If I Use Promoted Ads, Won't I Lose Organic Traffic?

Content marketers will never be satisfied with their traffic. They want more even if they're already receiving millions of visits daily.

As a result, there is a need to go beyond organic traffic.

Organic traffic is, of course, everlasting and most reliable but hard to come by. And when you get it, it may be too little for your sales target and conversion, especially if you're competing in certain niches.

The obvious solution is to look for other means to promote your content without waiting for Google and other search engines to send it to you.

Promoting your website outside the natural inflow of traffic will be solicited visits which is the quickest, though costlier, means to dominate the internet without search engines.

However, your fear, like every other marketer, is that you are in doubt if using paid adverts won't stop your organic traffic or at least, affect it in a negative way.

There is a need to think about this because, after you might have exhausted your budget for the paid ads, you'll eventually come back to your organic sources.

If paying to get more, would lead to losing more or losing a continual inflow of visits, it'd be better to shun the former.

This post will be establishing a few facts that will guide you and clear the air regards your fear and set the right position before making the next move.

Paid Ads Will Help You Gain More Organic Traffic Instead

Without personal experience, I could have argued that chasing solicited traffic may come back to hurt your organic visits. 

However, my experience has proved otherwise.

When my friend and I, as detailed in my post, "How to Dominate the Internet Without Google or Ranking", spent a few dollars ignoring the help of Google and other search engines in getting traffic, we're had thought "to hell with their organic traffic".

However, we were proved wrong when, after exhausting our budget and waiting to spend more, we noticed we'd got more natural/organic traffic that we could rely on for the rest of the blog's life.

It's important to note that we couldn't possibly have gotten the same level of organic traffic had we not run the campaigns.

Here is the short version of the story.

We ran out of budget. But while the campaign was ongoing, we got more subscribers, our post histories had been saved on people's web browsers, and system cookies/caches.

These are some of the metrics that Google, especially, uses in displaying the right answers to queries.

If a searcher is used to your website through paid adverts and later uses Google to search for another keyword you have content for, Google knows he'll like reading from you. He's more likely going to like one of your content if shown.

He'd prefer being shown results from a blog/website he'd recently subscribed to, to being shown another blog's result.

These are not assumptions, but rather, facts!

Hence, if you have some dollars to expend on the ads, kindly go ahead. Be assured that you may win more organic traffic when the show is over.

Want more evidence? Read on...

Google Ads Platform is Different From Google Search Platform

Google has proved to us, very lately, that they're not using the same metrics to measure what content deserves ranking for their ads and content that deserves ranking for queries.

As a result, there is no way one will affect or overlap the other.

While your paid ads are being served, your natural traffic will continue as usual. 

Of course, organic traffic might surge, remain the same, or drop, just as it could have been without campaigns. In no way does your success in one will lead to failure in the other. 

In fact, in my own opinion, success in your campaigns should help your organic traffic, as earlier noted, except you don't have the right content for your potential visitors.

Google SERP is an Indicator that Paid Ads Doesn't Affect Organic Traffic

When last did you search for something on Google? Have you seen a situation where a result appeared as an ad at the same time as part of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP)?

Below is an example of such.

Here, the keyword was able to bring results from the different Google platforms - as a paid ad and organic search results.

In other words, had the website not run any campaign, it'd still be the first result. And with the ad, it occupied the first ad result and 1st organic result.

Don't Be Afraid To Discontinue Ads For Organic Traffic

In the same vein, after promoting your content, you may not only see the returns direct from the paid ads but also experience a drastic surge in organic traffic at the same time.

This is not far from being realized.

As expected, the campaign would come to an end sooner or later. 

Your success in receiving more natural licks during the campaign period may create fear of the unknown.

You may think if you should stop the campaign, you may as well lose the organic traffic.

I've read a few forum contributions stating this. Some got more natural traffic but as soon as their campaigns were over, the organic traffic dwindled too.

There are no traceable facts behind this drop in organic traffic. But if you're a victim, check yourself.

You might be promoting the wrong products or services. You might be writing for the wrong audience, in the first place.

And there's a myth!

No matter how odd your content is, there should be a time it will see a surge in the natural traffic. This period I coined "the quality testing period" - a time when Google will collect as much as possible feedback from readers to measure the worth of your content or the website as a whole.

And if the feedback is positive, you're to retain your traffic, and if otherwise, you should be ready to leave the show.

During the campaign, you might have been hit by organic traffic, or the quality rating report has frowned at your content.

Conclusion

Running paid campaigns for your content should have positive impacts on the natural traffic if you're writing the right content and for the right audience. 

Where any of these is missing or you're hit naturally by algorithms, the end of your campaign may be a dessert.

Obviously, it's never the campaign that sends your organic traffic away. Instead, all things being equal, you should enjoy more organic traffic when the campaign is on or over.