Google recently released a study that finally answers the question of whether it is efficient to run both a paid and organic campaign for the same overlapping keywords. Their results showed that Pay Per Click Ads do not take away from your organic traffic, so it is still beneficial to run both a paid and organic campaign, even if they overlap.

For your paid campaigns, it is a good idea to bid on branded terms as well as other high ranking terms that are relevant to your business or service. This will help keep your competitors from dominating the paid ad space, and it will also help brand building and controlling brand messages. By bidding on paid ad space for keywords you already rank organically for will only increase your brand's presence online and strengthen the chance of being visible to more potential customers.

However, if you are curious to see the effects of your paid campaign, you can always run a quick test yourself. To see the effect your paid campaign has on your revenue and on your website visits, simply pause your AdWords campaigns for a day or two. While having your paid campaign shut off, you are sure to see a dramatic drop in page visits as well as revenue if you are running a commerce site.

Here at Blue Archer, as a Pittsburgh Web Development Agency, we offer both services of Pay Per Click campaigns as well as search engine optimization to help your company reach maximum online visibility.


Kerianne Lawlor
Internet Marketing Consultant
Blue Archer