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Performing keyword research can be a tiresome task. Yet, it is a crucial and necessary job for Google Ads and digital marketing as a whole. Keywords are fuel for your marketing fire! Without new keyword opportunities stoking the flames, your campaigns are destined to only be a matchstick compared to the roaring bonfire that they should be.
Not to mention, keywords do not just impact your PPC strategy. They also influence what content topics you write about, your on-page SEO, email marketing, social media strategy and so much more. Keywords impact the majority of your digital marketing strategies.
Even if you operate a small business, you will likely discover hundreds to thousands of keywords that relate to your company and its offerings. This giant list of possible keyword targets is an overwhelming amount of data. Working the list line by line or group by group requires hours of time and mountains of patience.
If you’re sick of the tedium of keyword research, there is some good news. It doesn’t have to be so time-consuming if you get the right keyword research tool.
What is a keyword research tool? It is a keyword planner that allows you to speed up the process and alleviate many of the pressures commonly created when manually researching and analyzing keywords. However, many keyword research tools don’t incorporate one crucial feature: charts!
Charts can turn tabular keyword data into engaging, straightforward visuals that allow you to extract meaningful, actionable insights instantaneously. Once you see the information visually represented, you immediately understand the data and see the hidden insights.
In this how-to guide, we’ll cover how you can speed up your keyword research process with charts, without sacrificing the quality of the insights you receive.
Visual information is communicated faster and more efficiently than text or raw numbers. That’s where we get the expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” If you were to describe a scene to someone, it would take a lot of time and more than a thousand words to accurately capture every detail. Then, that person has to take the time to read the entire description.
On the other hand, if you give someone a picture, the information is not only processed in mere seconds but also the individual receives a much deeper understanding of the scene. Arguably, you could say that a picture is worth much more than a thousand words.
The same is true when it comes to your keywords data. You have all of the numbers and information that you need to select the right keywords and build an effective marketing strategy. What you lack is the ability to process and understand this data efficiently.
This is why charts can play such a significant and impactful role in your keyword research. They take the thousands of numbers that comprise your keyword data and then translate them into a visual format that allows you to see the insights right away. You no longer have to “read” the data line by line.
Charting your keywords data can help you in the following ways:
Furthermore, charting keywords data is very useful when it comes time to report your findings to others, such as your marketing team or stakeholders. For a digital marketing agency, you may want to show off your latest keyword discoveries to your clients.
When crafting a report, you don’t want to rely on raw numbers and tables. It’s flat, unengaging and even confusing for audiences because these individuals are not as familiar with the data and metrics as you are.
Instead, take advantage of colors and other design elements to create a captivating chart that effectively conveys the data results and doesn’t bore the viewer.
With the above list of benefits, the power of charting your keywords research is obvious. The next question becomes, ‘How do I get started charting my own keyword data?’
First, you need some keyword data. You’re in luck here because you undoubtedly have this data by the buckets full. If you don’t, or it is not organized into a structured table, then you may need to do a little extra work.
A keyword planner makes this step very simple. If you aren’t already using one, we recommend PPCexpo Keyword Planner. We’ll discuss this tool at length in a later section of this guide.
Once you have a spreadsheet of your keyword data properly set up, charting the information is actually quite easy. You don’t have to be a math or data wizard. Simply select the metrics or variables you want to measure and choose an available charting option.
Whether you’re using Excel, Google Sheets or another program, there should be a number of charting options available to choose from. Think critically about the variables you’re measuring and what kind of chart would best reflect the results. Sometimes, you may find yourself selecting multiple options until you discover the perfect fit.
While visually displaying your keyword research can be done with Excel or Google Sheets, there is a lack of charting options with these programs. Particularly, there is a lack of charts that are designed specifically with keyword data and PPC marketing in mind.
You can access ChartExpo Charts From Here
This is where ChartExpo enters the picture. With a library of over 80 charting options, many of which are created directly to visualize PPC marketing data, you can get the very best from your data.
Each chart offers a new angle or a new lens to look at the data from. Often, these fresh looks will yield game-changing insights that you hadn’t been able to see before.
ChartExpo is an add-on for Google Sheets and Excel. It works directly within these spreadsheets to give you more options when charting your spreadsheet data. Again, many of these charts are made specifically to interpret and display PPC data.
