[Author’s note: Before we start, all of the techniques shared in this post involve real users responding to compelling content, honestly. There’s nothing black hat, nefarious or evil. That said, if you have wonderful content, a big wad of cash and know what to do, it’s frighteningly easy to buy SEO dominance. The author wishes to thank Annalise Kaylor, Dion Plakos, AIMCLEAR® , and Ian Lurie, CEO of Portent, for research, editing and support.]
At AIMCLEAR, we love paid-organic amplification: Buy organic looking ads in social media to drive attention to content and reap the rewards in the form of additional likes, comments, shares and naturally built links. We wanted to put together a comprehensive list of which social media networks would let us buy ads pointing at other social networks and organic search results. So, we’ve been researching. For instance we wanted to know if we could buy:
- Facebook Ads to Pinterest pins and Google+ posts
- LinkedIn Ads to Google organic search SERPs and Pinterest pins
- Promoted Tweets to Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook posts
- Bing search PPC ads to Tweets and LinkedIn company pages
- Many other combinations of Facebook Ads, Promoted Tweets, LinkedIn Ads, Bing & Google search ads sending traffic to each other
The results, which we share in this post, are fascinating and have some important implications, especially for search engine optimization. Below you’ll learn what social and search ads channels DO allow ads pointing to Google+ content. Pay attention to that. The tactics discussed here are so powerful that ultimately mass adoption could harm Hummingbird, Penguin or whatever fuzzy creature Google breeds, IF we assume some part of the algo is based on Google+ social sharing and subscription.
Facebook As The Prototype
Marketers who use Facebook Page Post Ads understand what it means to distribute social content to audiences targeted by paid psychographic clicks. The results are nearly always some valuable combination of:
- In-Facebook post engagement, including page and post likes, comments, sharing and other social behavior
- Targeted and scalable social psychographic traffic to external content at a predictable cost
- Attributable external conversion from that traffic
- Links from sites with domain authority, as well-targeted users discover the content
- PR distribution to precisely targeted journalists, bloggers and myriad focused media-role users
Same As It Ever Was
Social ads offer powerful targeting. Because of the psychographic focus, paid social traffic to quality organic social content has almost always worked to seed organic social engagement and associated goodness. The same holds true for search PPC ads. For example, Nike has every reason to buy the search PPC keyword “snowboard videos,” with the destination URL being YouTube.
The search PPC amplification builds video views, shares and comments and the relative importance of the video on YouTube. It also increases the likelihood of those videos appearing in blended search results. Boom!
Ads to social content have always been precious. Back in the day we drove many a Google search user to MySpace and StumbleUpon pages, which resulted in all the good things that happened organically with MySpace and SU. Packaged correctly, driving highly targeted paid traffic to social content has nearly always resulted in wonderful social things.
The caveats: The ads’ creative needs to take a truly organic tone and destination content must be deserving of the attention.
In fact, well-packaged and targeted social paid amplification often generates engagement lift that exceeds purchased reach lift. In the graph below, reach for page post ads increased from about 2K impressions a day to nearly 3 million. Don’t get too excited. Remember we bought the reach:
As the next two images illustrate, engagement scaled in this case at a higher rate than reach, which is often the case. That’s pretty big because you can bullshit reach, but not engagement.
Enter Google+
First, we’re not going to show similar charts for Google+ because we don’t want any of our clients to have trouble with Google. We don’t use these techniques for AIMCLEAR‘s content. Just know that scaling Google+ post traffic with social and search ads achieves similar results to what you just saw with FB Page Post Ads, in terms of gaining a lot more engagement within plus-the channel.
Paid social traffic has especially interesting implications with the arrival of Google+, because “social engagement” in G+ lifts SEO. For a couple of years now, I’ve joked at conferences by sharing this riddle: “If we buy Facebook Ads to a Google+ post page and the result is a user’s +1 share or Circles follow, were the Facebook Ads SEO?” The answer, “of course it is,” comes because of direct or correlated SEO lift Google affords G+ page owners from users engaging in G+ behavior. While there are hundreds of ranking variables and disagreement about how Google+ impacts SEO, professionals do seem to agree that Google+ affects the Google SEO puzzle in major ways. We’re not here to argue whether Google+ causes ranking boosts. It does. When a user G+ your content, that person’s followers (your second degree of separation) see your stuff in personalized SERPs.
Gaining Google+ Traction With High Quality Paid Traffic
First, we’re not talking about going to Fiverr and buying + votes. That generates low-engagement behavior. When you send a real user to Google+ for a compelling reason to consume meaningful content, the G+ behavior is real and should be hard for Google to argue with.
Here are the tactics to unsettle Google’s SEO algo and buy SEO lift:
- Post your amazing content on a public Google+ profile or page.
- Create a Facebook page post. Make sure to “repackage” it by replacing the image (properly formatted). Every text field is editable as you post the content on your wall.
