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The pool of metaphors and witty quips about the importance of digital marketing keywords is all dried up. They’ve all been used.
There is no new way to describe the whale-sized significance of keywords on your PPC campaigns, as well as digital marketing at large.
Every strategy you plan, tactic you put in motion, message you send — it is all built on the shoulders of your keyword research.
The bottom line is this: a successful PPC campaign starts with successful PPC keyword research. If your keyword research is flawed, your marketing and PPC campaigns will also be flawed.
This discussion will examine how to perform successful PPC keyword research and what PPC keyword research tools to use in this process.
All hyperbole aside, keyword research absolutely matters. It impacts every aspect of your digital marketing.
By selecting the right keywords, you can ensure that:
Keyword research is part data science and part art. You need to use all the tools at your disposal to understand your customers and predict the best possible search terms to attract their attention.
When you can align the keyword targets of your ad and marketing messages with what audiences are currently entering into the search box, success is practically guaranteed.
Once upon a time, in a search engine results page far, far away, Google had very loose rules about keywords and optimizing for these terms.
This led to practices that are now frowned upon (and were back then), such as keyword stuffing.
Over the years, Google has grown and matured. It can now understand slang, colloquialisms, syntax, sentiments, conversational cues and context.
There are always new changes occurring that shape how organic and paid keyword targeting function. You must recognize these changes before diving into PPC keyword research.
All of Google’s improved natural language processing is being used to match search queries with better results. This means that Google tries to match search terms to results based on what they mean, not necessarily the words they search.
Google’s emphasis on context, meaning and other clues is to ensure the best results possible. When you search “dentist,” you receive information about dentists in your area.
This is Google using these natural language queues to essentially “guess” that you want information about nearby dentists, even though you never entered a specific location.
In theory, this would reduce the importance of keywords. However, that’s far from true.
You still want to incorporate keywords into your content and PPC ads. The trick is to integrate keywords organically. You don’t want to insert keywords where they don’t naturally fit. This will damage the readability of your content and won’t offer any added value or ranking.
Some of the context clues that Google uses to match search content with queries is data gathered from the user.
This is why when you search “dentist,” Google knows your location. You don’t have to enter “dentist near me.” Google knows.
Other contextual clues that Google accesses, besides location, are search history, demographical data, interests and more. All of this background data means that you and a friend could make the same Google search and receive slightly different results.
Google is increasingly getting better at knowing who you are and what information you’re most likely looking to access when we enter a search query.
One of the crucial factors that Google uses to determine Ad Rank is an ad’s relevance to the targeted keyword. Google Ads also uses keyword relevance when assigning Quality Scores and CPC values.
Keywords still have a definite role in this process. They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
That said, some changes suggest Google is moving away from keywords in the paid search marketing space as well.
There are newer ad formats on Google Ads that do not rely on the traditional method of bidding on keywords. Dynamic Search Ads, Smart Campaigns, Local Service Ads and Shopping Ads are all keyword-free.
These ad formats rely on some of the same contextual clues that Google uses to connect search users to more personalized results. They look at your website, business type, product catalog and other details to determine when your ads are most relevant to search users.
In the quest to offer the best possible results to search users, Google has also updated Ad Rank to consider the intent or meaning behind a search.
The goal here is to remove sponsored, commercial ad results when a search user’s intent is purely informational. These results can come across as spam and disrupt the user’s search experience, especially when commercial offers aren’t relevant to the intent.
For instance, if you search “how much does a dentist make per year?” the intent changes. Google recognizes that this is an informational search and there is no commercial intent. As a result, you don’t see ads for nearby dentists anymore.
Even if you are bidding on keywords for information-based requests, you may see significant drops in impressions because Google is less likely to serve ads for these searches.
This has a domino effect on your keywords that do have commercial intent. Now that advertisers have less chance of getting results from many long-tail keyword phrases and questions, commercial intent keywords will see a lot more competition.
Google has also made changes to how exact match types function.
In the past, advertisers would use broad match keywords to catch misspellings and variations of relevant search terms. Meanwhile, exact and phrase match types were used to have a tight bid control on high-priority keywords.
This use of match types has become somewhat dated because of these latest changes. Exact match will now include abbreviations, reordered words, synonyms, implied words, etc.
Essentially, exact match types behave more like how broad match types used to work. If you want to have a true exact match, you have to manually add lots of search terms to your negative keyword list.
Don’t make the mistake of treating organic and paid keyword research the same. The changes that Google has made to its search algorithms over the years has only further divided these two sides of the search marketing coin.
If you’re conducting “general” keyword research and not thinking specifically about paid versus organic, you need to stop this practice right away.
