PPC Keywords

At its core, PPC (Pay per Click) is a popular and effective form of online marketing. Rather than devising a way to earn organic customers, which may consume a lot of time, PPC attempts to help investors to buy traffic to their site.

The cost-effectiveness of a PPC ad often depends on how relevant the keywords are. The right keywords help connect with the right type of audience. The messaging of the ad matches the intent of the consumer. This is why PPC keyword research is considered to be of high importance to advertisers. While finding the right PPC keywords for your campaign may appear complicated at times, there are some definite approaches you can follow to find appropriate PPC keywords for your campaign.
 

1. Well-Structured Independent Research

Brainstorming of potentially relevant keywords may often turn out to be a haphazard exercise. However, if you break down keywords into sections and lists, independent research can also offer you an all-encompassing comprehensive list.

There are several segments you can distribute your relevant keywords into:
  • The list of branded keywords, for instance, would give you keywords that associate with your brand or your competitors’ brand.
  • Service or product-specific keywords help an advertisement to reach out to customers who might not be keen on a particular brand or its competitors but the service they have to offer.
  • High-intent keywords help address consumers who are deep into the buying process already.
  • You can also focus on feature-specific keywords that stress the key aspects of a product, service, or brand that the customers are particularly interested in.

2. Tracking Your Competitors’ Keywords

Several tools help dive into your competitors’ campaigns and explore what keywords they use. Additionally, it is also beneficial to know the amount they are paying per click, per month, their ad position, and get an idea of the searches they’re targeting in which to appear. It is an effective avenue to identify high-value keywords that result in high-value traffic.

For instance, PromoNavi’s Competitor Analysis tool proves highly effective in this regard. While, on a broader level, it helps discover your competitors’ best PPC strategies for PPC optimization at a local level, you also get to cherry-pick the best keywords. By subscribing to the PPC updates of the tool, you will get regular updates on selected competitors.
 

3. Leverage Google Trends

Google Trends is where you can access a large-scale unfiltered sample of actual search requests that people make to Google. It categorizes and aggregates the search topics to offer a clear picture of peoples’ interest in particular topics from around the world up to as local as city-level geography.

There are two types of information you can access from Google Trends reports. First is the set of real-time data that covers information for the last seven days. The second is the set of non-real-time data, which can go as far back as 2004 and as recent as up to 36 hours before your search.
 

4. Use Automated Keyword Tools

There are various keyword tools, such as Semrush, Keywordtool.io, Answerthepublic, etc. They allow you to quickly get hundreds of PPC keywords. However, they don’t analyze your PPC campaigns and don’t give data-based keyword recommendations.

Tools like PromoNavi have automated PPC recommendations, generated from the accurate analysis of the campaign data 24/7. The negative keywords tool helps eliminate ineffective keywords and increase the effectiveness of one’s budget. On the other hand, the add keywords feature recommends effective keywords to maximize the number of effective clicks.

Moreover, PromoNavi’s Keyword Planner and Campaign Builder helps expand your list of keywords and make it easy to work with them by helping filter them with key metrics and keyword groups.
 

5. Get Keywords from Google Search Console

Google Search Console tools and reports prove effective in measuring your site’s search traffic and performance. It helps optimize your content by reporting queries that bring traffic to one’s site. Understanding the query is vital to choose the right sort of keywords.

To come up with relevant results, the Console tools analyze the marketer’s site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search by keywords. You can see which keywords triggered impressions, and you can use them in your PPC campaigns.
 

6. Scrap Google Autocompletions and Recent Searches

Users confront the Google Autocomplete feature regularly, where Google predicts users’ queries. The prediction is not random as it takes into account a user’s demographics. While these keywords sometimes appear to be irrelevant or indicative of unusual user habits, they are effective in expanding and strengthening your PPC keywords list. Efficient scraping of Google Autocomplete suggestions can be an efficient avenue to locate effective keywords.

You can also explore the area that shows related searches. It is found at the bottom of Google’s search results page. It could be a vital avenue to pick ideas for keywords list expansion.
 

7. Explore Keyword Planner Forecasts

While it is important to source relevant keywords and keep expanding your list to cover the maximum possible ground, it is also crucial that you keep refining your list by including the ones that have a better chance of performing well. The Google Keyword planner brings you insights into how your keywords might perform.

Google leverages the historical search data to estimate what you might get from a set of keywords based on your spending. The forecasts are especially useful when it comes to judicious spending of your budget. They help the marketer decide how to group the keywords and set bids.
 

To Wrap up

In conclusion, while we stress the importance of each of these strategies on a standalone basis, you must know how to deploy a mix of these strategies. A combination of multiple strategies might result in better outcomes than deploying a single one, and which ones work the best for your type of campaign can only be known once you have performed a certain number of trials and errors. If you do not have the time or budget to experiment or you are in a hurry to reach the audience within a limited time, it is always prudent to deploy automation tools.

No matter which strategy you choose, always keep an eye on the keyword match type you are following. A broad match leaves many things open for Google to interpret, while an exact match may restrict you from obtaining great potential placements. It is vital to keep a check on your negative keywords as they might prove severely counter-productive and take a toll on your budget before you even notice. It is also crucial to remember that while deploying multiple strategies may benefit you, not all strategies would prove similarly valuable for your purpose.

So pick, choose, and deploy carefully.