You’ve got choices to make when it comes to 3rd party services and your website. What do you choose for an Analytics platform? What A/B testing service should you use? What should you use for search functionality? What about ads? What ad publisher should you run with? In my opinion (this is my theory and by no means actual fact) all of these decisions have everything to do with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Let me explain.

Here is my theory. And let me preface what I am about to tell you with the fact that there are many SEO professionals (much smarter than me I might add) who also agree with this. It’s the concept that Google gives higher credit to websites that use their (Google) services opposed to other 3rd party services. Follow me? For example, Google can give better rank your site organically in it’s search engine if you use Google Adsense as opposed to some other Ad Publishing Network like Chitika or Kontera.

The theory is based off the premise that because a site uses Google services, Google has direct access to that data which better allows them to crawl, index, and increase the relevancy of your site in an SERP. Let me go into further detail and break down each one of these services.

1. Google Adsense vs. Other Ad Publishing Networks

Understand that it’s in Google’s best interest to display your site if you have Google Adsense ads running on it. They get paid for when people click on those ads, and in turn so do you. Thus improving the overall power of the Google Adsense platform. Does this mean that Google will sacrifice spam moderation in order to display your site higher in their index just because you have Adsense on it? No! But if you put two equal weighted quality pages together and one has Adsense on it while the other does not, you are going to see that Adsense page rank higher.

2. Google Analytics vs. Other Analytics Services

This is a big one. When Google has access to all of your web analytical metric data, they have a direct insight as to how relevant your site actually is to specific keywords and phrases. They can see metric data like your Bounce Rate, highest visited entry pages and so forth. They can see that if your site gets intense amounts of traffic, that must mean that your site has some level of relevancy and reputation in your vertical market.

3. Google Website Optimizer vs. Other Site Optimization Platforms

What if Google could actually see the changes you are testing to help improve the experience of your visitors? You can’t tell me that they don’t just love the webmasters who put in extra effort to improve the usability and the experience of their overall websites. If Google had their way, they would force every indexed site to better optimize their site because it increases the relevancy and user experience of their search queries. Show the A/B testing you are doing to Google, share that data with them by using their Google Website Optimizer tool and Google will reward you!

4. Google Custom Search vs. Your Own Site Search Functionality

Here’s where I believe this one helps you in SEO. I believe this one has everything to do with the improved ability for Google to Crawl and Index ALL OF THE PAGES of your website. Now many of us don’t have this problem of not all of our pages being crawled. But many major portal type sites with hundreds of thousands to millions of content pages have serious issues with this. Google Custom Search for your site could then be used to help resolve this. Why you ask? Because in concept, if you think about it, everytime someone searches your site through the Google Custom Search tool, Google is expected to return the most relevant results. This puts the ball in Google’s court to make sure everything is being searched through. Thank you Google Custom Search!

There is one last theory out there that I am actually not a believer in myself. And that is the theory that Google will rank a site higher if that site is actively investing in a Google Adwords campaign (PPC). While the theory itself makes sense, the fact that Google would want to manipulate this does not. Why would Google want to rank you higher organically if you were paying for PPC? Wouldn’t they just want you to continue to invest in their Adwords service? That’s my thinking.

My last thought is that even if these theories are not completely on par, the fact still remains that if you use Google Services you are creating more transparency between your website data and Google. You are giving Google a greater opportunity to understand what your website is truly about, and where in the huge world of the web it is actually relevant.