We analyze it ~2.3 million keywords with ~4.99 million top ads to see how often businesses advertise on keywords that already have an organic ranking in the top 10 positions.
Here are some key statistics:
37.9% of advertised websites are ranked in the top 10 organically for the same keyword. This shows that a significant part of the business pays for advertising when it already has visibility for the term.
When viewing a specific page instead of the entire website, 15.7% Advertised URLs rank organically at top 10. This shows that, even at the page level, ads are often running on content that is already high.
surprisingly, 40.66% from the page where the rank is advertised #1 organic. Essentially, the business pays for the top ad spot on Google when it ranks in the number one organic position.
Another interesting insight from our research is that 51.09% of cases, businesses advertise on pages that are in the top 10, even if there are no competing ads.
This shows that many businesses can run ads unnecessarily, generating revenue 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 the SEO and PPC teams?
And perhaps more importantly, does running ads on keywords where you already rank well organically result in more clicks, or just increase your cost per acquisition?
We found the answers to these questions and some others among the comments we received on LinkedIn (here and here). Here is my attempt to summarize the discussion:
- Use PPC selectively: PPC campaigns should only complement organic rankings for keywords that are highly competitive or that are driven below the fold by advertising. Don’t overspend where organic visibility is already strong.
- Measure impact on revenue, not vanity metrics: go beyond clicks and RKT. The true measure of success is incremental income.
- Rethink PPC for branded keywords: PPC for branded terms often adds a small amount of value if you’re already ranking well organically. Shift that budget to something other than facing direct competition.
- Eliminate siled strategies: PPC and SEO should work together, not against each other. For example, you can use PPC to test different types of content on keywords you already rank for (thanks for the idea, Olli!), or use rankings for unstable keywords (like HubSpot).
In one of his comments, Nikolas Garfinkel shared his research in the same field. Blake, Nosko, and Tadelis conducted a series of large-scale experiments to evaluate the impact of paid search advertising for branded and non-branded keywords on eBay in 2014.
The conclusion is that for established brands, advertising that is open about brand terms is generally redundant. Results for non-brand keywords are similar: most of the clicks associated with the ad will happen organicallythat means the return on investment (ROI) of the ad is negative. This aligns with our findings that businesses often compete with themselves by paying for clicks they can get for free through strong organic rankings.
A big thank you to everyone who contributed with their comments!
If you want to run the same research on your site, you can use Site Explorer. Enter your domain, go to the Organic keyword report, and use the SERP feature filter (set to Where target ranks and Top ad).
A final thought
Marketers should evaluate their PPC and SEO strategies together. Are you really adding value by running ads for existing keywords, or are those ad dollars better spent elsewhere? Maybe it’s time to sit down with your PPC and SEO teams and re-examine your overlapping efforts.
Have questions or comments? Share it in this thread or let Tim (study author) or I know.
