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Keyword research and selection for SEO vs PPC

by MarkHazeldine
2 replies
  • PPC/SEM
    • |
Hi,

I currently have a long list of keywords that I am trying to whittle down. The goal is to do some PPC testing to find good keywords to optimise our website for.

To find keywords I used a mixture of Google Keyword Planner, Spyfu and my own brain.
I have since gone about collecting data on these keywords by looking at the Google results pages and looking at Spyfu data.

What is becoming clear, is that while many keywords are working well for our competitors in both SEO and PPC, there are some which seem to do well in one OR the other, but not both.

This leads me to ask the questions:
  1. Is there any point in using PPC to validate keyword selection for SEO?
  2. How do I decide which keywords to pick if they work differently for the two different things?
  3. If PPC is not a good testing tool, then is it safe to just rely on Spyfu and Google results pages to validate my list?

Thanks, Mark
#keyword #ppc #research #selection #seo
  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi MarkHazeldine,

    While it is often true that some keywords will generate more traffic from organic search engine listings, many of those search terms are informational queries with no commercial intent. According to a statistic I recall seeing from Google about 70% of all search queries are informational in nature. That is fine for website's that have a goal of informing and educating the public, not so good for websites with commerce in mind.

    According to research done by Wordstream nearly 65% of all searches with high commercial intent click on paid listings rather than organic listings. That is why search ads tends to generate far more online sales from non-branded searches than organic listings. With that in mind, you can assess the commercial value of search terms using PPC campaigns to test the commercial intent of your keywords. This allows you to estimate the commercial value of traffic generated by each search term, rather than just the search volume.

    Signature

    * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
    *     Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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  • Profile picture of the author AK86
    Hi Mark,

    When conducting keyword research, I always separate my PPC from SEO.

    While some of the keywords may in fact be used for both, you are analyzing different metrics when doing PPC research vs. SEO. For example, when doing PPC research for your product or service, you may spend more time trying to identify "low hanging fruit"; generally long tail keywords or service-specific keywords which have lower Suggested Bid's than the main keywords for that industry which would cost more.

    Now, from an SEO perspective, you're going to be looking mainly for the top keyword variations which get the most traffic, regardless of the suggested bid, because you'll be doing SEO work to rank for those and collect the visits for free. You may end up looking for long-tail keywords in SEO research to bring in additional visits- but your main focus will be on the big traffic senders.
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