How to make sense of data for this keyword (Moz Keyword vs. Google KW Planner)

[lulu71]

The keyword "auto immune disorder" has an avg monthly (local/US) search of 880 in Google KW Planner with "low" competition

In Moz, the same keyword has an avg monthly (local/US) search of 5 with a KW difficulty of 71%.

I realize that the competition in Google KWP is based on ads, but is there a discrepancy when the search volume is so different in Google vs. Moz/Bing?

Based on the above data, it seems like it would make sense to do a Google Adword (high search volume, low competition) instead of trying to rank organically...am I on the right track here?

Thanks!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Sarah,

My gut tells me the truth is a combination of the two tools. It does look like a highly competitive keyword from an organic point of view. The top 3 ranking results are the National Institute of Health and Wikipedia - all of which would be hard to beat.

But it's not a highly commercial term - so I bet the CPC would be lower for PPC than many other comparative terms.

That said, you can still win with a long-tail SEO strategy. It does require work and effort. But the idea is you would create lots of high quality content around this keyword theme and try to rank for potentially 100s of variations and similarly themed content. This strategy, when done with sincere effort, often succeed against the most competitive of terms.

That said, it does require a lot of time and effort and energy. If you're looking for quick results, PPC may be the way to go for you. Keep in mind as soon as you stop paying for PPC, the returns stop immediately, while good content can drive traffic for years after the initial investment. (if it sounds like I'm preaching, I'm really not - I actually run PPC ads all the time when appropriate)

Hope this helps! Best of luck.