We all know PPC advertising puts your brand in front of potential clients and customers within minutes, but the key is reaching the right ones. This is where PPC keyword research comes in handy.
Keywords connect search queries to the products your business offers. Proper research lets advertisers uncover the keywords and phrases their target audience uses, while also helping them understand intent and see the bigger picture, at least when it comes to competition and cost.
The point is not to gather as many keywords as possible all at once. The point is to create a set of search phrases with commercial prospects. In other words, keyword research should answer the following question: What search queries will produce valuable results from advertisements?
Start With Business Goals
Prior to opening a keyword research tool, consider what the ad campaign needs to accomplish.
An accounting software provider might focus on demo requests. A website selling products might focus on purchases and revenue. A local plumber can define success in terms of calls. Depending on the objective, you'll need different keyword approaches.
Take into consideration several basic questions:
- What product/service do you market?
- What constitutes the conversion?
- How much is it worth for your business?
This approach provides a solid foundation for evaluating keyword efficiency.
Let's say a branding/design agency can afford to pay £100 per customer and has a high conversion rate from searches related to 'design agency Leeds.' Such keywords require careful consideration despite their relatively high cost per click. Meanwhile, an inexpensive keyword that generates traffic but doesn't convert could slowly bleed the budget.
PPC marketing is a numbers game, so provide numbers you can use to calculate.
Build a Broad Seed Keyword List
Use obvious keywords based on your products and services and customer issues. These will serve as seeds for keyword research.
The list for a running shoes company could look like:
- Running shoes
- Road running shoes
- Trail running shoes
- Women's running shoes
- Men's running shoes
- Lightweight running shoes
But the list will inevitably need to expand based on how customers search and think. Consider the product's features, usage, brands, locations, target audience, and the purchase process. A person who searches for "best running shoes for beginners" thinks differently from someone who searches for "Nike Pegasus size 10." The same expansion logic applies to organic search, and our complete guide to keyword research for SEO walks through the seed-to-cluster process in more detail.
Your competitors' websites, autocomplete suggestions, customer questions, and even your website's search data can provide valuable insights. These insights can also inform automated content creation for marketing campaigns. Your sales team likely already knows a whole box full of expressions customers use in everyday life, often without realizing it.
Focus on Search Intent
Search intent is probably the most crucial concept in PPC keyword research.
It can mean the user searches to learn something, compare options, navigate somewhere, or has high purchase intent. The last type of intent is especially useful since the user is already close to making a decision.
Let's consider these queries:
- "How do running shoes work"
- "Best running shoes for marathon training"
- "Running shoes discount"
- "Buy marathon running shoes"
They share a general theme, but their commercial value can vary widely.
Keyword phrases that include words like 'buy', 'order', 'price', 'quote', 'discount', 'deal', 'near me', 'service', 'consultation', or precise product names usually indicate higher purchase intent. Your mileage may vary by industry, so keep in mind any historical data from previous campaigns. If you are still separating commercial terms from informational ones, this SEO keyword analysis breakdown shows how short-tail and long-tail terms map to different stages of intent.
Analyze Keyword Metrics
After building your own keyword list, evaluate your keywords by reviewing performance data and market trends.
Search Volume
This refers to how many times a keyword is searched per month. High search volume may mean high traffic potential, but it can also bring stiff competition.
A keyword with 10,000 searches per month sounds promising, but not all of those searches are potential customers, so that high volume isn't always impressive. A lower-volume but highly relevant keyword that gets 500 searches could be a better investment.
Cost Per Click
Cost-per-click is the price advertisers pay when someone clicks an ad. If a keyword is expensive, it's usually because of high commercial competition. This can indicate that businesses value that keyword.
Monitor your campaign CPC and compare it with what keyword tools offer. Google's own guidance on optimising your keyword list explains how Keyword Planner estimates competition and volume, but ultimately, the data you get from your accounts will be more valuable than general market information. For a broader view of the tool landscape, this rundown of performance marketing tools for SaaS PPC compares what each platform does best.
