How Are PPC Keywords Different Than SEO Keywords?

How Are PPC Keywords Different Than SEO Keywords?

You’ve got a rocking website that’s user-friendly and ready to convert traffic in dollars. You need marketing to take it to the next level and increase your brand visibility and want to develop search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising programs.

PPC and SEO are completely different approaches to digital marketing, but a key component to both is keywords. Keywords are the brick and mortar of both strategies, but you can’t always use the same ones for both.

In fact, keyword research between the two is different. While there is some overlap, you must know the difference between PPC keywords and SEO keywords.

Using Keywords in SEO

SEO is anything a website does to improve its ranking and visibility on search engines. There are many facets to SEO from blogs and backlinks to website copy and business listings. While there is debate on the value of keywords for SEO given the advancement of Google’s algorithm, they are more important than ever.

As long as people use search queries, keywords will always be a vital part of SEO. Traditionally, we use keywords in page copy, blogs, alt tags, and other areas. Google’s algorithm uses more than 100 factors when determining to rank for search queries, but we know keywords are one of the most important.

When someone types a query into the search bar, Google spiders crawl websites looking for those words and information pertaining to the query. If it sees those exact keywords or keywords like the query, it takes note.

It looks at every aspect of your code from the body content to the headers, image tags, and more. The keywords, in collaboration with the quality of the content, help Google determine your site’s authority, trustworthiness, and expertise.

Google recently unveiled passage indexing where instead of just searching the page, the bots look at and provide in the search results specific passages in your site relating to your search query.

SEO is as much an art as it is a science. SEO is not quick and takes time to build up your reputation and see results on the search pages. There are many factors from the keywords used to the SEO efforts of your competition.

No To The Quo has SEO experts with more than a decade of experience building websites’ search rankings, bringing traffic to your site, and increasing conversions. We’re your virtual marketing department.

Using Keywords in PPC

Pay-per-click advertising, whether it’s Google Ads or other platforms such as Facebook, requires payment to the platform when someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website or landing page.

Keywords are integral to your PPC campaign because they are a leading metric on who sees your ads. If you’re selling used cars, you want people who search for “used cars online” to see your ad, but not people looking up recipes for apple pie.

The PPC platform is like an online auction. When you create an ad and choose specific keywords, you also choose a budget for the ad and most commonly a cost per click. When someone provides a query that involves the keyword, then your bid goes against other businesses that chose that keyword.

If your bid wins then Google places the ad on the search page, website or video. When someone clicks on the ad, you pay the platform. It’s a delicate balancing act where you try to get the most qualified traffic to your site while paying the least to the platform.

There are many businesses that give up on PPC because they weren’t seeing any returns. Unless you are familiar with the nuances of the platform, it is difficult to run a maximized campaign even with many of the new automated features created by Google.

Our PPC experts navigate these platforms every day and there isn’t a nook or cranny that they’re not familiar with. It doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook ads, search ads, or retargeting, they bring the conversions with the lowest possible budget.

How Are PPC Keywords Different Than SEO Keywords?

When looking at keywords for SEO, the sky is the limit. You don’t pay for keywords, but that doesn’t mean choosing them willy nilly. You want to bring as much qualified traffic to specific parts of your site. This traffic needs to be somewhere in the buyer’s journey and then nurture those leads until they convert.

You can also have as many keywords as you want on a website if it is within Google quality standards i.e., no keyword stuffing.

PPC keywords need extensive research because it impacts your budget. You can’t have countless keywords as you do for SEO. You use specific keywords along with audience targeting to laser focus your campaign, which gets your traffic and saves you money.

You can also negative match keywords, so they aren’t included in your bidding.

The important factors in SEO and PPC keywords include:

Search Volume

This is how many times the keyword is used for a search within a given time frame, usually a month. High-volume keywords bring in the most traffic but are also the most difficult to rank. Everyone wants to rank for these keywords.

It’s often better to include these keywords in SEO but not for PPC. Instead, both SEO and PPC use more targeted keywords and keyword phrases. They are less searched keywords and easier to rank and bid for. You end up getting the same amount of traffic using four less popular keywords than if you tried ranked for the most popular one.

Keyword Competition

This represents how competitive the keyword is, which means how many people use it on their site. The higher the competition the harder it is to rank and the more competition for a bid. Volume and competition don’t always go hand in hand. There are keywords that have low search volume, but still high competition and vice versa.

Keyword Cost

SEO keywords don’t cost money, but they do have value. PPC keywords have an actual estimated cost. This is an estimated amount of how much the keyword would cost in a bid.

PPC and SEO Go Hand in Hand

PPC keywords and SEO keywords may be different, but they do go hand in hand. SEO is a slow build that creates high conversions over time, but PPC advertising brings in revenue quickly even if there is a cost to it.

If you want to learn more about PPC and SEO, then contact us today and talk to one of our experts.

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