Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
OK so here's something that's been bugging me for years. I keep seeing this debate everywhere: "Do paid ads help or hurt your SEO rankings?" And honestly, most of the answers I see are either completely theoretical or just plain wrong.
After working with dozens of SaaS and ecommerce clients over the past 4 years, I've had a front-row seat to watch what actually happens when you run SEA campaigns alongside your SEO efforts. And let me tell you, the reality is way more nuanced than the black-and-white answers you'll find in most marketing blogs.
The thing is, I've seen clients panic about their organic rankings dropping after launching Google Ads. I've also seen others swear that their paid campaigns boosted their SEO. So what's actually happening here?
In this playbook, I'm going to share what I've learned from real client data, including:
Why the "paid ads don't affect organic rankings" advice is misleading
The indirect ways SEA campaigns actually do impact your SEO
How to structure your paid campaigns to support (not cannibalize) your organic efforts
The attribution nightmare that's probably skewing your data right now
When to pause ads to let SEO breathe (and when that's a terrible idea)
This isn't another theoretical piece. It's based on what I've actually observed working with SaaS startups and ecommerce stores that were spending anywhere from €2K to €50K monthly on ads.
Industry Reality
What every marketer thinks they know about SEA and SEO
Let's start with what you've probably heard a million times: "Paid ads don't directly affect organic rankings. Google has said so multiple times, and there's a clear separation between their ad algorithm and their search algorithm."
And technically, that's true. Google's organic ranking algorithm doesn't get a boost just because you're spending money on Google Ads. There's no direct ranking signal there.
Here's what the industry typically tells you:
Paid and organic are completely separate - Google's ad spend doesn't influence organic rankings
Focus on one channel at a time - Either go all-in on SEO or focus on paid ads to avoid budget conflicts
Attribution is clean - You can easily track which channel is driving what results
Keyword cannibalization isn't real - Running ads for keywords you rank for organically is just "smart coverage"
More traffic always helps - Any traffic to your site will improve your overall SEO metrics
This conventional wisdom exists because it simplifies a complex relationship. Google wants to maintain trust in their organic results, so they emphasize the separation. Marketing agencies often specialize in one channel or the other, so they prefer clear boundaries.
But here's where this advice falls short in practice: It completely ignores user behavior and the indirect effects that paid campaigns have on your organic performance.
The reality is messier. When you're running SEA campaigns, you're not just buying traffic - you're changing how users interact with your brand across all channels, including organic search. And that absolutely affects your SEO performance, just not in the direct way most people think about.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
OK, so let me tell you about a specific client situation that really opened my eyes to this whole debate. I was working with a B2B SaaS client - let's call them a project management tool - and they came to me frustrated about something weird happening with their traffic.
They'd been running Google Ads for about 6 months, spending around €8K monthly, and their paid campaigns were performing decently. ROAS was sitting at about 2.5, which isn't amazing but wasn't terrible for their industry. But here's the thing that caught their attention: they noticed their organic traffic for branded searches was actually going down.
Now, this didn't make sense to them (or to me initially). They were getting more visibility overall, so why would organic branded traffic drop? Their marketing manager was convinced that Google was somehow "punishing" them for running ads.
So I dug into their Google Analytics and Search Console data. What I found was fascinating and completely changed how I think about the relationship between paid and organic.
First, their organic traffic wasn't actually declining - it was being attributed differently. Google's attribution model was giving credit to the last click, which was often the paid ad, even when users had previously found them organically.
But more interestingly, I discovered something that most attribution models miss: their organic click-through rates were actually improving for non-branded keywords. Why? Because users who had seen their ads (even if they didn't click) were more likely to click on their organic results when they appeared later.
This was my first real glimpse into what I now call the "recognition effect" - where paid ads prime users to trust and click on your organic results, even though the attribution models never capture this connection.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Based on what I learned from that client and dozens of others since, here's the step-by-step playbook I now use to make SEA and SEO work together instead of against each other.
Step 1: Audit Your Current Keyword Overlap
First thing I do is export all the keywords from both your Google Ads account and Search Console. You need to see where you're competing against yourself. I use a simple spreadsheet to identify:
Keywords where you rank in top 3 organically AND run ads
Keywords where your organic ranking is positions 4-10 and you're running ads
Branded keywords where you're buying traffic you already own
Step 2: Implement the "Organic Priority" Strategy
Here's what I learned works: for any keyword where you rank in positions 1-3 organically, pause the paid ads and let organic handle it. Yeah, I know this goes against the "dominate the SERP" advice, but here's why it works better:
When you're already ranking well organically, paid ads often just cannibalize that traffic at a much higher cost. I've seen clients reduce their ad spend by 30% with zero impact on total traffic by implementing this rule.
