If you manage both SEO and PPC, striking the right balance between these two digital marketing strategies is paramount to maximizing efficiency and return on investment (ROI). When paid search campaigns compete with high-performing organic listings, brands often end up spending more money while gaining little additional traffic, and keyword cannibalization dilutes search performance, inflates costs, and reduces overall marketing effectiveness. Identifying the signs that your PPC campaigns are cannibalizing your SEO efforts can help you implement effective strategies to ensure both channels work harmoniously.
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the warning signs of PPC cannibalization, practical testing methods to gauge its impact, and actionable strategies to prevent it from affecting your SEO efforts.
1. Review PPC and SEO Keyword Intersections
Reviewing the intersections between your PPC and SEO keywords is essential for identifying potential areas of cannibalization. Not all overlapping PPC and SEO keywords cause cannibalization, but protecting your top-ranking keywords by excluding them from your PPC campaigns is crucial. To speed up your analysis, filter organic search terms where your website ranks in position 4 or below since most clicks go to pages ranking in positions 1-3.
Additionally, sorting search terms by click volume helps identify phrases most susceptible to cannibalization. By cross-referencing your organic search terms with your Google Ads Search Terms report, you can pinpoint where you’re unnecessarily paying for traffic that you would otherwise get for free. This process allows you to safeguard your top-ranking keywords and maintain the integrity of your SEO efforts.
2. Apply Negative Keywords to Exclude Top SEO Performers
Using negative keywords to exclude terms that already perform well organically is a practical approach to preventing PPC cannibalization. If certain terms already perform well organically, they should be excluded to prevent them from triggering paid ads. Applying exact-match negative keywords ensures that your PPC campaigns avoid cannibalization while still targeting related peripheral phrases in your ads.
For instance, if your website ranks highly for a specific branded term, adding that term as a negative keyword in your PPC campaigns will prevent your ads from appearing for searches that you already dominate organically. This tactic optimizes your ad spend and maintains the performance of your organic listings. By refining your keyword strategy through negative keywords, you can ensure that your PPC efforts complement rather than compete with your SEO rankings.
3. Adjust Brand Bidding Strategies and Use Brand Exclusion Lists
Bidding on branded terms is often unnecessary since users searching for a brand already intend to visit its website. Paying for traffic that would otherwise be free is rarely a good investment. However, PPC brand bidding becomes essential when competitors target your brand, making recapturing your brand space a necessary expense. Fortunately, it’s much cheaper than bidding on a competitor’s brand.
Brand exclusion lists are crucial in preventing wasteful spending on branded queries where organic listings already dominate. These lists ensure that PPC budgets are focused on non-branded, high-intent searches that provide value rather than duplicating organic traffic. This step is especially critical for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, which aim to drive positive ROI often through low-cost branded visibility with high conversion potential.
One example of branded cannibalization involved a branded PMax campaign that inadvertently paid for an estimated $500,000 in organic revenue. Due to PMax campaigns’ premium visibility, this campaign bid on nearly every branded term, leading to unnecessary spending. A significant issue arose when a shopping carousel for the company’s two most-searched branded phrases appeared above other SERP features, pushing the search ad lower and the organic homepage listing out of view. Impressions dropped by 12%, and organic clicks fell by 33%. To avoid such scenarios, following Google’s guide to brand exclusions and benchmarking your SEO performance on branded terms before launching PMax campaigns is essential.
4. Special Considerations for Performance Max Campaigns and Targeting Options
Performance Max campaigns use AI-driven automation to serve ads across Google’s extensive inventory, including Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Unlike traditional PPC campaigns, PMax lacks detailed keyword-level control, making it challenging to prevent overlap with organic rankings. Broad matching across multiple channels can automatically target keywords where your brand already ranks well organically, leading to unnecessary ad spend.
Limited transparency on search terms is another concern with PMax, making identifying overlap with organic rankings difficult. Competing with organic listings by occupying both paid search and shopping ad placements can push organic results further down the SERP, reducing their visibility and performance. Mitigating SEO cannibalization in PMax campaigns involves using account-level negative keywords to exclude high-performing organic keywords and optimizing asset groups and search themes. Ensuring that PMax campaigns focus on different product lines or services where organic performance is already strong can help maintain a balanced approach.
5. Tests to Confirm PPC Is Cannibalizing SEO
To verify that your PPC campaigns are cannibalizing SEO efforts, several tests can be performed. One effective method is running a PPC pause test, temporarily pausing PPC ad groups, or using exact-match negative keywords for strong organic terms. If organic traffic, CTR, and conversions improve during the test, it indicates that PPC may be cannibalizing SEO.
Other methods include comparing pre- and post-bid adjustments by lowering PPC bids on high-ranking organic keywords and tracking shifts in paid and organic performance. Analyzing assisted conversions in Google Analytics helps determine whether PPC ads drive conversions that organic search alone wouldn’t achieve. Monitoring organic CTR changes using Google Search Console can reveal CTR fluctuations for top organic keywords before and after launching PPC campaigns.
Aligning PPC and SEO for Maximum Efficiency
Performance Max (PMax) campaigns utilize AI-driven automation to display ads throughout Google’s extensive network, covering Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Unlike traditional PPC campaigns, PMax lacks granular keyword-level control, making it difficult to avoid overlap with organic rankings. Broad match targeting across multiple channels may automatically select keywords where your brand already performs well organically, leading to redundant ad spending.
Another issue with PMax is its limited transparency on search terms, which complicates the identification of overlaps with organic rankings. When paid and organic listings compete on the same SERP, organic results may be pushed down, reducing their visibility and effectiveness. To mitigate SEO cannibalization in PMax campaigns, it’s effective to use account-level negative keywords to exclude top-performing organic keywords. Plus, refining asset groups and search themes can help. Focusing PMax campaigns on different product lines or services with already strong organic performance can help maintain a balanced strategy.
