Mad Genius
Blog

The Difference Between PPC & Organic Search Strategies

SEO

Paid search and organic search often get conflated by those who are unfamiliar with the search engine optimization (SEO) world. Don’t worry. We’re not here to judge (much). We'd rather clear up the confusion. The obvious difference is that paid search is paid for, and organic search is not. You probably got that. What you may not know is that there are countless other strategies behind these two approaches.

How to Create an Organic Search Strategy

As you might’ve guessed, organic search means that you can’t pay for your position in search results. I mean, you really can, if you’re okay with doing some sketchy stuff like buying low-quality backlinks and publishing dozens of generic AI-written articles per day. We, however, are in the business of keeping things above board, so let’s operate under the assumption that organic search positions shouldn't be bought, but have to be earned through honest hard work. Similar to how our forefathers would rise before the sun to feed the chickens, till the fields, and write alternate text for the featured images on their blog.

How to Choose Target Keywords for Organic Search

Collect Data With an SEO Tool

Use a tool like SEMRush, Moz, Backlinko, Hubspot, or countless others to collect data on keywords. You can get the job done with any one of these, but SEMRush is—as of right now—our favorite and the one we use. SEMRush is our special little guy.

Weigh Search Volume Against Difficulty

Two of the more important metrics for keywords are volume and difficulty. But like all things in life, it requires balance. All else being equal, you want to reach as many people as possible, so you’d want to target keywords with the highest volume. Keywords with higher volumes tend to also be more competitive. SEMRush assigns a difficulty score to each keyword on a scale of 0-100, 0 being the easiest to rank for, and 100 being the most difficult to rank for. Anything less than 30 is considered, and this is a direct quote, “easy.” Regardless of a keyword’s difficulty, you should always aim to create high-quality content that is useful to users.

Use Domain Authority as a Gauge for Realistic Target Keywords

SEMRush and Moz give sites an authority score on a scale from 0 to 100. Authority is one of the most indispensable factors search engine algorithms use to order their rankings. It’s more or less a measure of a site’s trustworthiness, as determined by factors like a site’s age and number and quality of backlinks. The more sites that link to yours, the higher your domain authority will be. And if those sites have high authority scores themselves, then that will help even more.

One must look inward and be honest with themselves when selecting target keywords. Ask yourself, “Is this keyword a realistic target for me?” Or, if you would rather not be honest with yourself, enter your URL into one of these SEO tools, and they’ll be honest for you. 

If your site has a domain authority of 15, you most likely want to stick to keywords that are either “easy” (15-29 keyword difficulty) or “very easy” (0-14). Then as you continue to produce quality content over time, your authority score should increase, and give you license to go after keywords in the “possible” (30-49 keyword difficulty) range, and so on. We all want to think of ourselves as a rottentomatoes.com (authority score of 96), or a michigan.gov (authority score of 80), or a firehousesubs.com (authority score of 62), but not all of us are and that’s okay.

How to Create a Pay Per Click (PPC) Strategy

Paid search means you can select keywords and appear at the top of search results without optimizing your content. Google dedicates the first one to four search results for any given search to its paid search results, meaning you appear above even the top organic search result. 

Though, keep in mind that the clickthrough rate for the first PPC spot is about two percent, while the clickthrough rate for the top organic search result is 39.8 percent. You need to get to eighth in the organic search rankings before you get to a clickthrough rate equal to the top organic search result. Though that doesn't imply that PPC is worse than organic search. With PPC, you have guaranteed visibility. The top paid search result having the same clickthrough rate as the eighth organic search result is an interesting statistic that illustrates the value of being on the front page of organic search results. But the paid search ad in that statistic will, by definition, have more traffic because more people will see it.

That is, of course, the most significant value of PPC: guaranteed visibility.

How to Choose Target Keywords for PPC

Avoid Keywords That Have Your Branding

Remembering the statistic from earlier that the top organic search result has a 39.8 percent clickthrough rate, you’ll want to avoid choosing keywords for your PPC campaign for which you already rank first. If someone’s searching for your exact company name, you’re probably going to be the top search result. Paying to show up for your own company name or other branded keywords would likely be a waste of money, since you’d just be appearing twice in a row. You typically want to target broader keywords for PPC.

Consider Using Your Competitors’ Branded Keywords

Inversely, your competitors’ branded keywords could be an opportunity to steal some potential leads. Picture this: a user types your competitor’s name into the Google search bar, clicks enter, and then there’s your site as the first result.

Disregard Difficulty

This is one of the key differences in strategy when it comes to selecting PPC keywords versus organic keywords. Difficulty is not a consideration for PPC. This is, and this may be getting repetitive at this point because you’re paying for placement. While when researching keywords to target for organic search, you want to make sure they have a difficulty score that’s in an achievable range, the sky is the limit with PPC. You are only limited by your wallet and imagination.

Search volume, on the other hand, is still very much a factor. Earlier we said, “All else being equal, you want to reach as many people as possible.” Well, now everything is equal because the great equalizer is cash.

Take Cost per Click (CPC) Into Consideration

The way PPC is priced is that you’re charged for every user who clicks on your paid search result. Tools like SEMRush show you what the CPC for each keyword is. Costs can vary wildly depending on industry and keyword. The more broad the keyword, and the higher the search volume, most likely, the higher the cost.

As an example, let’s say you’re a financial planner, and you’re researching keywords for a PPC campaign. You start simple and look up the term “financial planning” in a tool like SEMRush. You see that the CPC is $7.21. That’s not too expensive, but you want to see if you can do better. You go a little more niche and look up your specialty, “estate planning.” That has a CPC of $3.60. Still too expensive for your taste. So you get even more specific with, “asset protection trust,” which has a CPC of $2.87.

This is just one example, but you’ll see a similar trend across pretty much any industry. Broader topics tend to have higher CPCs, in large part because more people are searching for them. The three keywords in this example have monthly search volumes of 33.1 thousand, 27.1 thousand, and 2.9 thousand respectively. With organic search, you have to weigh a keyword’s search volume with how achievable it is to rank highly for that keyword. With paid search, you have to weigh the cost of the ad against the value you’re creating based on its reach.

Just to show you how much CPCs can vary based on how competitive an industry is, here’s an example of a PPC ad that actually encourages users not to click.

Dude, is it tempting to click.

Focus On User Intent for Both PPC & Organic Search

There are four different types of search intent: 

  • Informational: People want answers. These can range from broad topics to pointed questions.
  • Navigational: Users know exactly where they want to go, but are using a search engine as an intermediary to get there.
  • Commercial: Users are seeking information about a product or service.
  • Transactional: Users have enough information about a product and are ready to buy.

So, staying with the financial, here are some examples of different types of keywords:

It’s important to tailor your keyword strategy to search intents that align with your business. If you have a large ecommerce component to your site, you’re probably going to target commercial and transactional keywords. If you run a publication that focuses on science, you’d likely be best off targeting informational keywords.

Tools like SEMRush tell you the type of search it is, but to get the most out of search, you should go beyond dividing keywords into four categories, and use your intuition. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who is considering buying whatever it is you’re selling. What do those people search for? What information are they missing? 

SEO Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Selecting target keywords, or really any aspect of SEO, whether it’s for organic search or PPC, requires a unique approach for every company. The keywords that work for one company, are not necessarily going to work for another, and vice versa. Follow the guidelines in this blog and, keep in mind the factors like your domain authority, PPC ad quality, and other keyword data.

Want to discuss the best keywords for your website? Or any other aspect of SEO? Or our feelings? Fill out the form below and let’s chat.