Use your Google Ads search terms report to plan SEO content

The Google Ads search terms report lists the exact queries people typed before they clicked your ad, with clicks, cost and conversions next to each one. For SEO it is the most useful PPC data you already own: a keyword list filtered by buying intent, which you can export, trim to the terms that converted, group into topics, check against Search Console and turn into pages that rank organically.

The planning side, how converting ad keywords shape a publishing schedule, is covered in using converting Google Ads keywords to drive the content calendar. This post stays inside the report itself.

What is the Google Ads search terms report?

Keywords are what you bid on. Search terms are what people actually typed. With broad and phrase match, one keyword can trigger dozens of different searches, and the search terms report is where you see them.

Each row shows the search term, the match type, whether it has been added as a keyword or excluded, and the usual metrics: impressions, clicks, cost, conversions and conversion rate. For SEO, the conversions column is the one that matters. Nothing else you own shows which phrases people typed right before they paid you.

One limit: to protect privacy, Google only shows terms that enough people searched, so some spend always sits behind terms you cannot see. The visible ones have real volume, which suits an SEO plan anyway.

Where to find the search terms report and export it

1. Sign in to Google Ads and open Campaigns in the left-hand menu.
2. Go to Insights and reports, then Search terms. You can open it for the whole account, or from inside a single campaign or ad group.
3. Set the date range to at least the last 90 days. If spend is low, use 6 or 12 months; short ranges hide long-tail and seasonal terms.
4. Use the columns icon to add Conversions, Conv. rate and Cost / conv., plus Conv. value if you track revenue.
5. Download the table as a CSV or Google Sheet from the download icon above it.

If most of your spend is in Performance Max

Performance Max reports search data more coarsely, often as grouped categories. Use them as a topic list, but if you also run Search campaigns, start with their report.

Using the search terms report for SEO: which terms matter?

A raw export can run to thousands of rows, most of them noise for SEO. Cut it down first:

• Keep terms with conversions greater than zero. Clicks without conversions tell you about curiosity, not demand.
• Remove your own brand terms. People searching your name will find you organically if your site is indexed.
• Remove competitor brand terms. They convert on ads because your ad sits next to the brand; as organic content they rarely rank and can read badly.
• Flag terms with a high cost per click and steady conversions. An organic page pays back fastest on those.
• Keep low-volume converting terms, but do not give each one its own page. Group them first.

An illustration: say an account selling bookkeeping software shows "bookkeeping software for contractors" with 14 conversions in 90 days, "cheap bookkeeping app" with none from 300 clicks, and "how to do bookkeeping for a small construction company" with 3 conversions. The first and third are SEO targets. The second is a price shopper.

How do you group search terms into page topics?

Exported search terms are messy: plurals, swapped word order and near-duplicates. Group the terms one page could answer. If Google would probably show the same results for two terms, they belong on the same page.

Spot the question queries

Filter the export for words such as how, what, why, cost, vs and best. A question query that converted on an ad is worth a lot: the person arrived with a question and still bought. Pages built around them are also the kind of passage AI assistants like to quote, since a direct question gets a direct answer, which matters if you want to get your brand cited in ChatGPT answers.

Check Search Console before you write anything

For each cluster, open Google Search Console, go to Performance, then Search results, and add a Query filter containing the main phrase. Turn on Average position and open the Pages tab to see which of your URLs Google already connects to it. That tells you whether you need a new page or a better one.

The Performance report shows at most 1,000 rows in the interface, so filter by phrase rather than scrolling. It keeps 16 months of data, which is enough to see whether a query is seasonal before you build a page around it. If Search Console is not connected to your tools yet, connecting Google Search Console to an auto SEO tool covers the setup.

Which page should rank for a converting search term?

Your ad landing page is often the wrong page to push organically. It usually drops the navigation and covers one offer, which looks thin to a search engine. Search the term in a private window and look at what ranks. If the top results are product pages, a blog post will struggle. If they are guides, a sales page will struggle.

Then reuse what the ad account has already tested. The benefit wording from your best ad copy is proven language for that searcher, so put it in the page title and first paragraph.

Can SEO reduce your Google Ads CPC?

Not directly. Ranking organically does not change what you pay per click in the auction. It changes how much paid traffic you need. If you rank in the top three for an informational term, you can test a lower bid and see whether total conversions, paid plus organic, hold.

There is one indirect link. Landing page experience is one of the three parts of Quality Score, alongside expected click-through rate and ad relevance. A better page can help there, but treat any effect on cost as a bonus, not a plan.

How to test lower bids without losing leads

1. Pick informational or comparison terms where you have held position 1 to 3 organically for at least a month. Leave high-intent buying terms alone for now.
2. Use Google Ads experiments to split traffic, or lower bids on a small set of keywords and keep a similar set unchanged to compare against.
3. Run the test long enough to cover your normal conversion lag, which for most lead-generation businesses means several weeks.
4. Judge it on total leads or sales from the term across paid and organic, not on ad spend saved.
5. Roll back if total conversions drop. Some people click both the ad and the organic result, and giving up the ad slot can hand the click to a competitor.

Brand terms are different. Competitors can bid on your name, and pausing your brand ads gives them that space. Test that slowly, if at all.

Mistakes that waste this data

• Writing one article per search term. Fifteen near-identical posts compete with each other; one strong page per cluster does the job better.
• Copying the ad landing page into a blog post. Organic pages need depth, internal links and a clear answer, and a short sales page rarely gets them.
• Letting search volume make the decision. The whole point of this report is that it shows what converted. Five conversions beat five thousand impressions.

If you have run ads for a year with nothing organic to show for it, the bigger picture is in Google Ads vs SEO and which one compounds. If you already rank but leads are flat, the cause is often keyword intent, covered in why SEO traffic rises but leads do not. And if you want this research step run for you on a schedule, the upRanker feature overview shows how the Ads and Search Console data feed the plan.

The search terms report is a record of what your market typed and then paid you for. Reading it for SEO once a quarter takes about an hour, and it usually gives a better topic list than a volume tool, because the conversions are already in it.