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Move over “proficient with Microsoft Word and Excel” because effective keyword research is easily the number one skill for digital marketers (and should definitely make the cut on your resume).
Excellent keyword research serves you in content planning and creation, PPC advertising, SEO, social media and so many other facets of digital marketing.
Keywords tell you what audiences are interested in and they are essential for informing your digital strategies.
No matter how digital marketing changes, keywords continue to play a significant role in how marketers strategize and perform.
This discussion will help you learn how to search for keywords on Google. You’ll walk away from this how-to guide knowing everything from the basics to the best practices of effective keyword research and how Google can be an excellent tool for researching valuable search terms to incorporate into your strategies.
Let’s get started.
In this section, we’ll cover the basics of keyword research. What is it? Why is it so crucial to digital marketing? We’ll also cover some of the must-know terms when researching and comparing keywords.
By definition, keyword research is the process of finding search words that people are currently using to look for information on topics that relate to your business and its offerings.
When researching keywords, you want to pay attention to search volume, competitiveness, relevance, CPC values and more.
There are several tools that you can use to conduct keyword research; some are 100% free to use, while others require a paid subscription.
You can actually get a lot of vital keyword research done by inputting terms into Google searches and looking at the results!
As hinted at above, keyword research is vital because it influences your entire digital marketing strategy.
It doesn’t matter if you’re creating blog content, developing a social media presence, publishing paid search ads or improving your website’s search authority — keywords play a role.
Here are some of the reasons why you can’t ignore keyword research:
Essentially, keywords help you learn about your target audiences and how to structure your marketing materials to best appeal to these individuals.
Intent and interest are two critical factors when assessing the value of a keyword.
Intent expresses the reason why someone is performing a particular search. What do they intend to do next? For example, if you search for “buy running shoes,” your intent is to buy a pair of running shoes.
However, a search like “best brands for running shoes” indicates that you’re interested in running shoes, but perhaps not ready to buy yet.
If your marketing goals are focused on driving conversions and increasing revenue, you’d prefer to target keywords that fit the first example. Other marketers weave in keywords of all levels of intent, thereby empowering their entire marketing funnel.
Interest is best represented by search volume. The more people that are searching for a term, the higher the interest is.
Whereas intent behind keywords doesn’t change (someone searching “buy running shoes” is always intending to purchase running shoes), interest levels fluctuate for various reasons.
Seasonality is one reason. Keywords that relate to winter clothing don’t garner a lot of interest in the summer months.
Other times, interest just fades because people’s attention turns elsewhere. No one is searching for “MySpace marketing tips” anymore.
Some beginner marketers make the mistake of compiling all of their keyword research together. This blurs the lines between paid search keywords and organic ones.
Keyword intent is the main reason why this practice should be avoided. The intent between the two types of keywords is very different.
Paid keywords typically fall closer to the buying-end of the funnel, while organic keywords are focused on the beginning stages. The point where organic and paid keywords tend to cross each other occurs in the middle of the funnel.
Ideally, you want to use these two sides of search marketing separately, but as part of a cohesive strategy. Leads are nurtured through organic keywords, until they are ready to convert. Then, the paid search keywords re-engage prospects and finish the sale.
Aside from organic and paid keywords, there are some other search term types that you should know.
When someone searches for a specific brand, they are directly interested in that particular company. If they are searching for your brand, it’s an easy sell because they’ve already signaled that they are interested in your company and products. However, keywords that include brand names that you don’t sell, like your competitors’ brands, can be wrong for your targeting. Branded keywords also include specific models or products that are exclusive to only one brand.
Search terms in this category relate directly to your products. They are typically generic, non-branded terms like “running shoes.” They can also pertain to what your product/service does and what problem it solves. Due to their generic nature, keywords in this category typically have high search volume, but that also tends to mean more competition and higher costs.
These are keywords that are specific to a competitor’s marketing strategy. In other words, these are the keywords your competitors are targeting. The tradeoff is that you can potentially outrank them on these search terms, thereby diverting audiences to your pages, instead of yours. However, you’ll typically have to invest some time and money to overcome their established position in the rankings, whether paid or organic.
These are less-popular terms that someone may use when looking for a product. For instance, instead of shoes, some people may search “running footwear.” The danger here is that the substitute keywords tend to be less relevant than their primary counterpart. Footwear could also include products like socks, specialty shoes and or ankle weights, which may not be relevant to what your website has to offer.
