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Already Ranking Highly Organically on Keywords On Google
Posted by on November 19, 2025 at 12:04 amAn ad agency is running google cpc campaigns for my company on keywords that we generally rank top 5 on google for. And, on the top 5, if we're beaten we're beaten by amazon, reddit, ect not competitors in the space. Additionally we have no strong competitors in the space. We are very much the 800 lb gorilla in our niche.
Right now between 1/2 and 1/3rd of the margin is eaten up by the ad cost. In my optimistic view we could stop or at least greatly scale down our ad spend for cpc and continue making equivalent sales. Part of me thinks people will find us anyways even if they have to scroll slightly. Especially since we're the first non amazon ecommerce store most of the time. The other part of me thinks that having top position is probably at least somewhat driving sales. Us being on the eve of black friday does nothing to help the situation. I'm on shopify if that is helpful.
What would be the best way to address this situation? In my mind I could pull some kind of reporting for organic vs advertised sales. Not sure how useful that would be since people who see the organic link will see the paid one first. Just was my first instinct.
What have other people done in this situation? What kinds of questions would you ask / data would you try to acquire to help make a decision
Thanks
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1 Reply
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Run a test for 2 – 3 months and see what happens. You can scale down spend or even pause spend on a set of keywords and see what happens. This is a normal test to run. Usually people run it on a brand campaign but you can run it on a non-brand campaign.
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Traffic quality and total conversions. These two shld guide your decision making.
Are you getting higher quality traffic from ads? What behavior do paid search traffic exhibit after they land? Do they appear cold, lukewarm, or red-hot (for conversion)? Most ad managers dont give a dang. But this alone could be the key to unlocking 2X or 10X growth. How does paid traffic compare with organic? Data, data, data.
Total conversions. Which traffic converts faster? Which traffic converts the most over a set period? Which traffic gives you more repeat purchases? Data, data, data.
Decide not based on what you think the user will see but based on behavior data and sales. Sales!
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Slowly start bringing down budget on your branded terms and see how it impacts overall sales volume. If overall sales remain strong or go up, continue dropping your budget for branded terms or pause all together.
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If these keywords are working for you, I would never pause them. You never know when a competitor will pop up. This is like insurance. BUT you can test reducing your send on these keywords.
In Shopify, can you see conversions by state? If you can, you can pick one (or a few states) and decrease spend by X% and see how that impact your conversions. You can compare the results to your control (the states you didn’t make any changes).
Your agency should be able to help you set this up and run the analysis.
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