Every now and then I get asked about SEO and how much it affects Google Ads.

More specifically:

Does having better SEO make paid ads perform better?

The short answer is:

Yes.

Although organic and paid look like separate parts of Google, there’s a lot of overlap between the two.

And when you improve things on the SEO side, it usually carries over into paid.

Let me show you what this looks like in practice:

A lot of SEO work comes down to improving things like:

All of that feeds into Quality Score, which helps you rank higher and pay less per click.

This is especially important for top-of-funnel, informational keywords.

In case you don’t know, it’s a strategy where you go after a search like “how to fix [problem].”

You send traffic to an advertorial that educates the readers, builds trust, and warms the leads with valuable information.

Then, at just the right time, ask for the sale

A lot of brands struggle to make this work because their SEO is weak.

From our experience…

Without SEO, you’ll see way fewer impressions, lower click volume, and higher CPCs.

You need a full blog content setup with multiple pages, internal linking, and proper technical SEO.

I like to think of SEO as a key that unlocks another level of scale.

Once it’s there, you can usually push spend much further.

In simple terms:

Better SEO makes your store look more legitimate in Google’s eyes.

That can help reduce risk on the account and can make a difference when issues come up.

We had a client who got hit with Merchant Center problems and had to pause Shopping Ads.

During that period, our SEO team kept working on their site.

We noticed that…

The time it took to get their Merchant Center reinstated was faster than what we normally see.

Over the past year, we’ve been running a bunch of tests on how to rank on AI results.

We've figured out some methods to get our clients' products to show up.

And we’re getting solid traffic & sales from it.

What we’ve found was that:

The fundamentals of SEO are the backbone of how AI ranking systems work.

They pull from trusted sources and prioritize brands with strong signals.

They trust the same things Google trusts:

A lot of this comes down to how consistently your brand appears across the web and how accurate those signals are.

And as you improve SEO…

You’re strengthening these signals

Which increases your chances of appearing in AI placements

This applies to both AI Overview, AI Mode and tools outside Google like ChatGPT or Perplexity.

Here’s the thing:

Of course, having strong SEO doesn’t mean your Google Ads will perform well.

But the top Google Ads accounts always have solid SEO underneath.

That’s why we built out an SEO team inside the agency, so we can help clients dominate both the organic & paid side of Google.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn.

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