One of the most important PPC campaign factors is keyword research – listing the best keywords to bid on which are most likely to encourage clicks and conversions. In other words, keywords are what marketers use to define where their ads should appear. Before you start, make sure you undertake detailed keyword research. This is completed mainly about to understand your client and predict which terms / phrases i.e. keywords, users will be using when searching.
It’s no surprise that Pay per click advertising, be it through Facebook, Google, Bing or even Twitter promoted tweets, is one of the essential digital marketing mediums, enabling small businesses to reach their potential customers in a short period of time and effectively promote their products or services.
At the same time, utilising the correct keywords ensures your ads will show up at the right time and in the right place. However, the process of finding, filtering and evaluating those keywords can be a complicated process with important details affecting your final result.
In this article, you’ll learn a set of methodologies to help you acquire, define, and organise your PPC keywords to have targeted and more effective PPC campaigns. Let’s dive in.
Tip #1 Brainstorming a PPC Keyword List
Begin by scanning your landing page and gathering relevant keywords from the content. There should be enough material to put together a fairly effective list of keywords that relate to your products or services. Keywords can be broadly organised into the following groups:
- Brand keywords – include your brand name and trademarked terms. Usually, they have low costs, pretty high-quality scores, and are high in CTR.
- Generic keywords – relate to products or services your company provides. Those high-intent terms are actually used by users who are closest to the “bottom of the funnel” and most likely to buy.
- Related keywords – don’t directly relate to what you’re selling, but that users who want your products or services may be searching for. There is a chance to increase the conversion rate on broad keywords through retargeting strategies.
- Competitor keywords – the brand names of competitors who are providing similar products and services to yours. This allows you to get your brand and offerings in front of people who are searching for your competitors’ products or services.
- Long-tail keywords – the longer, specific, unique terms that are often very low-cost and have less competition, often have low volume.
- Negative keywords – the search terms that you don’t want your ads to show up for, and they’re an essential part of any campaign because they help control costs and keep your ad targeting as relevant as possible.
Some more tips for the keyword brainstorming stage:
- Start with generic keywords, and move to the specific.
- Include options and synonyms in the keyword list.
- Consider specificity when creating the keywords list.
- People don’t always type in perfect English, keyword lists can also include misspelled words.
- Keep an eye on your search query reports.
- Remember that you can apply multi-level negatives.
Tip #2 Expand and Refine Your List with Keyword Research
There are a lot of different keyword researching tools, but for now, we’ll suggest the most popular one – Google’s keyword planner. It’s packed with super-valuable insights that you can’t get from any other keyword research tool. So why use this tool? At first, you will want to use keyword research tools to expand the list of keywords you have researched. Begin with entering the terms you think your users would be searching for—even using some of the keywords already on your list—and look for recommendations.
And now it’s time to go ahead and make a short-list. It’s important to save the final list separately before you start cutting so that you can make rational decisions all at once. Then go back to Google’s search bar and upload the shortlist of keywords.
Actually, it’s possible to find low cost keywords with high search volume, and low competition. Don’t just look for a low-cost keyword. They can be high-value expensive, but be well worth it because they send more conversions and leads to your website. Take all of this into account when you start to cut keywords from your list.
#3 Grouping and Managing Your PPC Keywords
Once you’ve created a base of PPC keywords, you need to be able to group them to use in a more organised way that will optimise your time and budget. Through proper keyword management, you are able to target your users more efficiently, thereby reducing your investment.
Keyword segmentation is an overlooked part of the PPC campaign workflow. Not everyone realises that generating organised ad groups in your Google Adwords account can have a great impact on your overall account performance. The reason for this is that well-organised keyword groups improve your account’s relevance, which increases your quality score and lowers your cost per click.
Grouping and managing your keyword list improves your PPC strategies by enabling you to create:
- More quality–score ad groups
- More relevant text captions
- More effective landing pages that drive more leads.
Moreover, besides grouping by subject relevance, it’s a good call to also group by user intent or by sales funnel when possible.
You’re not going to discover every keyword you should bid on in the PPC campaign on the first, so update your keyword list regularly. We suggest spending over 20% of your PPC management time on PPC keyword gathering. Ideally, you’ll do a little bit of keyword research every week. Over time, your account will get stronger and more relevant because of it.