SEO vs Google Ads

The common goal and primary aim of SEO and Google Ads is to direct consumers to the target website. However, it should be noted at the outset that it is not correct to expect Ads to have the same effect as SEO search results.

Approaching Google Ads with the same logic as SEO can lead to missed opportunities. Search engine optimization (SEO) is very different from pay-per-click advertising. It would be unreasonable to expect instant results in SEO for search results when the goal of directing users or consumers to the website is the same for both. Similarly, approaching Google Ads with the same logic as SEO can also result in missed opportunities!

Ranking for SEO and Google Ads

With SEO, you can rank high in organic search results, but with Google Ads, you can achieve this in a very short time compared to SEO work by paying a certain cost. Content relevance is critical in SEO. If your page contains any terms that are not related to the content on your site, you have little chance of ranking. No website, regardless of how large and well-known its brand is, will succeed without embracing content and page relevance.

Organic ranking is largely determined by searcher intent. For example, an e-commerce site is less likely to rank for an informative phrase like “how to polish bots”. The sites that rate this sentence are fashion blogs or sites that provide training in this field.

Twenty years after analyzing the data, the Google Search Engine has also started to identify the expectations of searchers based on the keywords they use. When organic search results do not fulfill this need, searchers are more likely to return to select another result. In contrast, this generally leads to users being less satisfied with the search engine.

Paid search, low relevance affects your Quality Score, which is Google’s measure of page quality and the relevance between your ads and your content, which in turn affects the cost per click. However, if you are willing to increase the bid, even if the content does not rank in organic search, it can still achieve a good position in paid search.

SEO and Google Ads Internal Links

Beyond relevance, the authority conveyed to a site by the links of others still plays a central role in organic search algorithms. If the quality of the links needed to overcome competition in a search query is not mentioned on your site, the ranking will be lower.

On the other hand, landing pages without links often perform well in paid searches because they are preferred when specific messages are not suitable for a broader site audience.

When internal links for SEO and Google Ads are analyzed; they are also important for SEO, but not for Google Ads. Your site’s internal link and navigation hierarchy shows search engines which pages are more valuable. More link authority flows to pages that link from the homepage or from the header and footer navigation, giving them a greater chance of ranking and increasing revenues.

In contrast, landing pages can be separated from the rest of the site and still perform well in Google Ads.

Visibility of Entries

Organic search results are shrinking. This is better for advertisers, but not suitable for SEO. Ads in Google search results appear first and last on the page, sometimes to the right of the organic results. Content like Google’s zero-position featured “answer box” snippets can also push pages down.

However, the same answer boxes can also result in less site traffic, because searchers are less likely to click to get the information they want when they can read the answer in the search results, because they already know the answer to what they are looking for from the search results in the answer boxes without having to navigate the site. Therefore, ads are not suitable for prominent snippet placement.

Organic search results are narrowing. Another quirk of organic research is Google’s inconsistent use of structured data. Content displayed in organic search results generally relies on the page’s title tag and meta description, unless the search engine decides that other words on the page are more relevant to the search query. However, in Google Ads, the expression shown will be the one you specify.

SEO and Google Ads Costs

Google Ads can be tracked by keyword, from impressions to clicks to revenue. You can easily identify which keywords provide the most value. This is not the case with SEO. Thanks to safe search, Google no longer reveals the link between keyword and conversion. Organic search marketers can see Google and Bing traffic data with a keyword in Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools, but not in an analytics package. Yes, Google Analytics has a report for organic keywords, but 75 to 95 percent of the data is made up of results that fall outside of that report. The remainder is not enough to make a decision.

Analytics platforms assume that all traffic from search engines is organic, so you don’t need to tag pages for SEO tracking. CPC traffic needs to be tagged to track it by group, campaign and other attributes. Segmenting search traffic can be beneficial, but mistakes can occur during label placement, which may indirectly lead to data loss.

SEO consultants make recommendations, usually together with developers, designers, copywriters, they carry out the necessary work, but it is a time-consuming work. A Google Ads expert, on the other hand, usually needs help with landing pages and tracking elements, but can fully manage campaign structure and bidding. Thus, Google Ads can be published faster than SEO.

The cost associated with paid search is the final and most noticeable difference. Corporate SEO is not free, as some may imagine. It requires significant ongoing investments to analyze and implement content, structure and other optimizations. Paid search expenses are more transparent: you bid on keywords and manage campaigns, but Google Ads may provide assistance from a Google or Bing employee without requiring payment if you spend a sufficient amount.

Which is better?

With SEO, you can’t control whether your page will appear in search results or how that listing will look. But the benefits are longer term. With Google Ads, you have greater control over ad visibility and timing, but you always need to pay for it.

If you use SEO and Google Ads simultaneously, you can maximize visibility in search results. This is why many businesses opt to use both together.