Why Adwords advertisers might rank higher organically

[whatson]

Google says that if you advertise with Adwords you will not rank higher, but indirectly I am sure it will help your rankings.

Why? Because the more people see or find your site, the more likely you will receive links. If you start a new site, then you will have no links, and very few rankings and visitors, therefore few people finding your site and wanting to link to it.

This is why an Adwords business model is crucial to most start ups. Otherwise you have to be very proactive in building links. Which is not an easy task.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Yes, I agree that this is a logical assumption but I would not say that Adwords is crucial.

[mrmobility]

Can ad word clicks effect personalisation?

[almighty monkey]

Good point - also, Adwords also increases your crawl rate.

I also disagree that its 'crucial' - it really depends on the vertical. A well run SEO campain usually providers a much cheaper cost/conversion ratio in my (completely biased, I am after all an SEO monkey) experience, which is especially important for startups. In some verticals, it takes several thousand pounds to grow an adwords campaign and conduct all the A/B testing needed to get it up and running and profitable. If you can afford to wait a bit, SEO can get you there for a fraction of the cost.

Where adwords wins out is that its more predictable and scalable - I certianly wouldn't build a whole business around SEO, but I reckon its a good place to start.

[whatson]

Sure, but with an Adwords campaign, you can literally get 10,000 visitors over night with a new site. That will take a long time to produce from natural SEO, and a hell of a lot of work. And of those 10k daily visitors, it is likely you will gain some links, assuming your site is up to scratch.

[jakegotmail]

Please see my related post here regarding Adwords and rankings -- [webmasterworld.com ]

Thoughts?

[mrmobility]

I think it's a stretch. Sure ad word spend *could* be used as a quality signal but I would have thought the reputational risk to Google would be way too high for very little pay off.

[buckworks]

I don't think AdWords spend is even on the radar as a quality signal for organic SEO.

I agree with the OP that it can have beneficial indirect effects, though. Increasing your site's visibility by any means will increase your chances of getting organic links and mentions. AdWords can definitely help with that, although just how much can vary a lot from one niche to the next.

[Rlilly]

It certainly could! It brings in traffic and hence Google can pick up all kinds of signals threw the Google ToolBar.

[outland88]

Yes I would agree with the theory but there are drawbacks. Once you essentially sign up Google owns you. They’ve got more data regarding you than anybody even if you opt out. In fact they can easily control your traffic flow even with old data. Second, you can also become the target of every other schemer who also sees the ad and there are plenty plus unscrupulous competitors. In other words worthless clicks that can occupy 40% of your spend.

Plus with every other PPC program I dealt with in the past 12 years dropping out could lead to a subsequent drops or removal in the rankings. In other words whether provable or not Google can squeeze you in the rankings because they know you were once a paying customer. You can offset that with a strong link base but likely you wouldn’t be dealing in Adwords if you had that to begin with. The point being is Google wrote the book on leverage in the Internet world.

Overall I would rate this as a poor plan but at least a plan. I mainly saw just more of the larger link schemers wanting free one–ways or weak three ways. Wheel is the expert in that area and I think he might say obtaining quality links with hard work is a better answer tham what you'll attract with Adwords.

[whatson]

Doing an Adwords campaign should never be your sole link building campaign. It is just a passive way to gain links.
I see no reason why Google would want to effect your organic rankings if you are paying for rankings. It is most likely that if you get organic rankings too, then you can benefit from more economies of scale and are eventually able to pay more per click in the long run.

Besides, organic rankings are Google's bread and butter, and they do not want to compromise that quality, even for a quick buck, in the long run they make more by sustaining quality. Besides they are jumping on everyone else ideas now anyway, with daily deals, hotel finders, etc..

[jimbeetle]

Why? Because the more people see or find your site, the more likely you will receive links. If you start a new site, then you will have no links, and very few rankings and visitors, therefore few people finding your site and wanting to link to it.

Wouldn' this be true with any advertising or marketing campaign, not just AdWords?

[whatson]

Yes, but that is moot. I was talking about Adwords. Besides what advertising or marketing campaign is more effective and gets more traffic than Adwords for websites?

[buckworks]

what advertising or marketing campaign is more effective and gets more traffic than Adwords

That would vary a great deal depending on what you were trying to promote.

In my own recent experience, the professional publicist with good editorial connections was responsible for more traffic to a newly launched site than two months worth of AdWords (managed by me).

AdWords is an important tool in the marketing toolbox, but by no means the only one.

[whatson]

It is the only one relevant to this post, besides I said ADVERTISING, not PR.

[EvilSaint]

@ Almighty Monkey - I would disagree that having an active adwords campaign will increase your crawl rate.

The bots used by Google for Mobile, Search and Adwords are all different from each other. I doubt that the experience from one would have an impact on another...

[indyank]

Ok Evilsaint. How about these?

1) Adwords traffic (Direct traffic) helping the landing page to have a high usage metrics. (There are also several other data points like for example CTR which might be used in their favor).
2) "Quality score" which is said to be one big ranking factor now, helping the adword publishers to rank highly in Google SERPS. (@jimbeetle, is there any competition here from other advertising campaigns?)

[tedster]

Several years ago, Google did announce that their various crawlers would begin to share a "universal crawl cache" - I've been looking for the reference but can't find it at the moment. Part of the idea was to save websites the bandwidth of being hammered by many different googlebots.