There may be peripheral products that support your primary offerings. For example, if your main business is selling running shoes, then search rankings for things like laces, socks, shoe cleaning products, etc. are also marginally valuable. Relevance is once again a drawback for these terms.
Similarly, there may be topics or interests that are relevant to your audiences. Companies like Red Bull are famous for this. They target audiences through their extreme sports interests. Audience interest keywords are most valuable for display ad targeting, where you can publish ads on sites relevant to your products and audiences.
You need to follow a list of steps if you want to have effective keyword research. This orderly process is something that you’ll be doing continuously; this is not a one-and-done process.
Changes to keywords happen frequently. Remember, the things that audiences are interested in will shift over time. If you aren’t performing keyword research and planning on a persistent basis, you won’t be able to catch these changes quickly.
What sort of changes are you looking for?
Let’s look at the steps in the keyword research process:
You’re almost ready to get into keyword research, but there are still a few more steps to get through. Your next objective is to consider your goals with regard to keywords. You want to target keywords that further these goals.
When formulating your keyword research goals, consider some of the following questions:
Knowing the answers to these questions will help you decide what types of keywords to focus on and which search terms are most valuable to your business.
Your next step is to look at the keywords that you are already targeting or having. Try to analyze how they’ve been recently performing compared to in the past. Pay particular attention to how your rankings have changed (if they have) and the search volume for these terms. If this is a PPC keyword, you should also look at how your cost-per-click (CPC) values have moved.
A keyword wish list is really where all of your keyword targeting starts — in your head. This is what you should use if you have no pre-existing keywords. You simply make a list of the keywords that you would use to describe your business and products. This brainstorming list will help keep your keyword targets relevant to your offerings.
Remember, these are words that people would use to search for products like yours, not sales copy. Your products may be cutting-edge, beautiful, innovative, etc., but that’s not how people will search for them.
As you’re developing this list, think about what matters to potential customers at each stage of the purchasing decision.
Google Search Console is a free service that helps webmasters monitor their site’s presence on Google’s search engine. This tool will help you show what keywords you are already ranking for. You may not even be aware of all of them!
You can use the Google Search Console to establish a baseline for each keyword’s performance. Take a look at how each keyword ranks for the displayed metrics and note which ones are your top performers.
You also want to identify keyword targets where you are struggling. Ask yourself why you are having a hard time achieving results from these terms. In some cases, it may be that they just aren’t relevant enough to your business.
Keywords are valuable for the many reasons mentioned earlier. As such, they are highly sought after, especially in very competitive industries.
If you’re new to the keyword “marketplace,” you have a lot of ground to make up. Competitors have already established themselves for most rankings.
While you want to push for these keywords, you also want to look for alternate keyword targets that are less popular.
Google is a powerful, yet often underrated, keyword research tool. Some marketers and webmasters worry that they need a sophisticated keyword research tool to get anywhere. Not so! You can start typing your current and wish list keywords to start getting all types of valuable data!
As soon as you enter a search term into the bar, you’ll see several related search terms. These are all commonly searched phrases and words associated with your initial inquiry. With these related terms, you can discover new potential targets to add to your keyword lists.
It’s also a good idea to look at the search results pages for your keywords. Not only will this give you an idea of the competitive landscape and who is already ranking for these terms, but info panes and other rich snippets on the page will give you additional keyword clues.
For example, the “People also ask” box is a great source of question-based keyword phrases. It shows you what sort of questions and concerns customers may have about your products.
There are, of course, some limitations to using just the Google search engine. You don’t see things like search volume or CPC values. For this, you’ll need the Google Keyword Planner (GKP), which is another free tool available to Google account owners.
There are several notable features included in the GKP. Here are some of the ways you can use this tool:
Here’s a sample of the Google Keyword Planner’s recommendations after entering the topic “blue jeans.”
The GKP will typically retrieve a lot more related keywords than the search engine bar.
If your website uses Google Analytics (it’s a great tool if you aren’t already using it), this is another potential source for your keyword data. With Google Analytics, you can:
While all of these are useful features, what you really care about for keyword resources is the “Traffic Sources” tab. This will show you where people are coming from and what keywords people are using to arrive at your website.
