Does Buying Google Adwords Help SEO Rankings

There has always been controversy and miscommunication around the topic of Adwords and its impact on SEO rankings. At least once a month we have a call with a client who says ” I heard that you can pay Google and they will increase your rankings.” or “We use Google Adwords and our Adwords rep is going to change our SEO rankings.” – to which we explain those are just not true.

There were (and still are) digital marketing conspiracy theorists that believe if you give Google your money by purchasing ads through their Adwords program, magically your website will start ranking, or rank better, in the organic search results. It’s not true that because you buy Google Adwords, your SEO will improve, well mostly not true – as with most things that go on in SEO, there is some truth to every statement.

So Does Adwords Impact SEO Rankings?

Let’s start by defining ranking signals. There are two types of ranking signals – direct and indirect.

Direct Google Ranking Factors are factors that have been shown to have a statistically significant impact on rankings.

Indirect Google Ranking Factors are factors that show a correlation with ranking, but due to a lack of data, can’t be definitively defined or categorized as a direct ranking factor.

Much like social media’s impact on rankings, which is indirect, Adwords has a similar indirect correlation. Let us explain what we mean.

How Adwords Impacts SEO

In it’s simplest form, any type of link building activity (influencer outreach, social amplification, using paid media, etc.) is all about exposing your content, or notifying users that you have a piece of content on a particular topic that is contextually relevant to them. It is then up to the user to determine if the piece of content provides enough value to link to it from their blog.

Using Adwords To Build Links

With that said, if you buy AdWords you will be exposing your content to additional users or influencers who then have the chance to read it, and if they feel so included, link to it.  Getting this link is what impacts SEO rankings, not simply using Google Adwords.

The good news is that each year, this SEO myth seem to be talked about less and less. The bad news is that due to the complex nature of the ranking factors that Google uses, there will always be SEOs or business owners who claim facts such as “I started using Google Adwords and my SEO rankings increased.”. These myths are usually rooted is weak correlation data and not reliable, statistically relevant causation data.