Many businesses see SEO and Google Ads as two channels fighting over the same marketing budget. That’s a shame, because they strengthen each other: Ads delivers traffic and data right away, and SEO builds findability without a cost per click. Below you can read five ways to use them together, and how to divide your budget between the two.
What happens when you combine SEO and Google Ads
Say you start an online bike store and rely only on Google Ads. Visitors come in quickly, and you pay for every one of those clicks. If you also start working on your SEO, after a while visitors also come in through the ordinary search results. On the terms where you rank well organically, you can scale back your ad budget or shift it to terms where you aren't found yet.
The difference between the two is simple. With SEO you work on the organic results: you pay nothing per click there, and you don't lose a good position if you spend nothing for a month. With Google Ads you buy a spot at the top and pay per click. You are visible right away, and as soon as your budget is gone, so are you. SEO takes months, Ads works as soon as your campaign is live. You can play with those two speeds, as the examples below show.
Five ways SEO and Google Ads complement each other
1. Find the keywords that bring in customers
Google Ads quickly shows which keywords really bring in buyers. Say an online store selling sustainable clothing sees in its campaign that “organic cotton t-shirts” brings in far more orders than “eco-friendly shirts”. Then the owner knows which term to put at the center of their SEO copy, before they have waited months for organic rankings.
2. Show up twice on the same results page
If you are at the top with an ad and also high in the organic results, someone is more likely to end up on your site. You simply take up more space on the results page, and a competitor who shows up in only one of those two places stands out less next to you.
3. Test which titles and descriptions get more clicks
With Google Ads you can quickly test a few headlines and descriptions side by side. The version that gets clicked most often has the highest CTR (click-through rate: the percentage of searchers who click through). You can use that wording in the title and description Google shows with your ordinary search result as well.
A travel agency, for example, tests a few ad variants, and the version with “Includes hidden beaches” is clearly clicked more often. Put that wording in the page's meta description too, and there is a real chance that the organic CTR goes up as well.
4. Improve your landing pages with Google Ads data
In the Google Ads numbers you see which landing page brings in more inquiries or orders. If you notice that pages with a short video demonstration do better, you try that approach on the pages people find through SEO too. Your ad budget thus also becomes a test budget for your organic strategy.
5. Make up for a dip in your rankings with Google Ads
Your rankings in Google fluctuate, especially around a big algorithm update. Google Ads lets you respond quickly when that happens.
If your most important pages drop a few places after an update and organic traffic falls, temporarily put more ad budget on your most important keywords. That way you catch part of that revenue while you work on your technical SEO and content.
How to divide your budget between SEO and Google Ads
Use SEO for:
- Organic visibility that stays when you stop advertising
- Pages and articles that answer your customers' questions
- Authority in Google, because other sites link to you
- Traffic whose cost per visitor drops the longer your pages have been running
Add Google Ads for:
- Visitors and inquiries while your SEO is still being built
- Keywords with so much competition that you don't (yet) reach the top organically
- Promotions and seasonal offers that only run for a few weeks
- Searchers who want to buy or get a quote right now
Where Google Ads fits next to my SEO work
My work revolves around SEO and the Vizibly System: measuring month after month what visitors and Google do on your site, and improving the site based on that.
Google Ads comes on top of that, at the moments when it adds something. At the launch of a new site, for example, or on a few terms where competition is high. What that involves: search campaigns on the keywords that convert, shopping campaigns for online stores, remarketing to bring back visitors who haven't bought yet, and conversion tracking set up so that you see exactly which click brings in money. Those numbers then go back into the loop, so that your SEO benefits as well.
You can read how that monthly loop works and what you see of it on the Vizibly System page.
Using SEO and Google Ads side by side
Use Google Ads for new products, promotions and terms with a lot of competition, and meanwhile let your organic traffic grow with SEO. The numbers from your ads tell you which keywords and ad copy work. Your organic rankings, in turn, make you less dependent on your ad budget.
Frequently asked questions about SEO and Google Ads
Why Google Ads alongside SEO?
SEO builds visibility you don’t pay per click for, and that takes time. Google Ads brings traffic right away and fills the gaps: with a new site, a search term with a lot of competition or a temporary dip in your organic rankings. That gives you traffic in the short and the long term, and the data from your ads makes your SEO sharper.
How much budget do I need for Google Ads?
That depends on your industry and how fiercely the competition bids on your keywords. In an expensive niche you pay much more per click than in a quiet market. In any case, make sure your budget is big enough for a good number of clicks a month, otherwise you can’t see which keywords and ads work. Setting up and managing the campaign comes on top of that.
How quickly do I see results with Google Ads?
From the moment your campaign is live, visitors and inquiries can come in. The first weeks are mostly about adjusting: which keywords pay off, which ad works, on which landing page people actually get in touch. After that it stabilizes and you roughly know what a click brings you. That is the key difference from SEO, which takes months to build up, but then gives you traffic without a cost per click.
What is the difference between SEO and PPC?
SEO stands for search engine optimization: you build your pages so that they can rank high in the organic results. You pay nothing per click for that, and a position you’ve built doesn’t depend on an ad budget. PPC (pay-per-click, also called SEA, search engine advertising) means advertising through Google Ads: the paid spots at the top of the search results, where you pay per click. If your budget stops, that visibility disappears immediately.