Competition
Keyword tools generally offer competition signals. While these may offer some insight into the advertising environment, they shouldn't be the only basis for keyword choice. Competition provides information about the bidding process, but not about whether the keyword will actually yield profitable leads.
Conversion Potential
Here is the strategic part of keyword research. A keyword that attracts a lot of traffic but converts poorly may warrant a lower budget than a lesser one that brings valuable leads. Consider conversion rate, cost per conversion, conversion value, and revenue where possible.
For ecommerce campaigns, revenue and ROI are particularly informative. Lead generation campaigns should focus on lead quality and customer lifetime value. Pairing this with your organic data also helps, as SEO and PPC data together tend to reveal which terms are worth defending across both channels.
Calculate the Economics
Let's take a closer look at a keyword with an average CPC of £2.50 and a 5% conversion rate. This means you need 20 clicks to get one conversion, for an average acquisition cost of £50. If the gross profit of this particular conversion is £150 on average, there is enough headroom for advertising expenses.
On the other hand, when the gross profit is £35, everything looks different.
The equation becomes:
Cost per acquisition = CPC ÷ conversion rate
Example:
£2.50 ÷ 0.05 = £50 CPA
Then you can compare the CPA with your allowable CPA. Real campaigns involve much more, but even this simple calculation can save you from wasting money.
Use Long-Tail Keywords Strategically
Long-tail keywords use more specific phrasing and show clearer intent.
Some examples are:
- "Women's waterproof trail running shoes"
- "Emergency boiler repair Manchester"
- "Accounting software for small construction companies"
These searches will have less volume than broad keywords, but their specificity may make them more relevant to your product or service. Search Engine Land's guide to long-tail keywords makes a similar point: lower volume tends to mean less competition and clearer intent.
Advertisers can use long-tail keywords to hone in on what their target audience really wants. This is because the phrasing of a long-tail search tells us explicitly what matters to the person making the search, from location to price to a key feature that gives the product a USP.
Find Negative Keywords
Keyword research should also include terms that shouldn't be associated with your ad. Keywords can help you avoid clicks that aren't relevant. A high-end furniture store might exclude searches with "free," "DIY," or "second hand," depending on its business model.
Search-term reports frequently show irrelevant searches that triggered your ads. This step will show you some interesting aspects of the search world. People are pretty inventive when using Google. Adding relevant negative keywords can improve traffic quality and make a huge difference in conversions and conversion rate.
Organize Keywords Into Tight Themes
It all makes sense when a large list of keywords is well organized. Grouping similar words into ad groups based on product, service, intent, or consumer needs works well. A running shoe campaign can split its ad groups into "trail running shoes," "road running shoes," and "marathon running shoes." Niche accounts benefit most from this, as these PPC campaign strategies show.
Such organization helps create more relevant ads and landing pages. If all those elements (keyword, ad copy, and landing page) share a common language, users will find the message easier to understand. That alignment is worth auditing separately, and these tips for improving the PPC landing page experience cover the message-matching side. Well-organized data also makes optimization easier. It's easier to see which themes need more budget and which need more attention.
Conclusion
Effective PPC keyword research comes down to a combination of market knowledge, psychology, user intent and finance.
Get started by clarifying your business objectives, creating a comprehensive seed list, and assessing keywords for relevance, intent, competition, cost per click, and conversion rate. Don't forget to use long-tail keywords to target niche requirements, negative keywords to keep spending under control, and structured campaigns to improve relevance. Once the structure is stable, these practices for improving PPC campaign performance are the natural next step.
The best keyword is, all too often, not the one with the largest number next to it. Most of the time, it's the one that brings the right customer and the right offer together.
When you view keyword research as a commercial process, rather than an obligatory tick-box exercise before launch, PPC becomes a genuinely useful tool for finding the best combination of search volume, relevance, and value. Automation is changing how much of this work is manual, so it is worth understanding how AI is reshaping PPC campaign management before your next build.
