Does Paid Ads Help Organic Search/Traffic?

I've read that paid ads give you nothing more than quick visits, conversion, and sales. And when your budget is out, you have to start all over, a journey to getting organic traffic.

You have to come back to organic traffic whether you have or have not before.

The question is if you can spend a few dollars upfront to promote your website, product, or service online, will that help generate organic traffic after you're out of budget?

In this post, I'll b breaking things down into what is possible and what is not if you're expecting organic traffic to surge as a result of paid ads

Google Declares Paid Ads Won't Help Organic Traffic

It's not unusual to read a few Google announcements that something is not possible but in reality, you see them working.

Remember Google's position on less-quality links and its no-effect or poor effect on ranking. People are still using it, to date, because it's working for them.

Remember Google's position on copying and pasting of others' content and publishing it as yours. The big G said you'll never rank for them. In reality publishers, even the well-known, are guilty of it and they're ranking than the original owners of these pieces of content.

When John Muller of Google said that spending for ads won't guarantee you more organic traffic and ranking at the end of your campaign, I grew a bit skeptical.

Yes. I was once a benefactor of such a surge in natural traffic after I'd spent on ads.

Although the quality of my content was acceptable to guarantee organic traffic even without spending upfront on ads.

However, with my experience, without the paid ads, I couldn't have got that number of natural visits within the period.

Here, I won't totally be convinced by Google's position that spending on ads won't help natural traffic eventually.

And I have proofs that you may or may not have thought about.

Why Paid Ads Will Attract Organic Traffic Eventually

Below is a list of practical reasons you should be expecting more organic traffic after your promotional campaign has come to a stop.

1. History Of Your Purchased Traffic Will Return Them

During your ads campaign, a few people must have read your content, shared it, subscribed to your website, and probably bought from you.

These people had to be tracked down by their devices. On every device are cookies and caches. This is the medium through which a computer can read if a device has visited a page before or not.

If you buy visits to your website, these people are forever bought on unless they change devices or clear histories (cookies and caches) of their browsers and devices.

After the campaigns, if these once-bought people are looking for any content you've covered, Google and other search engines are likely to rank your posts for them.

The secret is that these search engines usually use the histories, cookies, and caches to tailor their results for potential readers.

If during the campaign, these people enjoyed your content/website, they're more likely to be returned to your pages, organically, thereafter.

2. Your Subscribers Are Your Content Returnees

Still on history, the internet is designed to feed us back with several activities going on, on our devices.

Considering people who have once subscribed to your content, shared your posts, printed, or bookmarked it, during the campaign, the internet is likely to return them originally in the future.

While your ads were running, they were lured into subscribing to your content. And ever since, they're returnees through regular newsletters.

While following your newsletters, the internet is recording their interest in your content. 

Hence, if any time, later, they need answers to queries, except you don't have content around it, posts related are likely going to be ranked for them from your end.

This is one of the reasons searchers for the same keywords but on different devices or with different histories, will be fed with different results.

In short, if your campaign gives you more visits and subscriptions, these people will be returned when your budget is out.

3. Google Discover is Tailored by History

If you understand how Google Discover works, you'll see why spending a few bucks upfront should guarantee more organic traffic in the future.

Google discovers rely on histories too. Every Android user is now fed back on the type of content he loves reading, the websites he'd visited in the past, his past queries, and more.

Your campaigns must have helped to attract clicks from people who regularly checked their Discover feeds. These people will, forever, be returned to your pages if you can continually create relevant and related content suitable for Google Discover.

4. Social Signals Help Your Contact to Rank

Google uses social signals as a ranking factor, and Google Ads can increase social signals by driving traffic to a website. This can indirectly help organic search/traffic by improving the website's social presence and increasing its visibility on social media.

While the impact of social signals on search engine rankings is unclear, having a strong social media presence and engaging with users on social media can indirectly benefit a website's search engine rankings by increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to the website, and potentially resulting in natural backlinks from other websites.

5. A/B Testing

Google Ads allows for A/B testing of ad copy, landing pages, and other elements. This testing can provide insights into which elements perform best, which can be applied to organic search/traffic efforts.

The insights gained from A/B testing in Google Ads can then be applied to organic search/traffic efforts. For example, if a particular ad copy or landing page performs well in Google Ads, it may be worth incorporating similar messaging or design elements into the website's organic content to improve user engagement and conversion rates.

Additionally, A/B testing in Google Ads can also help identify areas for improvement in the website's organic search strategy. For example, if a landing page performs poorly in Google Ads, it may indicate that the page needs optimization or a redesign to improve its relevance and user experience for organic visitors as well.

Conclusion

I'd once argued that you shouldn't lose organic traffic to paid ads but gain more instead. But when you hear from the horse's mouth that something is otherwise, you're likely to be confused.

However, when all the evidence you need is within your reach, there's no need to be thrown into a dilemma. It's not unusual for Google to speak ill of a few SEO tactics that are working for all. It's not usual for them to say one thing in the morning, but you hear them saying another in the evening.

In the end, it all boils down to what's working without potential harm to your content, SEO, and ranking.