- Buy News Feed and mobile Facebook Page Post Ads. Remember, you want external traffic to the Google+ post! Dial in deadeye psychographic targeting.
- Tweet an awesome tweet with a shortened link to the G+ post. Promote the tweet to appropriate audiences.
- Create a LinkedIn Ad using the + post as the destination URL.
- Buy Google and Bing search PPC ads to highly relevant KWs. The destination URL can be the Google+ post.
Simple, right? Not so much. There is a problem.
Facebook Says, “NO Google+ Paid Clicks For YOU!”
FB disallows ads pointing at Google+. Facebook does allow outbound paid clicks to numerous other major social media channels, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. FB even allows ads with destination URLs to Google SERPs.
Does Facebook have some motivation to protect Google’s algorithm? There is little (or no) difference between a Facebook Ad pointing at a Pinterest pin or a YouTube video or the same image or video on a + post. Probably not, even though to allow such destination URLs to Google+ would be very disruptive for Google.
More likely, Facebook considers Google+ competition, which is kind of paranoid because Google+ has about 52 active users. Still, every other network is specialized and offers no direct, broad competition with Facebook. But G+ is really a direct competitor (even if they’re much smaller). If they allowed us to buy clicks pointing at G+, then Google could hire folks to buy ads pointing at G+ content and thereby build membership. Don’t worry. Every other major search and social channel allows ads pointing at Google+. We don’t need Facebook.
One thing’s for sure: The more awesome traffic we sent to great public Google+ content, the more great G+ things (+1s, shares and Circles) occur. Great G+ things result in SEO advantages. Scaling well-targeted psychographic paid traffic to Google+ means paid, predictable, scalable SEO. In other words, the ability to do so would threaten the vaunted G+ based Google organic search algorithm. We’re surprised that Facebook won’t allow it just to mess with Google.
Summary Of Test Results
- Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google AdWords Search Ads and Bing Search Ads all let you point destination URLs at Facebook page posts, Tweets, Google+ posts, Google SERPs, Pinterest pins and LinkedIn posts.
- Facebook Ads lets you point at Tweets, Google SERPs, Pinterest pins and LinkedIn posts. They allow Sponsored Stories with a + destination URL, which means you can market the + URL to friends of FB users who liked an organic page post pointing at +. FB does not allow ads or page posts with + destination URLs.
Facebook Ads To Organic Search Engine Results Pages
You can point Facebook Ads at Google organic search results. This is an interesting concept. Smart marketers have been exploiting Google personalized search for years. Sending a prospective client a link to SERPs or asking them on the phone to search for [keyword] instead of providing a direct link skews future searches that user might make. Facebook’s policy supports that loophole, which is surprising.
Google’s Official Method Of Buying SEO Lift
While Matt Cutts, Google’s affable spam ambassador-engineer, has refuted the importance of G+ as a direct ranking factor, Google came right out and said it in (of all places) their PPC blog as early as 2011.
The ability to vote with a + directly from a PPC ad, assuming that these votes help SEO, probably amounts to buying SEO lift.
Sample Results Screen Caps From Our Study
Because we don’t want any blowback from Google, we did not run many examples for very long for any identifiable Google+ accounts. For the purpose of this post, we only proved the ads could be approved and received paid impressions. Here is a sampling of the results.
Facebook Page Post Ads to Pinterest
The landing page on Pinterest
Facebook Page Post Ad to Tweet
The landing page
Disapproved FB PPA to Google+ post
The landing page
Sorry, no Google+ ads for you!
The nice rejection letter from FB
This is pretty freaking major because psychographic traffic to Google+ could disrupt Google’s organic algorithm by scaling Google+ shares and Circles additions. It would work the same way as in FB, but “Likes” in G+ amount to SEO. DoubleClick (a Google property) touts their “partnership” with Facebook because they participate in FBX. Is that why Facebook does not allow + as a destination URL?
Facebook ALLOWED us to run Page Post Ads to Google SERPs
This is the FB page post ad pointing at Google organic search engine results
…and the landing page 🙂
Here’s the data showing that FB is willing to market Google SERPs via Page Post Ads
FB is more than happy to send traffic to YouTube video posts
The landing page
FB PPA pointing users to LinkedIn
The proof
Promoted Tweet pointing at LinkedIn post
The landing page
Promoted Tweet to Google+
The landing page
Promoted Tweet pointing at Google SERPs
The landing page
Promoted Tweet pointing at Pinterest
The landing page
Promoted Tweet pointing at FB
The landing page
Promoted Tweet proof
LinkedIn Ad pointing at G+
Google AdWords search pointing at G+, Facebook and Pinterest
The live ad
Bing search ads pointing at G+, Facebook and Pinterest
Anyway, there you have it. We tested other combinations and may share them in future blog posts. Be responsible and don’t spend money marketing crap. Let us know how these techniques work for you.
