If you’re panicking about how Google’s recent change to Pay Per Click results will affect you as a marketing pro – you’ve got good instincts. First off, what exactly is the change and what does it mean for you?
What did Google do?
The folks at Google recently removed all PPC ads from appearing on the right-hand side of their desktop search engine results page (SERP). Before the change there were ad sections above organic listings, to the right of them, and below them.
(BTW Mobile has never had side ads so that’s not a problem for smartphone users.)
So there’s now a decreased amount of total ads. What does this mean for people who advertise on these pages? Unfortunately, it means fewer clicks for companies that aren’t in the top three or four paid positions.
How does it impact Organic Searches?
In some cases there’s the addition of a fourth ad above organic search results. Marketers: this could have a negative impact on organic searches as this pushes results further down the page, and maybe even pushes them off the first SERP with Product Listing Ads taking over the SERP. This means lower traffic for your clients. This is not good.
What can marketers do?
First and foremost you’ll have to work that much harder to create great content that is formatted optimally. You’ll have to utilize an uber-smart keyword strategy that will become more and more important moving forward. You have to make your SEO do the heavy lifting for to make your organic listings stand out in order to compete against paid ads.
Focus on Latent Semantic Indexing
Don’t let this fancy phrase scare you. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, or semantic keywords, are synonyms or similar words related to your main keywords. This should be an important part of your overall SEO strategy as basically Google likes them and deems them “relevant”, ranking them favourably as a result. And if Google likes them then you can be sure it’s going to be good for other search engines too.
Don’t get left behind
As ads evolve and become more interactive and visually appealing, there’s going to be more of a blurring between ads and organic listings. It’s crucial to shoot for the sky in terms of SEO to help your be the brand of choice. That way potential customers think of your organization first before they even type in a query to Google. Done properly SEO professional can boost your search engine rankings and draw more traffic, leading to more conversions and ultimately ramp up your bottom line.
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