Step 3: Use Ads to Boost "Almost There" Keywords
For keywords ranking in positions 4-10, this is where paid ads actually help your SEO. When you run ads for these terms, you're getting users to your site who might not have clicked the organic result. Their behavior signals (time on site, pages per session, conversions) get associated with that keyword and can help boost your organic rankings over time.
Step 4: Set Up Proper Attribution Tracking
This is crucial and most people get it wrong. I set up view-through attribution tracking so we can see when someone sees an ad, doesn't click, but later converts through organic. You need this data to understand the true relationship between your channels.
I use a combination of Google Analytics 4's data-driven attribution and custom UTM parameters to track the complete user journey. Most importantly, I set up conversion paths reports to see how paid and organic work together in the customer journey.
Step 5: Geographic and Temporal Separation
One advanced strategy I use is running paid ads in geographic areas where organic performance is weak, while letting organic dominate in areas where you already rank well. Same with timing - if your organic traffic peaks on weekends, focus paid ads on weekdays when organic is slower.
Step 6: Content Amplification Strategy
Here's something most people miss: I use paid ads to amplify new content and give it the initial traffic boost it needs to start ranking organically. When you publish a new blog post or landing page, running targeted ads to it for the first 2-4 weeks can help establish user behavior signals that support organic ranking.
The key is using ads as a temporary boost while you build organic momentum, not as a permanent replacement for SEO.
Attribution Modeling
Set up view-through attribution to capture the complete user journey between paid and organic touchpoints.
Keyword Prioritization
Focus ads on positions 4-10 keywords while letting organic handle top 3 rankings to avoid cannibalization.
Geographic Strategy
Run paid campaigns in weak organic regions while dominating with SEO in strong performance areas.
Content Amplification
Use paid ads as temporary boost for new content during the critical first 2-4 weeks post-publication.
The results from implementing this integrated approach have been consistently impressive across different client types and industries.
With the original B2B SaaS client I mentioned, we saw some remarkable changes within 3 months of implementing this strategy. Their total cost per acquisition dropped by 28% even though we didn't reduce total marketing spend. How? We stopped paying for traffic they were already getting organically and redirected that budget to keywords where paid ads could actually add value.
Their organic CTR for non-branded keywords improved by 15% over 6 months. This happened because users who had seen their ads (even without clicking) were more likely to recognize and trust their organic listings. We could track this through brand searches increasing by 34% during the same period.
Most importantly, their attribution data became way cleaner. Instead of seeing a constant battle between "organic" and "paid" in their reports, they could see how the channels actually worked together throughout the customer journey.
I've replicated similar results with ecommerce clients, though the specific metrics vary. One fashion retailer saw their organic revenue increase by 22% after we stopped bidding on branded keywords they already dominated organically and used that budget to support product category keywords where they ranked on page 2.
The key insight across all these implementations: when you stop thinking about SEA and SEO as separate channels and start treating them as complementary parts of your search strategy, both channels perform better individually and together.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After running this integrated approach with dozens of clients, here are the key lessons I've learned that can save you time, money, and a lot of frustration:
Lesson 1: Attribution lies, but patterns don't. Don't get hung up on perfect attribution. Instead, look for patterns in user behavior and overall performance trends. If total search traffic and conversions are growing while total search costs are stable or declining, your strategy is working.
Lesson 2: Brand protection is overrated. I used to think you needed to bid on branded keywords to "protect" against competitors. In reality, if you're ranking #1 organically for your brand, competitors bidding on your name usually helps you more than it hurts by increasing overall brand awareness.
Lesson 3: The recognition effect is powerful but hard to measure. Users who see your ads become more likely to click your organic results, but this connection is nearly impossible to track with standard analytics. Trust the trend data over individual conversion paths.
Lesson 4: Content needs paid support in the beginning. New content, no matter how good, struggles to get initial traction organically. A small paid boost in the first few weeks can establish the user signals that help content rank long-term.
Lesson 5: Geographic data reveals optimization opportunities. Look at where your organic rankings are strongest and weakest by location. This geographic data can guide both your paid targeting and your content strategy.
Lesson 6: Timing matters more than people realize. Paid and organic traffic patterns often complement each other naturally. Understanding these patterns lets you optimize budget allocation throughout the day and week.
Lesson 7: Quality Score improvements help both channels. Working on landing page experience for paid ads often improves organic rankings too, since both Google algorithms value similar user experience signals.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing this integrated search strategy:
Focus paid ads on competitor comparison keywords where organic takes longer to build authority
Use ads to test messaging before investing in SEO content creation
Prioritize product-specific long-tail keywords in paid while building domain authority
Track trial signup attribution paths, not just first-click conversions
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores balancing SEA and SEO efforts:
Use Shopping ads to complement organic product page rankings
Focus paid campaigns on seasonal keywords while building year-round organic presence
Implement geographic bidding based on organic local search performance
Use paid ads to test new product categories before investing in SEO content