Sales & Conversion
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last year, I had a client with a healthy $50,000 monthly ad budget asking me a question that made me pause: "Do we really need to keep running Google Ads if our SEO is finally working?" They'd been burning through paid search for three years, and their organic traffic had just started taking off.
Most agencies would have said "absolutely keep both running" – after all, why kill a revenue stream? But after analyzing their data for two weeks, I realized something counterintuitive: their paid ads were actually cannibalizing their best organic traffic.
This experience taught me that the "SEA vs SEO" debate isn't really about choosing sides – it's about understanding when each channel makes sense for your specific business situation. And more often than not, businesses are wasting money on paid search when they should be doubling down on organic.
Here's what you'll learn from this case study:
Why having "good SEO" might mean you're overpaying for clicks you'd get for free
The 3 scenarios where I actually recommend stopping paid search
How to audit your own campaigns to find hidden cannibalization
The transition strategy that maintained revenue while cutting ad spend by 70%
When you should ignore this advice and keep burning cash
Check out our other insights on growth strategies and SaaS marketing tactics for more contrarian takes on conventional marketing wisdom.
Expert Opinion
What every marketing consultant will tell you
Walk into any marketing agency, and they'll give you the same sermon: "You need both SEO and SEA for maximum visibility. Organic takes time, paid gets immediate results. They complement each other perfectly."
Here's the standard industry playbook most consultants push:
Immediate visibility: Paid ads give you instant presence while SEO builds up
Keyword coverage: Use ads for competitive keywords you can't rank for organically
Testing ground: Paid search data informs your organic keyword strategy
Brand protection: Bid on your own brand terms to prevent competitors from stealing clicks
Seasonal boosts: Amplify organic performance during peak periods with ads
This conventional wisdom exists because it's partly true – and because agencies make money from managing your ad spend. The bigger your budget, the bigger their retainer.
But here's where this advice falls apart in practice: most businesses have no idea how much their channels are actually competing with each other. They're paying for clicks on keywords they already rank for organically, creating an expensive overlap that nobody talks about.
The agency dashboard shows "great results" from both channels, so everyone assumes they're both working. Meanwhile, you're essentially paying Google twice for the same customer journey.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When this client approached me, they were running what looked like a successful dual-channel strategy. Their Google Ads account showed healthy metrics – decent CTR, reasonable CPC, steady conversions. Their organic traffic had grown 300% over 18 months. On paper, everything looked perfect.
The client was a B2B SaaS company selling project management software to small teams. They'd been running paid search campaigns for their core feature keywords: "team collaboration software," "project tracking tools," "remote team management," and about 50 variations.
But when I dug into their attribution data, something weird jumped out. Their paid search conversion rate was steadily declining month over month, while their organic conversions were climbing. Even stranger: the decline in paid performance directly correlated with their improvement in organic rankings.
I decided to run a simple experiment that most agencies would never suggest: we paused their highest-spending campaigns for two weeks to see what would happen to their organic traffic and overall conversions.
The first attempt at understanding this was a disaster. I tried to use Google Analytics' standard attribution reports, but they were showing me what I already knew – both channels were "working." The data wasn't telling me if they were cannibalizing each other.
That's when I realized we needed to look at this differently. Instead of trying to measure attribution, I needed to measure incremental impact. What happens to total traffic and conversions when we remove one variable?
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the step-by-step process I developed to identify channel cannibalization and optimize the balance between SEO and SEA:
Step 1: Keyword Overlap Analysis
I exported their top-performing paid keywords and cross-referenced them with their organic rankings. The results were shocking: they were paying for ads on 47 keywords where they already ranked in positions 1-3 organically.
Step 2: The Pause-and-Measure Test
We paused paid campaigns for these overlapping keywords in two-week intervals, monitoring what happened to:
Total click volume for those keywords
Organic CTR changes
Overall conversion volume
Cost per acquisition across all channels
Step 3: Traffic Recovery Tracking
For keywords where we paused ads, we tracked how much organic traffic increased. The magic number we discovered: when you stop bidding on keywords you rank #1-3 for, organic traffic typically recovers 60-80% of the paid volume within 72 hours.
Step 4: The Reallocation Strategy
Instead of completely cutting paid search, we reallocated budget to three specific use cases:
Keywords where we ranked below position 5 (genuine need for paid visibility)
Competitor brand terms (offensive strategy)
Long-tail variations we hadn't optimized organically yet
Step 5: Continuous Monitoring Setup
We built a monthly review process to identify new cannibalization as their organic rankings improved. Every time they moved into the top 3 for a new keyword, we'd pause the corresponding paid campaign.
The key insight that changed everything: Your organic success should inform your paid strategy, not the other way around. Most businesses keep running the same ad campaigns they started with, never adjusting for their improved organic performance.
This approach works because search behavior is predictable. When someone sees your organic listing in position 1 and your ad in position 1, they're not twice as likely to click – they're just as likely to click, but now you're paying for that click unnecessarily.
Channel Audit
Run monthly overlap analysis between organic rankings and paid keywords
Budget Reallocation
Shift spend from cannibalized keywords to genuine opportunity gaps
Recovery Tracking
Monitor organic traffic recovery within 72 hours of pausing ads
Competitive Strategy
Use saved budget for competitor brand terms and defensive positioning
The results were dramatic and fast:
Within 30 days:
Reduced paid search spend by 68% ($34,000 to $11,000 monthly)
Maintained 94% of total traffic volume
Improved overall cost per acquisition by 45%
Increased organic CTR by 12% on previously cannibalized keywords
After 90 days:
Total conversion volume actually increased by 8%
Freed up budget for content creation and link building
Improved search visibility for competitor comparison terms
The unexpected outcome: their organic performance accelerated even faster once we stopped the cannibalization. When your organic listings get all the clicks instead of splitting with ads, Google's algorithm interprets this as increased relevance and can boost your rankings further.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons that completely changed how I think about SEO vs SEA:
Channel conflict is invisible in standard reporting – you need to measure incremental impact, not just attribution
Organic success should trigger paid reallocation – most businesses never adjust their ad strategy as SEO improves
Users don't click twice – showing up in both paid and organic doesn't double your chances
Recovery happens fast – organic traffic fills the gap from paused ads within 72 hours for top-ranking keywords
Quality Score improves when you stop competing with yourself – your ads perform better when they're not fighting your organic listings
Brand protection is overrated – nobody's bidding on your brand if you're not worth copying
This only works if your organic game is actually strong – ranking #1 for low-value keywords doesn't count
What I'd do differently: I would have run this analysis earlier in the relationship. Most businesses are wasting 30-50% of their paid search budget on cannibalized keywords, but they never find out because agencies don't proactively look for this issue.
When this approach doesn't work: If you rank below position 5, if you're in a highly competitive market where you need maximum visibility, or if you're running e-commerce with thousands of product variations where organic coverage is impossible.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups implementing this playbook:
Focus on feature-based keywords where you can realistically achieve top 3 organic rankings
Use saved ad budget for content creation and backlink acquisition
Reserve paid search for competitor comparison terms and trial-intent keywords
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores implementing this strategy:
Apply this logic to brand and product category terms, not individual product SKUs
Use saved budget for Google Shopping campaigns and product feed optimization
Focus paid efforts on seasonal promotions and new product launches