If your website, SEO, and Google Ads were musicians, would they be playing in harmony, or just making noise?
Most businesses treat these three as separate jobs. They’ll use one person for SEO, another for Google Ads, and maybe someone else to “do content” or update the website when there’s time. But the truth is, they’re not just instruments, they’re a band. And unless they’re playing from the same song-sheet, your marketing budget is probably just buying noise.
SEO, Content, and Ads: Who Plays What?
Think of content as the melody. It’s what people come to hear. It has to speak your audience’s language, not the language you use internally.
That was the case with Kiwibank. Their website content was all about home loans because that was the business unit and the internal terminology. But potential house buyers weren’t searching for home loans. They were searching for mortgage rates. Something as fundamental as that flows right through SEO, SEM, and the way website content is written.
SEO for organic (earned) results is the rhythm section. It keeps everything structured and consistent so search engines can understand and recommend your content. It’s about helping Google’s bots recognise your song, not guess what it’s supposed to sound like - and it relies heavily on content.
Then comes Google Ads, your lead guitarist. It gets you noticed fast. But here’s where many businesses get it wrong. They assume you can just throw money at ads, bid on a few keywords, and magically appear on top if you bid enough.
Not quite.
Why Alignment Matters
Google Ads doesn’t just reward whoever spends the most. It rewards relevance. The more aligned your website content is with your ad copy and keywords, the higher your Quality Score, the more your ads get served and the less you pay per click.
In other words, a well-tuned website makes your paid ads cheaper and more effective.
When we optimise a website’s content, it’s not just for SEO rankings. It directly impacts ad performance too. Google literally measures how well your page delivers on what your ad promises. If your content hits the right notes, Google turns up the volume for you.
When SEO, content, and Ads play together:
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Your organic rankings rise.
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Your ads cost less.
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Your click-through rates climb.
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Your visitors stay longer (and buy more).
That’s the kind of harmony that makes your marketing budget sing.
When they don’t, you get disharmony. Missed clicks. Wasted spend. Bidding on keywords your website barely mentions. Visitors bouncing off irrelevant pages. Algorithms quietly lowering your score and raising your costs.
Here’s what alignment looks like in action.
Example: Devold New Zealand
In working with Devold New Zealand, we found product titles and descriptions that weren’t optimised for either organic or paid search. For example, beautifully made merino cycling tops were listed as “short-sleeve zip neck merino shirts”. That's language that made sense internally from a straight apparel perspective, but not to search engines or customers (cyclists) actually looking for technical products like that.
A few key changes: renaming products to “women’s merino cycling jersey” (for the long sleeve version) and “women’s short sleeve merino cycling top,” plus optimising descriptions and metadata, saw them start appearing on page one of Google results and outperform competitors in Google Shopping ads.
With the groundwork done, setting up paid campaigns became straightforward and cost-effective. The website content had already earned a high-quality score, so every ad dollar worked harder.
No tricks. Just clear, relevant, findable content.
Integration is Everything
At Patchwork, we don’t just “do” SEO or Ads. We tune the whole band. That includes your content, your structure, and your campaigns, so your customers get one cohesive performance.