To really improve your keyword researching, you’ll want to invest in a third-party tool outside of the Google lineup. The GKP is great for a while, but if you want deeper insights related to possible keyword targets, you want to pay for a more sophisticated option.
These keyword tools have three main advantages:
In the final section of this guide, we’ll look at PPCexpo Keyword Planner, which is an excellent, third-party tool that won’t break the bank.
The last step in the process is not so much research as it is analysis. You’ve compiled all of this keyword information and now you need to make sense of it all. In other words, you need to figure out what all this research means and what you can do with it.
Ultimately, your goal is to identify the best opportunities out of your list of newly discovered keywords. This requires you to compare all of the different metrics and performance indicators, including search volume, competitiveness, CPC values, conversion rates and more.
It’s worth mentioning that even though cost-per-click is not typically a measure of organic search keywords, it can indicate how competitive a keyword is. Higher CPC values usually relate to more competition.
Once you’ve got your list of top opportunities, you need to think about costs; this is the investment side.
You’ve learned how to search for keywords on Google, but there may come a time when you want to bring your keyword research to the next level. PPCexpo Keyword Planner is a great option. It is a third-party tool that allows for effective keyword research.
Free keyword tools, like GKP, have limitations. A tool like PPCexpo Keyword Planner is needed if you want to get the full picture of your possible keyword opportunities.
Not only does PPCexpo Keyword Planner Keyword Tool offer hundreds of relevant keyword results, but it also shows additional information like search volume, estimated CPC and more.
The PPCexpo Keyword Planner appears alongside any Google search results page. Here is an example of the tool’s interface when searching for “blue jeans.”
There are many advantages to using this third-party tool for effective keyword research:
Let’s further explore some of these features and advantages.
By default, the Google Keyword Planner will show search volume data for the United States only. If you want to add more locations, click on the “Settings” icon and select the areas you want. You can press “All” if you want to see global search volume.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner offers several filtering options to refine your keyword lists. Search locations, described above, is one of these options.
Besides location, you can also use the sliders to only display keywords that fall in a specific range of each metric.
For example, you could set the “Volume” slide to 70 to 1,000. This means you will only see keywords that have between 70 and 1,000 searches.
This is a great feature when looking at CPC values. You can filter your keyword results for a specific price range that you’re willing to spend on keywords.
You can copy your lists to your clipboard at any time in your research. This makes it easy to transfer the data elsewhere, like an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet that acts as your “master” keyword list.
You can copy Keywords by hovering your mouse over a keyword result. You’ll notice the copy icon will appear. Once pressed or tapped, it is added to your clipboard to be pasted elsewhere.
So far, all of the screenshots have shown the PPCexpo Keyword Planner in “Table” mode. Alternatively, you can view keyword data visually by clicking the “Chart” tab.
Even you can copy or search again on particular keyword by right clicking on the results on chart.
This is a straightforward and easy-to-understand chart that displays keyword data along two axes. The Y-axis is search volume, while the X-axis reflects CPC amounts.
The top-left quadrant is colored green because this area reflects your desired keyword range based on your selected filters.
Keywords with high volume, but low costs, will end up in this top-left area. Thus, it is the most opportunistic area. Any keywords plotted in this area are valuable and should be explored further.
If you hover over any data point in the chart, an info pane will appear that gives you the metrics for that term.
While the tool has “PPC” in its name, that doesn’t mean it is only valuable to paid search marketers.
The comprehensive, accurate list of keyword suggestions that this tool generates can be a great alternative to the Google Keyword Planner, even if you’re not interested in paid search ads.
You can use PPCexpo Keyword Planner to find keyword ideas for all different purposes:
It’s useful to know how to search for keywords on Google. That said, given how crucial keywords are to your entire digital marketing strategy, you should expand your horizons beyond the Google search bar.
At the very least, you should incorporate Google’s other free tools into your process, like the Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console.
However, to truly gain an advantage in keyword research, you should invest in a tool like PPCexpo Keyword Planner. This powerful tool will help you discover relevant, popular and cost-efficient keywords for your campaigns, SEO content, website and other areas of your marketing strategy.
You’re going to be performing a lot of keyword research. Why not make the most of this time with PPCexpo Keyword Planner?
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