, fixing broken links, and ensuring fast webpage load times.
Producing additional "SEO content" like blogs, articles, and product pages on the website.
Business Functions
Brands execute Google Ads campaigns to drive performance. By serving their ads across Google’s web locations, they get their message in front of relevant users, encouraging them to engage and move down the funnel.
SEO’s business function is to structure a brand’s website content so that Google deems it relevant and includes it in the search results of pertinent queries. The more this website content appears in Google SERPs, the more users can discover and engage with it, enhancing brand exposure and driving performance, albeit more organically.
Execution and Management
Brands can execute Google Ads campaigns in-house or outsource to an independent agency. Nowadays, it’s popular for these agencies to outsource their digital media execution to a Media Execution Partner (MEP) that assists with running their clients’ Google Ads campaigns.
Performing SEO is an in-house activity brands primarily perform or outsource to service teams that specialize in SEO.
Targeting and Placement
For Google Ads display, YouTube, and app campaigns, teams can target and retarget ads to users based on their geographic locations, demographics, interests, and behaviors. They can also target specific web pages and contexts within Google.
In Google paid search campaigns, teams will target their ads to appear in search results when users query particular keywords and phrases; they can typically include additional targeting parameters.
Regarding SEO, teams have much less control over where their website content appears in Google SERPs, as it is ultimately subject to Google’s serving it based on user search queries and the perceived relevance of the web content. Performing SEO improves the potential for this website content to appear in these results; however, there is no guarantee of placement.
Speed of Results
Due to its pay-to-play nature, Google Ads generates more rapid results. Teams can build and launch their campaigns quite quickly, immediately serving ads to users and driving performance.
In contrast, SEO takes longer to yield results. Teams need to spend time creating and optimizing website content for search engines. Once Google indexes it, it will serve it in SERPs, but it will likely initially rank relatively low and slowly move up in search results over time – if it is quality.
Cost, Time, and Resources
Executing Google Ads campaigns is costly. Teams must put forth the budget to serve ads in the first place. But more importantly, they also need to invest in the expertise to perform all the execution activities for these campaigns, from planning to optimizing to reporting, ensuring the most effective performance.
The costs and demands for SEO vary. Some scrappy teams can develop and optimize their websites and content quickly and inexpensively for search engines. However, more robust, long-term SEO strategies will naturally involve more employee bandwidth, costs, and time commitments.
Performance and Cost Analysis
Within the Google Ads platform, teams can assess how much they spent during the campaign flight, the performance they drove, and other key metrics. This helps determine a more straightforward ROI on these efforts.
Performance and cost analysis are more difficult for SEO. Teams can look at website page views, clicks, and impressions using specific tools offered by Google; however, it is challenging to tangibly determine how much it costs to perform SEO activities, such as updating headers and placing internal links, and the immediate performance results they yield.
The Pros and Cons of SEO
Pros
Google indexes and serves a brand's SEO content in its SERPs at no cost.
Brands can engage in as many SEO activities as they desire. However, minimal effort may reduce their website content’s visibility in SERPs.
Teams can create additional SEO content for their website that discusses industry topics, answers questions, and provides value to users. This establishes the brand as a thought leader and can improve the website's organic search ranking.
Cons
Despite their most diligent efforts, brands cannot fully control when and where their website's search-engine-optimized content will appear in SERPs – Google’s search engine algorithms make the ultimate decision.
Moreover, the Google SERPs landscape is very competitive, with many players actively pursuing SEO as a core strategy. To gain significant traction and results from these efforts, teams will more often need to invest in additional expertise and resources to manage it all.
The Benefits and Drawbacks of Google Ads
Benefits
Google has an enormous user base and reach across its platforms and networks, allowing media teams to leverage this walled garden’s first-party data in ad targeting.
Google Ads offers multiple campaign types, from paid search to YouTube to shopping, broadening how brands can engage with audiences.
Google Ads uses machine learning and algorithms to assist with ad serving, ensuring relevant ads reach the right users. It also has features to help ensure the advertisers’ budget paces at an optimal rate and meets performance objectives before the campaign ends.
Predefined and custom reports in Google Ads empower teams to access and analyze data about campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and more, facilitating informed decision-making.
Drawbacks
Google Ads is pay-to-play, requiring an upfront ad budget, which may be a barrier for some advertisers.
Mastering the Google Ads platform and campaigns requires a significant learning curve.
Advertisers heavily use Google Ads, which increases the costs of serving ads on the platform and makes advertising auctions very competitive.
While Google Ads offers multiple targeting capabilities, teams still can’t fully control the auction and ad-serving algorithms, which determine where and when their ads will exactly serve.
When Should You Invest in SEO?
Brands should invest in at least some search engine optimization, as these activities create more opportunities for their website content to appear in relevant SERPs, leading to more brand visibility and organic traffic.
Even if brands do not delve deeply into the complexities of SEO content writing and internal link structures, adhering to basic SEO best practices like clear language, fast page load times, and aligning keywords with search intent is universally sensible when creating any website or landing page. In short, some SEO can’t hurt.
When Should You Invest in Google Ads?
Investing in Google Ads campaigns is ideal when a brand needs to drive direct and immediate performance to meet its marketing and business objectives. For instance, if a brand focuses on boosting sales, increasing sign-ups, educating an audience, or enhancing conversions, Google Ads offers a strategic avenue to pay for targeted exposure.
Paid search campaigns through Google Ads are especially effective when users show increased interest and progress down the sales funnel. By placing ads in high-intent scenarios when users actively search for info, products, or services using specific keywords, brands can capture user interest in these critical moments and push them further down the funnel.
Should You Do Google Ads and SEO?
Executing both Google Ads campaigns and performing SEO activities is advisable for a holistic digital marketing strategy.
As mentioned, if teams have the budget and need to drive more immediate and direct performance for timely initiatives, leveraging Google Ads’ advanced reach, ad formats, and many other features is worth considering.
Meanwhile, SEO will be a great activity to enhance the brand’s website quality and promote more appearances in relevant search results, opening the door to additional organic traffic in the long run.
It is also worth noting that certain SEO activities can even boost the impact of Google Ads and vice versa. A few notable instances are below:
For brands running Dynamic Search Ad campaigns, maintaining an SEO-optimized website is beneficial, as Google leverages this content to create relevant DSAs.
Users who engage with Google Ads often seek more information about the brand. Having an SEO-optimized website with comprehensive SEO practices increases findability and offers more opportunities to engage users further.
Teams can draw inspiration from the SEO-focused content and creative elements, such as headers, key terms, and graphics, used on their optimized websites to develop consistent and effective Google Ads campaigns.
Teams can analyze keywords that perform well in paid search and reincorporate them into the website’s SEO strategy to strengthen overall search engine performance.
Remember that Google’s algorithms are complex, and the direct interaction between Google Ads and SEO is unpredictable and not highly correlated. So, please, don’t spend too much time weighing how they will interplay, and take the above considerations with a grain of salt.
In Conclusion…
Google Ads involves executing targeted ad campaigns via the Google Ads platform that serve ads on various web locations owned or affiliated with Google, such as through paid search, shopping ads, display ads, and YouTube ads.
Meanwhile, SEO focuses on enhancing a brand’s website content to improve its likelihood of appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs).
While both Google Ads and SEO are managed under the umbrella of Google's offerings, and despite Google paid search results appearing above organic SEO results, they fundamentally differ in their core definitions, execution methods, business functions, and the certainty of speed, placement, and outcomes they provide.
The debate over which is more effective or relevant will persist, but brands will undoubtedly continue to leverage both strategies to some extent moving forward.
