Organic Search Strategy in an Age of Emphasized Ads

One of the tenets of a strong website marketing strategy includes a fair amount of work in Search Engine Optimization: the process of making your website more attractive to search engines and the people using them. SEO is still the end all, be all of search engine ranking, however some seemingly recent changes have made even more apparent the need to augment strong SEO with other methods of search ranking. Some of us have noticed around the office that Search ads on specific queries are displaying in larger quantities, sometimes going as far as pushing all organic results "below the fold."

How Google Displays Results

Search Ads Can (Indirectly) Support SEO

A page with strong SEO meets these requirements: it loads quickly, provides the information a user needs to access in a manner that truly helps the user, is mobile responsive and accessible, encourages users to spend a decent amount of time on the page, and is frequently linked to by other users or websites. While paid ads don't directly help your ranking in organic search, they do help to bring your website to the top of the page, encouraging users to click through to your content. If your content meets those SEO requirements, there's a stronger likelihood of that content being shared around, meaning that while you may have paid once for an ad click, the ROI is much higher thanks to the clicks from shares and the indirect SEO boost.

Is It Still Feasible to Rely Solely on Organic Search?

The bottom line of all "free" services is that they must make money through alternative means beyond a paid subscription from users. The way that Google makes money is by offering paid ads to individuals and organizations and backing the value of those ads against users' information they've collected. Recently, we've noticed an increase in the paid ad prevalence, and that trend is not likely to reverse itself anytime soon. Getting in on search ads early can give you a chance to collect valuable data on how to optimize the ads you publish and get the highest ROI you can, while waiting can mean a tougher uphill battle to optimize ads while everyone else is already competing strongly. 

There are a huge variety of ads available, such as Search Ads, Video Ads, Banner Ads, Social Media Ads, Video Ads, Local Service Ads and more. If you would like to learn more about paid ad strategy from our Google-certified marketing experts, contact us today!