First off, there’s this idea of intent. PPC keywords typically have commercial buying intent; they include transactional, buying words. The primary purpose of these paid keywords is to drive conversions.
Organic keywords are typically built to attract leads in the top and middle of the funnel. These keywords are informational. They still have their value, but they may not have that end-funnel power to help audiences convert.
What happens when you treat these two types of keywords as the same? You can:
Ideally, you want both informational and transactional keywords in your marketing strategies. You want to be there to answer questions and help leads access the information they need to ultimately convert.
Transactional keywords finish the process and offer products, discounts and other deals when leads are ready to convert.
This relationship only works if you understand the differences between organic and paid search terms and plan your research accordingly.
All of the changes to how and when Google displays ads have created an entirely foreign PPC marketing landscape. More than ever do marketers need a PPC keyword research tool to help navigate these uncharted waters.
To recap, here are the most significant changes affecting PPC keywords today:
The question remains: how do you take advantage of keywords in this new landscape? Keywords still matter, so how do you choose the right targets to maximize your results?
You want to invest in a PPC keyword research tool that offers the most useful data on keywords to accommodate these new changes. PPCexpo Keyword Planner is consistently one of the best options when it comes to discovering new keywords.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner provides data on hundreds of relevant keywords, including search volumes, estimated CPC, relevance and more. It is an excellent alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner.
Plus, you can research up to 500 keywords a day at absolutely no cost. Additional keyword targets cost only pennies.
To help you understand the value of a proper PPC Keyword Research Tool like the PPCexpo Keyword Planner, here is a scenario:
John is an online retailer who wants to use PPC ads to boost sales for his sports bicycle and accessories business. Before he can run a successful Google Ads campaign, he needs to do some research to determine the most profitable keyword targets for his PPC marketing.
John opts to use the PPCexpo Keyword Planner to solve his dilemma.
Before the actual research begins, John will devise a starter list of keywords.
While he isn’t 100% sure about what keywords will be the absolute best for his business, John does know a lot about bikes and what matters to sport cyclists.
The first step of any keyword research is basically just old-fashioned pen and paper. What are the first words and phrases that come to mind when you think about what your customers might be searching for?
John starts with the brainstormed keyword “sports cycle.” After entering this search term into Google, the PPCexpo Keyword Planner gives John tons of recommended keywords to explore.
John is quickly impressed with the amount of data he has on all related keywords from just one search.
Now that John has a long list of possible keyword targets, the first task is to filter out the irrelevant results.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner provides a similarity percentage that measures how relevant each keyword opportunity is to your original search.
This similarity percentage is calculated using many of the same contextual and semantic signals that Google’s algorithm now implements to determine ad ranks and search results.
Thus, it is a perfect measure for keyword relevance. You can use the sliders at the top of the PPCexpo Keyword Planner to set a similarity filter. This effectively removes any keywords that are too semantically removed from your original search.
With irrelevant keywords removed, the remaining options need to be measured for their potential value. One of the best metrics for achieving this is search volume.
The more popular a keyword is (i.e., the more people searching for it), the more potential value. More searches create more possible impressions and clicks.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner displays monthly average search volumes for every keyword. John decides to use the slides at the top to see only keywords with search volumes between 1,000 and 2,900.
By setting this filter, John effectively removes keywords that aren’t popular enough to be of value. This makes it much easier to reduce the hundreds of options to a more manageable number of results.
John now has a list of relevant, popular keyword targets. Unfortunately, the more popular a keyword is, the more expensive it tends to be.
Popularity leads to more competition.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner shows you the estimated cost per click (CPC) values of every keyword. If you’re new to PPC marketing, CPC is how much you’ll be charged every time someone clicks on your ad for the given keyword.
John knows that he doesn’t have a huge budget. He needs to be reasonable with his CPC numbers. Otherwise, he’ll burn through his budget too quickly.
Again, the filtering sliders at the top of the tool come in handy. John can set a CPC range that fits his budget.
The table of data that this PPC keyword research tool provides is a great start. It is packed with useful insights. However, comparing individual keywords is a little tedious in this format.
To speed up the process, PPCexpo Keyword Planner allows John to visualize the data. This leads to faster insights. He can literally see which keywords provide the most value.
Since John is an online retailer, he has plans to service global audiences. He looks at the location filtering feature of PPCexpo Keyword Planner.
The default option is to view PPC data in the United States. John decides to expand this to include all countries with Google search data. This will slightly change the data to reflect global audiences.
John can also filter his results by individual countries to see which locations around the globe are most interested in sports cycles and what terms they use to describe these products.
