Difference between Keyword and Search Query

Trust me, and I’m not kidding; even experienced digital marketers make mistakes with the terms in the field. One among them is the difference between keywords and search queries.

Both these terms are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings and roles within your digital marketing strategy. Knowing this difference makes a significant impact during creating and managing digital campaigns of your organisation.

Let me explain you the role these two words play in your GoogleAds and SEO.

What is Keyword?

Keywords are the phrases you target with your strategy. They’re based on your products and services, and they make it easier for search engines to rank your pages in results.

So, for example: let me take the mutual fund industry, you might target the keywords, “best mutual funds” or “best mutual funds to invest in 2020.”

You find these keywords through keyword research and use search and trend data to find the best ones for your strategy.

What is a Search Query?

Search queries are what users type into a search engine like Google to find information.

Above suggestions are all based on search queries that other Google users have typed.

Users phrase their searches in unique ways, so Ten users searching for the same product could wind up, creating ten completely different search queries. Sometimes, they include misspellings.

The significant difference between these two is based on who uses them.

Digital Marketers use keywords to create SEO and PPC campaigns, while users type search queries in search engine and try to bid on those and be on the top of the search results.

The end-users aren’t aware of either of these terms, and most of them don’t think about the companies that try to rank for the queries they type into search engines. They type what they’re looking for and hope that the search engine provides the information they need.

As marketers, we try to make sense of these search queries and use them to determine the keywords we should target with our digital marketing strategies. That helps us help people who need products, services, or information.

For example, I am sticking with the “how to save.” example above.

Sometimes it might be impossible to target every single search query that users type into search engines, and users type new variations of that query every day.

The goal is to select keywords in your the audience’s search queries and optimise your site to rank well for those searches.

Hope I helped you to guys to understand the difference between a keyword and a search query.