Keyword research is arguably the most important element for both SEM and SEO campaigns. If one does not pick the right set of keywords for either, then one can fail miserably.

But, cannot the keywords for SEM and SEO be used interchangeably? The answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. It is true that many times the keyword phrases will overlap when doing a PPC campaign as it does for organic SEO, but other times the same keyword phrases will not work for one or another.

For instance, if someone uses the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to investigate keywords for an SEM campaign, they will see a column for Advertiser Competition. This represents the number of advertisers signed up with Google who are bidding on this same keyword phrase.

Some people make the mistake of thinking that this number has some correlation with the number of web pages competing for a keyword phrase in the organic search engine rankings, which it does not.

When investigating SEO keyword competition, one has to look at how many web pages have the same keyword phrase in the title tag and link text pointing to a web page. This competition number may be relatively the same as Google’s Advertiser Competition or in vast contrast to this number.

Those who do SEM through a PPC program like Google or Yahoo are competing solely with a pool of advertisers in the sponsored section of each site. Those who do SEO do not compete directly with SEM’s, but rather other SEOs who build pages for the organic rankings.

These two distinct spaces on each search engine results page lends itself to two different search advertising models and thus two different methods of analyzing keyword competition.

Filed under: Keywords