PPC Does Not Increase Your Organic Results

Search engine optimization is often called organic optimization, and this refers to the fact that SEO is “natural” or “unpaid.”  Indeed, imagine an Internet where only huge corporations dominated the top 50 results!  This is what we would have if PPC advertising ruled the Internet.  However, creators of Yahoo and Google wisely realized that the search for information should not be dictated by money alone.  What matters is effort and that’s what organic SEO is about—putting forth the effort to make content and links valuable to the customer.

Is There Evidence Showing Organic PPC?

In contrast, there is no evidence to suggest that PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads (which direct audiences to a landing page based on a few characters of text) have any effect on overall search ranking.  PPC ads are the equivalent of classified ads or newspaper ads.  They work solely on the basis that the company can make a sale based on the landing page.  In theory, the landing page itself could help with search ranking, as landing pages contain search engine optimization and probably have keyword-friendly content and relevant links.  However, there is no direct link with PPC ads and overall rankings.  You are merely paying for the customer’s click and nothing more when you go this route.

If anything, PPC might be valuable to you as a means of analyzing CTR and other analytic data.  However, no major search engine has ever listed PPC ads or “sponsored listings” as a factor or “signal” used in determining search rankings.  In fact, suggesting that a site like Google “rewards” those webmasters who pay them directly through PPC would be contrary to Google’s high standards of fair play, since it would be in essence, a form of paid advertising—something that SEO is not.

One User Claims Success…

Over at Ask Kalena, I found a very interesting conversation.  A user claimed to have tested his PPC campaign in relation to organic rankings, and observed favorable results.  The expert answered that the test didn’t address one crucial point: in order to prove the correlation the user would have to “turn on and off the PPC campaign” over a longer period of time and then compare this with his/her rankings.  (The test time was only one month)

Personally, I think what often happens is that users get overly excited about PPC campaigns and design great landing pages to go along with their PPC ads.  Landing pages (that just happen to have great links and great keyword density) are what help to improve organic results.  The “bribing” of Google and Yahoo doesn’t accomplish this.  In fact, you may notice that a lot of PPC marketers are being advised to link their landing pages to the rest of their site, so that they can benefit from the extra links and can send users elsewhere in case they want more information.

So no, there is no conclusive proof that any major search engine mixes PPC with SEO.  They are two totally different avenues, one decided upon by money, the other with efficient and smart marketing.