We analyzed ~2.3 million keywords with ~4.99 million top ads to see how often companies advertise with keywords for which they already have an organic ranking in the top 10.

Here are some of the key statistics:

37.9% of advertised websites already rank organically in the top 10 for the same keyword. This indicates that a significant portion of companies pay for ads when they are already visible for that term.

When you look at specific pages instead of entire websites, 15.7% of the promoted URLs have an organic ranking in Top 10. This shows that ads are often shown on already high-ranking content, even at the page level.

Shockingly 40.66% of the advertised pages rank #1 organic. Essentially, these companies pay for top ad placement on Google when they already rank in the #1 organic position.

Another surprising finding from our research is that in 51.09% In most cases, companies will promote a page that ranks in the top 10, even if there are no competing ads.

This suggests that many companies may be running ads unnecessarily, thereby incurring costs, without competing with other advertisers.

This overlap between paid and organic advertising raises two important questions.

Are companies just trying to dominate the SERPs, or is this a sign of a lack of coordination between SEO and PPC teams?

And perhaps more importantly, does running ads on keywords for which you already rank well organically result in significantly more clicks, or does it just increase your cost-per-acquisition?

We found answers to these and some other questions in the comments we received on LinkedIn (here and here). Here is our attempt to summarize the discussion:

• Use PPC selectively: PPC campaigns should only supplement organic rankings for highly competitive keywords or those pushed down by ads. Avoid unnecessary spending when organic visibility is already good.
• Measure revenue impact, not vanity metrics: Go beyond clicks and CTR. The true measure of success is additional sales.
• Rethink PPC for branded keywords: PPC for brand terms often adds little value if you already have a good ranking organically. Unless you are in direct competition, move that budget to something else.
• Eliminate isolated strategies: PPC and SEO should work together, not against each other. For example, you can use PPC to test different types of content related to the keyword you’ve already ranked for (thanks for the idea, Olli!), or use it to rank for volatile keywords (like HubSpot does).

In one of the comments, Nikolas Garfinkel shared research results in a similar area. Blake, Nosko and Tadelis conducted a series of large-scale experiments in 2014 to evaluate the impact of paid search advertising for both branded and non-branded keywords on eBay.

They concluded that running ads on brand terms was largely unnecessary for established brands. The results for non-branded keywords were similar: Most clicks attributable to ads would have happened organically anywaymeaning the return on investment (ROI) of these ads was negative. This is consistent with our findings that companies often compete with themselves by paying for clicks that they could have gotten for free through strong organic rankings.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed with their comments!

If you want to conduct similar research on your website, you can use our Site Explorer. Enter your domain, go to the “Organic Keywords” report and use the “SERP Features” filter (set it to “Target for Ranks” and “Top Ads”).

Final thoughts

Marketers need to evaluate their PPC and SEO strategies simultaneously. Are you really adding value by running an ad for a keyword you already have a presence in, or could those advertising dollars be better spent elsewhere? Maybe it’s time to sit down with the PPC and SEO teams and reconsider your overlapping efforts.

Do you have any questions or comments? Share them in this thread or let Tim (the study author) or me know.