Two important online marketing strategies used by businesses are search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC). There are substantial differences between the two and the development of their respective strategies.

With SEO, you are developing strategies to increase your organic and natural search engine placement results (SERPs) on the major search engines. While with PPC, you are using paid ad campaigns on various sites, most frequently search engines, to achieve to rankings above organic results.

Even though the strategies used to develop effective marketing concepts are different, one thing that is common between the two is the use of keywords. Keywords are specific words and phrases that are relevant to your business and the products and services you sell.

Keywords and SEO

In the past, keyword stuffing was a common practice many online sites used to increase exposure and improve their SERPs. However, search engines got much smarter and now will actually penalize sites that use keyword stuffing.

Today, keywords are still relevant for SEO. They need to fit naturally within the content on the web page and be used a limited number of times. A good general rule to follow is one keyword or keyword phrase for every 250 to 300 words of content. So, for a 500 word piece of content, you would only want to use one or two keywords or keyword phrases. In addition, the latest trend with keywords for SEO is the use of long tail and localized keywords.

Long tail keywords take a single keyword and turn it into a specific keyword phrase. For example, let’s look at the keyword “plumbing.” By itself it is too generic of a keyword and makes it difficult to stick to the current keyword usage guidelines. However, if we transform it into a long tail keyword, “licensed plumbing services,” now it is easier to stick to those guidelines, and at the same time has made the keyword more unique.

Localized keywords is taking long tail keywords and adding a specific geographic location to them to make increase the likelihood of the business being displayed in local search results. Going back to our example above, we could convert the long tail keyword into “licensed plumbing services in Toronto” and now have made a localized keyword.

Keywords and PPC

For PPC campaigns, keywords follow many of the same guidelines as they do for SEO. The reason keywords are important for ads is it lets the search engine now when to display the ad based on the relevancy of the search entered.

Both long tail keywords and localized keywords can help limit when the ad is displayed so it will reach the targeted audience. There are slight variations regarding keyword usage guidelines, like the keyword can be used in the title of the ad, as well as within the content of the ad.

To learn more about keywords and how to develop effective long tail and localized keywords for SEO or PPC, contact Logik Digital at 1-866-307-0086 today and remember to ask for your free website audit!