How to Stop PPC from Cannibalising Your SEO

Stop wasting your ad spend on traffic that could be gained for free. Learn how PPC cannibalisation impacts your SEO performance and discover how to fix it.

If you’re managing both SEO and PPC, finding the right balance is essential for maximising efficiency and ROI. When paid search campaigns directly compete with high-performing organic listings, businesses often end up spending more without seeing a significant increase in traffic.

Keyword cannibalisation not only dilutes search performance but also inflates costs and reduces the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

This guide will help you identify the warning signs of PPC cannibalisation, test its impact, and implement strategies to ensure both channels complement each other, driving the best results possible.

Signs your PPC campaigns are cannibalizing your SEO rankings

Declining Organic Click-Through Rates

If your organic rankings remain steady but click-through rates (CTRs) are dropping, it’s possible that your paid ads are stealing traffic from your organic listings. This is typically the result of targeting branded or high-ranking keywords in both PPC campaigns and organic search results.

It’s also worth noting that additional SERP features, such as ad placements and AI-driven search results, have led to a broader decline in organic CTRs across the board.

Increased PPC Clicks with No Overall Traffic Growth

If your PPC campaigns are driving more paid traffic, but total website visits remain the same, it’s likely that your ads are simply diverting clicks that would otherwise have come from organic search.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)’s Traffic Acquisition Report can make identifying this issue easier. By comparing traffic changes over time, you can directly analyse the shifts in channel performance side by side.

Organic Conversions Declining While Paid Conversions Increase

If you’re seeing an increase in paid search conversions but overall conversions remain flat or even decline, it could be a sign that your PPC campaigns are cannibalising your organic conversions, rather than expanding your reach.

This is particularly common with Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, as they tend to prioritise branded terms due to their higher return on investment (ROI). We’ll dive deeper into this in the next section.

3 steps to prevent PPC from cannibalizing your SEO

Audit PPC and SEO Keyword Overlap

Not all overlapping PPC and SEO keywords will lead to cannibalisation, but it’s important to protect your top-ranking keywords. To do so, exclude these from your PPC campaigns.

To streamline your analysis, filter organic search terms where your website ranks in position 4 or lower – as most clicks tend to go to pages ranking in positions 1 to 3. Next, sort the search terms by click volume to identify phrases that are most at risk of cannibalisation.

Once you’ve done this, cross-reference these organic search terms with your Google Ads Search Terms report. This will help you pinpoint where you might be paying for traffic you could otherwise be getting for free.

Use Negative Keywords to Exclude Strong SEO Performers

If certain terms are already performing well organically, it’s a good idea to use negative keywords to prevent them from triggering paid ads. By applying exact-match negative keywords, you can avoid cannibalisation while still targeting related peripheral phrases in your ads.

Refine Brand Bidding Strategies and Implement Brand Exclusion Lists

Bidding on branded terms is often unnecessary since users searching for a specific brand typically already intend to visit its website. Paying for traffic that could otherwise be organic is rarely a wise investment. However, PPC brand bidding becomes crucial when competitors target your brand.

In such cases, recapturing your brand space through paid ads is a necessary expense. Fortunately, it’s much cheaper than bidding on a competitor’s brand.

The Importance of Brand Exclusion Lists

Brand exclusion lists are essential in preventing wasteful spending on branded queries where organic listings already dominate. By using these lists, you can ensure that your PPC budget is focused on non-branded, high-intent searches, instead of duplicating the traffic you’re already getting organically.

This is particularly critical for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, which aim to drive positive ROI, often through low-cost branded visibility with high conversion potential. A case example my team encountered involved a branded PMax campaign that inadvertently paid for an estimated $500,000 in organic revenue.

Since PMax campaigns provide premium visibility, even in areas where results may not be entirely relevant, this campaign bid on nearly every branded term without restriction. A significant issue arose when a shopping carousel for the company’s two most-searched branded phrases appeared at the top of the SERP.

This pushed the usual search ad further down the page, forcing the organic homepage listing completely out of view unless users scrolled. As a result, impressions fell by 12%, and organic clicks decreased by 33%.

If you haven’t yet taken measures to prevent your campaigns from bidding on your brand, ensure you consult Google’s guide to brand exclusions. Additionally, benchmark your SEO performance for branded terms before launching PMax campaigns, which will help you identify any potential cannibalisation more easily.

Special considerations for Performance Max campaigns and targeting options

PMax Campaigns and Their Impact on SEO Traffic

PMax campaigns leverage AI-driven automation to deliver ads across Google’s full inventory, including platforms like Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. Unlike traditional PPC campaigns, PMax does not offer detailed keyword-level control, which can make it challenging to avoid overlap with organic rankings.

How PMax Can Cannibalise SEO Traffic

Broad Matching Across Multiple Channels: PMax may automatically target keywords where your brand already ranks well organically, leading to unnecessary ad spend.
Limited Transparency on Search Terms: Without access to keyword-level reports, identifying overlap with organic rankings becomes difficult.
Competing with Organic Listings: PMax can push organic results further down the page by occupying both paid search and shopping ad placements.

Mitigating SEO Cannibalisation in Performance Max

Use Account-Level Negative Keywords: Google now allows negative keywords for PMax, which lets you exclude high-performing organic keywords to minimise redundancy.
Optimise Asset Groups and Search Themes: If certain categories already perform well organically, adjust PMax to focus on different product lines or services. As PMax is designed for maximum reach, precise targeting is crucial.

Tests to Confirm PPC is Cannibalising SEO

Run a PPC Pause Test: Temporarily pause PPC ad groups or apply exact-match negative keywords for high-performing organic terms. If organic traffic, CTR, and conversions improve, PPC might be cannibalising SEO.
Compare Pre- and Post-Bid Adjustments: Reduce PPC bids on high-ranking organic keywords and track changes in both paid and organic performance.
Analyse Assisted Conversions in Google Analytics: Investigate whether PPC ads contribute to conversions that organic search wouldn’t have achieved. If not, adjustments may be necessary.
Monitor Organic CTR Changes: Use Google Search Console to track CTR fluctuations for top organic keywords before and after launching PPC campaigns.

Aligning PPC and SEO requires careful keyword management and strategic bidding

To reduce unnecessary costs, it’s important to minimise ad spend where possible and avoid paying for traffic that could otherwise be obtained for free through organic search.

In the case of Performance Max campaigns, mitigating SEO cannibalisation can be achieved by using negative keywords and refining targeting. This ensures a more balanced approach between paid and organic efforts.

A well-coordinated PPC and SEO strategy not only improves efficiency but also maximises the value of your digital marketing investments. By carefully aligning both strategies, you can ensure optimal results while reducing wasted spend.