What is Cost Per Click (CPC)?
The paid-search price per keyword click. In SEO it sizes traffic value and commercial intent: sustained high CPCs mark queries worth organic investment.
Related terms
Traffic Value
The estimated ad cost of a site’s organic clicks. A rough money translation of SEO output, useful for resourcing conversations but not for P&L accounting.
Transactional Intent
Queries ready to act: buy, sign up, download. Serve with product fit, proof, pricing clarity, and one primary call to action.
Commercial Investigation
Pre-purchase comparison queries ("X vs Y", "best X for Z"). Win with criteria tables, sourced claims, and honest fit statements instead of adjectives.
Google Search Console (GSC)
The free official view of how Google sees a site: impressions, clicks, positions, indexation, and issues. Audits join its demand data to crawl findings before prioritizing anything.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Event-based analytics measuring what visitors do after they arrive. Pair it with Search Console to connect rankings to engagement and conversions instead of optimizing positions blindly.
Impression
One appearance of a page or link in results or AI answers. Impressions without clicks diagnose snippets and intent fit; falling impressions diagnose demand or visibility loss.