we analyzed About 2.3 million keywords and About 4.99 million popular ads See how often a business advertises on the top 10 organically ranked keywords.
Here are some key statistics:
37.9% of advertising websites are already ranked in the top 10 natural rankings for the same keyword. This suggests that a large portion of businesses are paying for ads when they already have visibility for the term.
When viewing a specific page rather than the entire website, 15.7% The ad URL is in Top 10. This shows that even at the page level, ads are often served on content that is already ranking highly.
Shockingly, 40.66% Number of ad ranking pages Ranked No.1 Organic. Essentially, these businesses are paying for top ad placement on Google when they are already ranking in the #1 organic position.
Another surprising finding from our research is that 51.09% In most cases, businesses will advertise for the top 10 pages even if there are no competing ads.
This suggests that many businesses may be advertising unnecessarily, incurring costs without competing with other advertisers.
The overlap between paid and organic raises two important questions.
Is the business just trying to dominate the SERPs, or is this a sign of a lack of coordination between SEO and PPC teams?
Perhaps more importantly, will running ads on keywords that already rank well significantly increase clicks, or just increase your cost-per-acquisition?
We found the answers to these questions and others in the comments we received on LinkedIn (here and here). Here’s our attempt to summarize the discussion:
- Use PPC selectively: PPC campaigns can only supplement organic rankings for highly competitive keywords or keywords that are pushed off the first page by ads. Avoid unnecessary spend where organic visibility is already strong.
- Measure impact on revenue, not vanity metrics: Go beyond clicks and CTR. The true measure of success is incremental revenue.
- Rethink PPC for brand keywords: If your organic rankings are already good, PPC for branded terms usually doesn’t add any value. Unless you face direct competition, shift your budget elsewhere.
- Eliminate siled strategies:PPC and SEO should work together, not against each other. For example, you could use PPC to test different types of content for keywords you already rank for (thanks for the idea, Ollie! pivot point Do).
in one of the comments Nicholas Garfinkel Share research done in similar areas. Blake, Nosko and Tadelis conducted a series of large-scale experiments Evaluating the impact of eBay paid search advertising on branded and non-branded keywords in 2014.
They concluded that for well-known brands, advertising on brand terms is largely redundant. Results for non-branded keywords are similar: Most clicks attributed to ads occur organically anywaymeaning these ads have a negative return on investment (ROI). This is consistent with our findings that businesses often compete against themselves by paying to get clicks they get for free through strong organic rankings.
Thanks so much to everyone who provided comments!
If you would like to conduct similar research on your website, you can use our website browser. Enter your domain name, go to the Organic Keywords report, and use the SERP Features filter (set it to Target Position and Top Ads).
final thoughts
Marketers need to evaluate both their PPC and SEO strategies. Are you actually adding value by advertising against keywords you already have, or could those advertising dollars be better spent elsewhere? Maybe it’s time to sit down with your PPC and SEO teams and revisit your overlapping efforts.
Have questions or comments? Share them here Wire or let Tim (author of the study) or I Know.
