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Should I Buy My Way Into Showing Up On Google Results?

8 MIN
November 10, 2020

Should I Buy My Way Into Showing Up On Google Results?

Short Answer: There is nothing wrong with giving your Google visibility a little push; just remember to keep an eye on your inbound marketing efforts stay relevant, authoritative, and empathetic.

Should I Buy My Way Into Showing Up On Google Results?  graphic for ability growth partners blog

The Importance Of SEO

SEO is the most effective way of showing up on Google. Why is it important? If you consider that search engines are the first place your prospective customers go when they are looking for competitive prices, find answers to their questions, look for recommendations -  your visibility online is essential for your business’s growth and success.  

To give you a picture of the opportunity, there are 5.5 billion searches on Google every single day. So, brands that are higher up in Google’s organic search results (which aren’t through paid ads) for relevant keywords or phrases are in pole position when it comes to educating their customers and to compete for business. 

At the same time, it’s a great chance to lay down solid foundations of trust which creates long term relationships with those searching for you online. 

Considering how important it is to be visible on Google you may ask yourself, “If I am only showing at the bottom of page one or at worst on page two, should I pay to show up on Google?” But first, what things can I do to strengthen my SEO?

How Do You Strengthen Your SEO?

There are a lot of things you can do to increase your SEO, one of the ways to boost SEO that people often don’t think about is link building. The practice of link building means having authoritative blogs link to your content.Creating and delivering quality content and adding higher quality backlinks to your site helps you to show up on Google.

However, as Google says “no one can pay for a better ranking, because Google is committed to keeping [their] search content being useful and trustworthy”.

You may think to yourself, maybe I don’t need the most expensive SEO company out there? Perhaps you need to reframe the question, “What are the costs with using a cheaper SEO company? 

As we’re already said, creating content and earning backlinks are the two most important factors in driving your SEO. If they are done properly, they’ll take time and significant investment.

Can I Buy My Way Into Showing Up On Google Through Buying Cheap SEO Services?

Choosing a cheaper SEO company isn’t the best choice because they won’t be able to produce high quality long - form content and obtain backlinks on high authority websites. 

Long-form content needs to be informative and well structured. 

Because these cheaper options lack the resources, they’ll often use software to crawl existing articles online, take this content and to repurpose as their own “original pieces”.

The problem is it is easy to distinguish what is a quality original piece and what’s not. The tell - tale signs are bad grammar and structure. Remember that your content reflects on your brand's reputation. And even something that seems minor like a typo leaves a bad impression. 

These companies will not give link building the attention it deserves. The results are cheap or poor quality links that won’t offer you much value. 

SEO / Content Marketing Companies To Be Wary Of

You may get some SEO companies that prioritize creating streams of blog articles that lack quality. Other companies may not give the consideration that’s needed to whom they create the content for.

Why Cheap / Poor Link Building Won’t Work For You

When link building first emerged the websites with the most backlinks won the most organic traffic. However, today, link building is all about quality rather than quantity. One of the main reasons for this is Google continually updates their algorithm. An algorithm sifts through all available content on the web and decides what is most relevant for the user’s query.

One of the most important drivers of Google rank is authority, so having more backlinks won’t help you rank higher if your backlinks quality is poor. Unfortunately, cheaper SEO companies either don’t keep track of Google updates or choose to ignore them. 

Cheaper SEO companies typically tell you that they offer high quality backlinks to authority websites. However, they are likely to use automated software to build links and then publish them on poor authority websites. 

Today, Google not only ignores this, they will also penalize companies for publishing mass links on their websites. Penalties can be as severe as removing your site from organic search results completely. 

Can I Buy My Way Into Showing Up On Google Through Google Ads? How?

Social Media or Google paid ads show up next to relevant searches and “other content on the web”. Orchestrating a ppc campaign (Paid Per Click), won’t directly help you show up on Google, but it can help give you more exposure to a wider audience online.

What Are PPC (Paid Per Click) Campaigns?

Pay-Per-Click or PPC is a type of digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee every time one of their ads is clicked on. Ultimately, it’s a way of buying more visits to your website, rather than earning those visits by organic means. 

Advertisers make a bid to place their ad in a search engine like Google’s sponsored links. 

When PPC works well, the fee can be trivial. For example, if Google charges you $3 when someone clicks on your ad, but the click results in a $300 sale, you could make a tidy profit.

One of the most common ads in PPC campaigns is the paid ad. These typically appear on local searches or in any other search where someone is looking to buy something. 

How Bidding Works? 

Bidding works very much like bidding at an auction. A bid reflects how much you’ll spend on a specific keyword in Google Ads. The bid that you make dictates where your ad will be displayed on the search results page. 

Every time that someone searches on Google, it runs the results through an algorithm and ranks them based on the amount that “people are willing to pay for that term” Cost Per Click (CPC) Bid as well as quality score affects where your ad shows up in search results.

Your quality score is a value on a scale of 1-10  that includes your ads relevance, click through rate, and landing page quality. A key part of making sure your ad is relevant meaning the text is written is relevant to a user’s search intent.

When someone makes a search query on Google, it creates a very rapid online auction between businesses to show up higher on the search engine results page. 

Keyword Quality And Relevance

Google Ads assigns three status to its keywords: 

  • Above Average
  • Average
  • Below Average

If your keywords are assessed by Google as being above or below average there are no issues with your keywords when compared to all the others in Google Ads. If you have a below average status, it could mean that your ad or keyword is not specific enough or your ad group “covers too many topics”. 

Your ads relevance is based on how closely your keyword matches the message in your ads. For example, if you made a bid on the keyword “ lead generation”, and your ad included the message, “The Ultimate Guide to Design A WordPress Website” you would get a low mark for relevance because your keyword has nothing to do with your ad’s message. 

Landing Page Experience 

Your landing page’s quality is based on how relevant the message on your page aligns with the ad that visitors click on. If the message on your ad is not relevant to what is on your landing page, Google will mark you down for providing a poor landing page experience. 

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click Through Rate (CTR) is an estimate of how much your ad will show up on Google according to the past performance of your ads. This means how your ads rank on Google in the past.

Quality Score And How It Affects Your Visibility

Your business site quality score that it ranks for keywords in a search can impact how expensive it is for you to win being on the top of a search page. If your quality score is low, it will cost you more, if it’s high, you won’t have to spend as much and you will get more of a return on for your investment.

Quality Score And Your PPC Success

Even though the score of your ads isn’t used at the time of auction, your Google Ads quality score is a key factor that correlates with your PPC success. The higher score you earn, the better quality Google thinks your ad is. 

Higher-quality ads do better at ad auctions and have more visibility on Google. By improving your ad, it will lead to a better quality score, and Google will give you a higher ad ranking on the search results page. A key benefit of a high quality score is it will decrease your Cost Per Click (CPC).

Google has ad rank thresholds. These are minimum costs you have to hit before  your ad is shown to customers. Better quality ads have lower ad rank thresholds, meaning lower CPCs. This means more impressions (more people seeing your ad) which increases the opportunity for more ad clicks at a lower cost.

The higher quality score your ad earns leads to lower costs per conversion. Lower costs per conversion have more impact on your ROI because it is how much you pay when someone makes a desired action like purchasing a product or downloading an app.

Our Bottom-line: You are doing nothing wrong by paying to show up on Google. By following best practices to increase your ads' quality score, you will pay less for showing up higher in search results plus have a better Return On Investment.