Paid search marketing strategies, like eCommerce PPC management and social media ads, can help funnel new, interesting visitors to your website and can help drive higher conversion rates, revenue, and sales, even paying for themselves.
There’s just one small catch. There are a wide range of industries that Google simply will not allow to advertise through PPC marketing.
Google has stated in its “Ad Policy Guidelines” that it does not allow ads for products that are “counterfeit goods, dangerous products or services,” as well as products that encourage “dishonest behavior” as well as “inappropriate content.”
While Google reviews all ads and has the final say, the following products and industries are generally blacklisted from being able to advertise using Google ads:
- Firearms
- Edged tools (knives)
- Anything else that Google considers to be a weapon
- Political content
- Medical content/healthcare/medicine
- Any content related to gambling
- Adult content
- Alcohol
- Tobacco
Ultimately, and since Google has the final (and subjective) call, there are other categories that could be applied here, but these are some of the industries that are generally disqualified across the board.
But Wait, There’s More!
If your eCommerce business operates in one of these industries, the bad news is that you are more than likely not going to be able to advertise using Google Ads.
Unfortunately, this is where the plot thickens. Google doesn’t just censor these products and categories; if your website sells them at all, and is actively advertising for another category, Google may flag and suspend your account anyway, even if the products for which you are advertising do not belong to these so-called “restricted categories.”
This makes navigating the challenges of eCommerce PPC management a minefield for some online businesses. Doubtless, more than one eCommerce merchant has had his or her account suspended because of Google’s arbitrary rules.
Consequences of These PPC Restrictions
As if it weren’t bad enough that Google nearly arbitrarily flags and suspends accounts based on what it deems inappropriate (or not) getting an account un-suspended can entail a lot of legwork and red tape – not to mention time that many small business owners simply do not have.
The best avenue is to play it safe and not roll the dice, and for many online businesses, that means not tempting fate in the first place – avoiding Google ads and other paid search strategies.
Fortunately, even for these select few businesses, there is a powerful out, in the form of organic marketing.
How eCommerce SEO Services Can Help Meet These Challenges
For some businesses, specifically, those that are PPC-restricted, the only viable strategies for growth in marketing are organic. The most effective of these are eCommerce SEO services.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of adjusting a website and its online presence to make it attractive to both search engines and users. This, in turn, results in higher organic rankings over time, more impressions (greater visibility) and healthier traffic streams.
Most marketers agree that eCommerce SEO services constitute the single most effective class of digital marketing, and drive more traffic even than social media marketing by a factor of ten. In the long term, SEO services almost always offer the best ROI – and effects compound on themselves over time.
This is the greatest aspect of SEO – while it’s slow to develop a head of steam and nothing happens overnight, the results compound on themselves and as domain authority grows, online visibility is magnified, which will result in greater traffic and more qualified leads.
And the best part is, unlike PPC, when you “stop” SEO (even though you never should) the results linger.
The bottom line – if your online store operates in a PPC-restricted industry, make it a goal to start investing in SEO through a digital marketing agency in 2023.