Google have always maintained a strict separation between their paid ads and organic listings, yet I believe that this has now changed. At least in terms of strategy.
In the early days of AdWords, Google’s model wasn’t that different from that of GoTo. Essentially you paid for ad position: the higher the bid, the higher the placement.
But Google soon realised that this model was flawed, as it effectively diluted the quality of their search results with poorly-targeted ads. Some of their advertisers had different agendas, poor skills and/or larger budgets, but none were as committed to the quality of the results as Google.
And so along came Quality Score – the AdWords equivalent of PageRank: over-hyped, misunderstood and often mistakenly interpreted as either the holy grail or irrelevant.
Stage 3 in the evolution of AdWords saw Google placing a far greater importance on the landing page.
This was a critical turning point, as before this you could directly ramp-up the number of AdWords visitors by spending more, irrespective of the quality of your website.
The same principle still applies, but if Google deem landing pages to be low quality, advertisers soon realise that to have any impact on their position and clicks, they’re going to have to spend a great deal more. Increasing volume becomes exponentially more costly.
So let’s take a step back.
Effective SEO requires on-site optimisation, external optimisation and a hint of black magic.
Effective AdWords management now requires the need to optimise the website, a healthy budget and a pinch of voodoo.
Both require website optimisation. And dabbling in the occult helps.
Ads and organic listings are not only starting to look like each, the optimisation process is moving ever-closer too.
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