With a finalized list of keyword opportunities, John’s last step is to export this research. It is easier to work with the data and analyze it further after it is entered into a spreadsheet.
All John needs to do is click on the Export button to quickly add his keyword data to Excel, Google Sheets or another program.
The example with John and his online sports bike store is a great way to see how you can use a PPC keyword research to achieve better campaign results.
To make your PPC keyword research even more effective, here are 8 tips to consider.
The best way to have more effective PPC keyword research is to invest in a PPC keyword research tool.
In the example with John, the process would not have been nearly as painless without the PPCexpo Keyword Planner’s help.
You want a PPC keyword research tool that gives you real-time keyword data, while also accounting for the recent changes to Google’s search algorithm.
One strategy for brainstorming keyword targets is to work backwards. Instead of looking at keywords from the perspective of the customer, look at keywords that already exist on your website and content.
Which keywords appear the most across your landing pages, blog articles, social media posts and other content assets?
This is a great strategy to begin with because any keywords you select are already built into your content. Relevance to these keywords is already established. You’ll generate higher quality scores and better CTR right out of the gate.
From there, you can work on better optimizing your keyword targets to achieve the best possible results.
In your Google Ads account, you can access a search terms report. This is a report of the actual search terms that caused your ad to show up.
Search terms are different from keywords. While John may use the keyword “sports cycles,” his ads may still trigger when someone uses the search term “sports bicycles” because Google’s algorithm knows that these are the same things.
The search terms report will show you any keywords that search users entered and found your ad messages. Not only will this report help you understand how Google’s algorithms and match types work, but it will also give you some new keyword ideas that you can explore further.
You can find the search terms report by clicking on the campaign or ad group in the Google Ads interface that you wish to explore. Then, click on “Keywords” from the left sidebar. Finally, select “Search Terms” from the top navigation menu.
Your website is already ranking organically for many keywords. Google Search Console can tell you which keywords you rank for and where your site ranks. This is a free tool that is very easy to access.
Your existing organic keywords are an excellent start for several reasons. First, it shows you the general focus of your SEO strategy and whether you target the right funnel positions.
With this information, you can identify gaps in your targeting that PPC keywords fill. You can also use your organic search report to gain inspiration for new paid search terms.
If you link your Search Console account with your Google Ads, you can simultaneously view your paid and organic search reports. In the navigation menu at the top of the Google Ads interface, select “Reports.” You’ll then find the “Paid & Organic” option under the “Predefined reports” tab.
You have substantial evidence to back up what people are searching and why. You also have detailed insights into what your customers care about the most and want from your products.
Despite all this data, it doesn’t hurt to still consult with customers directly. Attitudes and customer preferences change regularly. So, it is a good idea to keep an ongoing dialog with your audiences.
The single best way to know what people care about and are searching for is to ask them!
Some marketers make the mistake of abandoning keywords too early because they don’t see immediate results. There are several reasons why a keyword may have low performance.
Timing can be one issue. Performance for some words will ebb and flow. You may simply be at a slow point. If you pause the keyword now, you’ll miss the boom in activity that’s right around the corner.
The other reason for low keyword performance is that you haven’t optimized your ads, landing pages and other components for the targeted term. This could be affecting your ability to rank well for the selected keyword.
There may be other technical issues interfering with performance as well, such as:
It’s easy to assume that you rule the search engine results pages for any searches that include your brand name(s).
However, if you aren’t careful, competitors can use PPC ads to reach the top spot for searches related to your own branded keywords.
Neglecting these branded keywords can be extremely dangerous for your business because it allows these competitors to divert search traffic to their pages that was otherwise headed to your website.
The good news is that ranking for your business’ proprietary keywords is very easy and inexpensive. After all, you have the crucial element of relevance because they are your brand’s keywords!
Each search results page doesn’t have to be an either-or situation. Either you try and rank organically or pay for PPC ad results to appear on the page.
If you have the budget and time, integrating both strategies for your high-priority keywords is a great strategy. Having paid and organic results on the same page will maximize your site’s visibility.
Two results are better than one.
Keyword research is the most critical aspect of any successful PPC campaign.
If you don’t know what your customers are searching and which keywords lead to conversions, you’ll be helpless in your efforts to attract and capitalize on target audiences.
With the frequent changes to how Google’s search algorithm works, having a PPC keyword research tool is more essential than ever.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner is one of the best solutions for researching and planning a more effective keyword strategy.
This PPC keyword research tool allows you to take a small list of brainstormed keywords and turn it into hundreds of effective terms that:
Plus, PPCexpo Keyword Planner allows you to chart your keyword data to see each term’s performance immediately. This makes your research an extremely productive process.
A successful keyword strategy is just one tool away.
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