We all know that PPC advertising puts your brand in front of potential clients and customers within minutes, but the key is being in front of the right potential clients and customers. This is where PPC keyword research comes in handy.
Keywords serve as a connection between search queries that people make and the products your business offers. Doing proper research allows advertisers to dig up the keywords and phrases that their target audience is using, while also enabling them to understand their intentions, and view the bigger picture, as far as competition and cost are concerned, at least.
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 provide an answer to 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 could be interested in demo requests. A website selling products could be concerned with purchases and earnings. The local plumber can define success in terms of call requests. Depending on the objective set, different approaches are needed when considering keywords.
Take into consideration several basic questions:
- What product/service do you market?
- What constitutes the conversion?
- How much is it worth for your business?
An approach like this provides a solid foundation for evaluating keyword efficiency.
Let's say that a branding/design agency can afford to pay £100 for one customer and has a high conversion rate from the searches related to 'design agency Leeds.' Such keywords require careful consideration despite their relatively high cost per click. Meanwhile, an inexpensive keyword generating traffic that does not result in conversions could be slowly bleeding the budget.
As far as PPC marketing is a numbers game, provide numbers with something meaningful to calculate with.
Build a Broad Seed Keyword List
Use obvious keywords based on your products and services and customer issues. They will form the 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 expanding according to how customers search and think. Think about the features of the product, their usage, brands, locations, target audience and the purchase process. A person who searches for "best running shoes for beginners" is a customer who thinks differently from one who searches for "Nike Pegasus size 10." The same expansion logic applies on the organic side, and our complete guide to keyword research for SEO walks through the seed-to-cluster process in more detail.
Your competitor's websites, autocomplete, questions asked by customers, and even search data on your website could provide you with valuable insights. Your sales team most likely already knows a whole box full of expressions customers use in everyday life, usually without even realising it.
Focus on Search Intent
Search intent is probably the most crucial concept for keyword research in PPC.
It can mean that the user performs a search to study something, compare options, navigate somewhere, or that they have high purchase intentions. 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 all share the same general theme, but their commercial value can vary massively.
Keyword phrases that include words like 'buy', 'order', 'price', 'quote', 'discount', 'deal', 'near me', 'service', 'consultation', or precise product names usually point to a higher purchase intention. Your mileage here may vary, depending on your industry, so remember to bear in mind any historical data that you have from previous campaigns. If you are still separating commercial terms from informational ones, this breakdown of SEO keyword analysis covers how short-tail and long-tail terms map to different stages of intent.
Analyse Keyword Metrics
After amassing your own keyword list, evaluate your keywords by looking at their performance data and market trends.
Search Volume
This refers to how many searches a keyword gets per month. High search volume may give you high traffic potential, but could also bring about stiff competition.
While a keyword that gets 10,000 searches per month sounds promising, not all of those searches are potential customers, so that high volume isn't too 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 paid by advertisers for clicking on ads. If a keyword is expensive, then that is usually due to high commercial competition. This can be taken as an indicator that businesses find value in that keyword.
Monitor your CPC from campaigns and compare it to that offered by keyword tools. 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. If you want a wider view of the tool landscape, this rundown of performance marketing tools for SaaS PPC compares what each platform is actually good at.
Competition
Keyword tools generally offer competition signals. While these may give some insight into the advertising environment, they should not become the only means 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 fails to convert much could have its budget lowered compared to a lesser one that brings valuable leads. Consider the following parameters: conversion rate, cost per conversion, conversion value, and revenue where possible.
In the case of 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 helps too, as SEO and PPC data used together tends to reveal which terms are worth defending on both channels.
Calculate the Economics
Let's take a closer look at a keyword which has an average CPC of £2.50 with a 5% conversion rate. This implies that 20 clicks are needed to achieve one conversion, giving 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 use the CPA to compare it with your allowable CPA. There is much more that goes into real campaigns, but even this simple calculation can save you from wasting money.
Use Long-Tail Keywords Strategically
Long-tail keywords have more detailed phrasing and show more explicit 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 specificity may well make the searches more relevant to your product or service. Search Engine Land's guide to long-tail keywords makes a similar point: lower volume tends to come with lower competition and clearer intent.
Long-tail keywords can be used by advertisers to hone in on what their target audience really wants. This is because the phrasing of a long-tail search tells us explicitly what is important to the person making the search, which could be almost anything, from location, to price, or a key feature that gives the product a USP.
Find Negative Keywords
Keyword research should also include terms that should not be associated with your ad. The use of negative keywords could help you avoid clicks that are not relevant at all. A high-end furniture store might choose to exclude searches with "free," "DIY" or "second hand," depending on their business model.
Search-term reports need to be checked frequently to discover those 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. Incorporating relevant negative keywords can help increase traffic quality and make a huge difference when it comes to conversions and conversion rate.
Organise Keywords Into Tight Themes
It all starts to make sense when a large list of keywords is well-organised. Grouping similar words in the form of ad groups depending on product, service, intent, or consumer needs works well. A running shoe campaign would be able to split its ad groups up between "trail running shoes," "road running shoes," and "marathon running shoes." Niche accounts benefit most from this, as these PPC campaign strategies for niche businesses show.
Such organisation helps create more relevant ads and landing pages. If all those elements (keyword, ad copy and landing page) share a common language, it will be easier for users to get the message. That alignment is worth auditing separately, and these tips for improving PPC landing page experience cover the message-matching side of it. Well-organised data also allows for easier optimisation. It's easier to see which themes require more budget and which themes require more attention.
Conclusion
Effective PPC keyword research comes down to a combination of market knowledge, psychology, user intent and finance.
Get the ball rolling by clarifying your business objectives, creating a comprehensive seed list and assessing keywords based on relevance, intent, competition, cost per click and conversion rate. Don't forget to utilise long-tailed keywords to target niche requirements, negative keywords to keep spending under control and structured campaigns for improved 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 allows the right customer and the right offer to meet.
When keyword research is viewed as a commercial process, rather than an obligatory tick-box exercise on the to-do list prior to launch, PPC becomes a genuinely useful tool for discovering the searches where you can get 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.
