Should Google show AdWords ads promoting AdWords for searches containing the keyword phrase “SEO”? SEM and SEO are certainly very much related. Both increase web visibility, and both can bring you web visibility, but in the words of a programmer.
SEM != SEO
Or in other words, AdWords really has nothing to do with SEO – at least directly (It is true that you can get links from the ripple down effect from the traffic that you will receive from AdWords). Paid traffic and organic traffic are completely different animals, and optimizing your AdWords account to improve your quality score has nothing to do with optimizing your site to rank for your targeted keywords.
It is against AdWords policy to create ads that are misleading or misguiding. AdWords has nothing to do with SEO, and there are definitely no PPC companies out there that are reaping the benefits from SEM ads on the SEO vertical – especially the way that Google is.
If you search the keyword term Negative SEO you will be able to see the AdWords Ad on the bottom of the page. If you filter it by past hour, it will show up in the top right panel in a lot of cases like the picture shown below. This isn’t the first time Google has been caught bidding on SEO keyword phrases to promote their AdWords product.
If you haven’t heard all the rage about negatvie SEO then here’s a quick scoop:
Negative SEO is the process of bringing somebody’s site down in the SERPs by making it look like whoever runs the blog or website has been participating in the spammiest of all spam that there is in SEO: heavily dense anchor texts, xrumer blast, exploiting duplicate content vulnerabilities – the whole 9 yards.
Recently, the door has been opened for Negative SEO to go mainstream because of what seems to be Google’s over optimization penalties setting in – although this could just be a bunch of hype. There have been case studies all over the internet and in the forums about negative SEO and how it works and what some of the processes are.
Is it so bad that Google would possibly be steering people away from bad SEO practices with their AdWords ads running for SEO keywords? – Probably not, but if you are Google, and you make the rules – don’t you think you should practice what you preach? What do you think?
This article was written by Philip Rudy – Internet entrepreneur and enthusiast. In his spare time he loves writing about SEO and SEM.