Let’s look at an example of the type of PPC charts that ChartExpo offers. The following is a sample table for the keyword “hiking shoes.”
With ChartExpo installed, you can access the add-on easily and begin transforming your data. For example, if you want to turn your data into a PPC Scatter Plot chart, then all it takes is a few simple clicks. You enter your desired variables as metrics and dimensions. Then, you click to create the chart.
Here’s what this PPC chart looks like:
With the variables, search volume and cost-per-click (CPC), you can immediately locate your most valuable keywords. The keywords in the upper left quadrant (“men’s hiking shoes” and “best hiking shoes”) are obvious, must-have targets because they have extremely high search volumes, but low CPC.
It’s a great chart for immediately evaluating the profitability of lots of keywords at once.
Another example of a great PPC chart included in ChartExpo’s library is the adjacent bar chart. Using the same data table and process as before, we can enter the necessary information into ChartExpo and then transform it into an engaging visual depiction of the data.
The final chart looks as follows:
PPCexpo Keyword Planner is a great example to look at when explaining what is a keyword research tool. This will give you hundreds of relevant keyword results, complete with search volume, CPC, similarity and other data.
You can access keyword planner from here
You can take this valuable keyword data to the next level and make it actionable with multiple charting options right from the keyword planner. Not only does this make keyword insights extremely visible and readily available for use, as we’ve covered, but it also saves you an additional step of charting the information yourself. You can easily switch between a chart view and a tabular view of the data.
For example, if you were to search “toys for kids” on Google, you would receive the following results with PPCexpo Keyword Planner.
As you can see along the right side of the screen, PPCexpo Keyword Planner’s findings are incorporated right into the Google search results page. The first thing that you see is a table of related keywords, including their volume, CPC and similarity. With these three metrics, you can measure so much – value, profitability, relevance, consumer interest, costs and much more.
Next to the table icon, you can click the chart icon. Then, you are given the option to display the data as either a scatter plot or an adjacent bar chart.
Here is what the scatter plot chart looks like for this sample data.
Each keyword’s search volume is measured by the Y-axis, while the X-axis looks at CPC values of the same words. Again, this chart is great for finding highly valuable keywords in a short amount of time.
Every search phrase in that green region shows the desired range that you have set. You can adjust the size of this space with filtering options, thereby getting you right to the keywords that make the most sense for your budget and other needs.
Scatter plots are very good to distribute data and see the relationships and space between each point. However, this chart type does have some shortcomings, one of which is noticeable in this chart. Due to many of the keywords falling in the same area of the chart, a lot of the points are overlapping in the bottom left portion of the chart.
To look at this cluster of data closer, you can change the chart to the bar option. For the example dataset, the bar chart would look as follows:
Every keyword is listed in order of search volume. Now, you can see the terms that are in that dense bottom cluster, as well as the exact CPC and volume data for each. This is a great example of how looking at data through different charts can unlock new insights.
Despite “PPC” in its name, the features and analysis provided by PPCexpo Keyword Planner carries over into all areas of your digital marketing. Again, keywords are vital for almost all modern marketing strategies. Your PPC keyword research will inform how and what you target in these other areas.
Here are some of the useful features and ways that PPCexpo Keyword Planner empowers your keyword research across your digital marketing strategy.
The free version of the tool permits you to research up to 500 keywords every day at no cost. Need more from a keyword research tool? No problem. You can invest in additional keyword credits right in the planner.
Here is the pricing breakdown for added keyword credits (one keyword = one credit):
Still don’t find an option to suit your needs? Get in contact with us and we’ll work out a custom plan.
As much as you may grimace at the thought of doing yet another round of keyword research, it is a task that almost always pays off handsomely for all of your digital marketing efforts. To make this routine process more efficient, less time consuming and even enjoyable, we highly recommend a keyword research tool like PPCexpo Keyword Planner.
What is a keyword research tool? For most, it is a simple tool that shows related keywords and some basic metrics. If that’s all you are getting from your keyword research tool, it may be time for an upgrade.
You need a solution like PPCexpo Keyword Planner that not only makes discovering new keyword opportunities a breeze, but also allows you to efficiently understand the data and pull actionable insights out of the hundreds or thousands of possible keyword combinations.
You want a tool that can chart your keyword research and visually express which terms offer the most opportunity or the greatest risk. With PPCexpo Keyword Planner, you can see the bigger picture.
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