I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that markets like cryptocurrency, sexual wellbeing and vaping are growing in popularity.
With this increase in search, they are also facing more and more advertising restrictions. They are examples of what we call “restricted verticals”, and marketers for these businesses must now create new strategies to reach their target audience.
This blog will explain how restricted verticals can rank highly and increase website traffic, even without PPC, while also covering how SEO is highly effective on these particular SERPs, where the first listing is organic, not an ad.
I’ll finish by suggesting a few top tips for building an SEO strategy if your page falls within the restricted categories.
So, in which verticals can I not use Google Ads?
In their Ads guidelines , Google outlines areas where advertising is either prohibited or restricted.
Entirely prohibited verticals include:
📌Dangerous products (this ranges from recreational drugs, to fireworks, to vapes)
📌Counterfeit goods (think that fake gucci purse your Auntie got you from Turkey)
📌Services enabling dishonest behaviour (those sites writing whole essays for you, that you definitely considered once or twice at Uni)
Then, ‘restricted content’ is sometimes allowed. So with these verticals, you might get away with advertising, but only on a limited basis. The ads may not show in every location, or the advertisers could need to meet additional requirements before their ads are eligible to run.
The primary restricted sectors are:
📌Alcohol
📌Sexual content (ads are pretty much a no-go, even on Google Ads alternatives like Meta and TikTok)
📌Gambling (and this includes, casinos, lotteries, and betting sites)
📌Political Content
📌Healthcare and medicine (in the UK, ads cannot be run for prescription drugs, bulk drug manufacturers, and medical professional suppliers but can be run for over-the-counter medicines)
Other examples of things that cannot be advertised at all in the UK are:
📌Addiction Services
📌Legal Cannabis
How does Google know?
You may be wondering, how does Google identify if my ad complies? Well, in their guidelines they state that “we use a combination of Google AI and human evaluation to ensure that ads comply with these policies”. For most cases, they use technology modelled on human reviewers’ decisions. But, more complex or severe cases are “evaluated by our specially-trained experts”.
Essentially then, it’s pretty difficult to dodge these guidelines. Best to have a thorough evaluation of whether any of your ad content falls within a restriction.
Competition across these sectors
As well as facing the challenge of Google’s guidelines, these restricted verticals must also tackle the problem of competition.
Here are some stats showing you just how competitive these industries are:
>The casino industry is cut-throat, with legality constantly changing, and backlinks hard to acquire. Language Bear states that: the term “online casino” returns over 1 billion results on Google. If we look at one of the sector’s biggest review sites, there are close to 1,500 casinos listed.
>It won’t surprise you to hear that the vaping industry is rapidly growing, with a new trend of private-label brands beginning to dominate. This diagram shows how much this vertical is estimated to grow in the next five years:
Source: Technavio
>Likewise, the sexual health and wellness market is projected to reach an estimated value of $2,100 million by 2030, according to mediainfoline.
Source: NoGood
Why no ads may work in your favour…
It’s not all bad news, I promise. When it comes to these restricted sectors, the first listing for a search result is the natural listing. So if your website is ranking well, you won’t have to sit below that pesky handful of ads at the top.
Having a look at the data, we can see how not having ads on search results can get users more clicks to their websites:
Source: Econsultancy
Econsultancy found that the CTR of the first-ranking page on Google SERPs is 17.9% when ads are displayed, but 25.7% in the absence of ads. That’s a whopping 30% increase.
Their research also shows that the number one slot secures the best part of clicks, with little to be gained for everyone ranking below:
Source: Econsultancy
What does this mean for businesses in restricted verticals?
What this means is that SEO is now even more valuable for websites where you can’t advertise. Without ads on your SERPs, you have a far greater opportunity to land that top position. It is now worth investing your time into a robust SEO strategy, or SEO professionals, to make sure you tap into this potential. Position one and that target demographic is up for grabs, and optimal SEO will make sure you grab it.
It is especially worth investing in SEO because traditionally, these verticals would have spent far more on advertising anyway. Traffic from organic search is free (although it will take some time, energy and investment), whilst each impression or click through advertising has a direct charge. And, PPC can get pretty expensive if your ads aren’t achieving a positive ROI quickly.
Even using an SEO agency is far more cost-effective than advertising. While investing in SEO professionals for your business will cost some money, it is a long-term investment.
How can users optimise their website for SEO?
To get you off the ground, here are a few aspects to consider initially.
- Targeted Keyword Discovery: keywords will form the backbone of your SEO strategy. Do your research into what your demographic are searching for, then fit a mixture of short and long-tail keywords naturally into your content.
- Website structure: a smooth-running site will rank far higher in the search results, and is more likely to hit that number 1 spot.
- E-E-A-T: some of the restricted verticals (e.g. pharmaceutical websites) fall under the Your Money, Your Life category which need to hit specific requirements. Work on demonstrating experience, expertise, trustworthiness and authority in your content.
- Backlinks: something that really helps you meet the E-E-A-T requirements is collecting credible backlinks which show Google you can be viewed as a trustworthy authority.
Differences between SEO & PPC
I’ve covered the cost, but in what other ways do SEO and PPC differ?
SEO is the practice of improving your website’s visibility through a myriad of aspects including content, site structure, loading speed and use of keywords. It’s less of a quick-fix, and more a process of optimisation which takes time but gives your page the best chance of being crawled.
PPC on the other hand, is pay-per-click advertising. On Google Ads (the most popular advertising system) this involves businesses bidding on keywords to show ads in Google SERPs. You then pay each time that someone clicks on your ad. PPC comes in many forms, not only as the top listing on Google’s results page. Check out this diagram showing different ad examples:
Source: WordStream
Do you need both?
In a nutshell, yes; they do different things, but both can help your business in different ways. They go hand-in-hand, and investing time into both SEO and PPC is the best way to achieve a well-rounded marketing strategy. PPC lets you customise your ads at any time to reach specific people, or promote a new deal. This is then effectively supplemented by SEO which helps the site show up more frequently in relevant search results.
What does the future look like for ad-restriction?
The current list of restricted verticals is not steadfast. Google states that “if we feel that certain kinds of businesses pose an unreasonable risk to user safety or user experience, then we may limit or stop related ads from running.”
Additionally, they posted just last month that an update to Google Ads policies is coming our way in November 2023. They explained that “Google will update its policies to limit impressions in certain ad-serving scenarios that have a higher potential of causing abuse or a poor experience for our users.”
It is therefore a good idea to keep track of the fluctuating guidelines for ads, as more vertical restrictions may be on the horizon.
In summary
If your business comes across a dreaded ad restriction, this article should now put you in good stead. Don’t fret, just target that SEO optimisation, because high CTR and busy website traffic is now at your fingertips.
