Editor's Note: Roy Dopaishi writes about content marketing and advertising for Paidtraffic. Today, he joins us to share the best methods for finding great keywords to use in content and PPC campaigns.
An AdWords campaign is driven by keyword research. Target the right keywords, and your ads appear at just the right moment when prospects are searching for the products and services your business offers. But if you target keywords that are too broad or narrow, you run the risk of failing to reach customers and wasting your adspend.
This is why it’s so important to identify the right keywords before launching your campaign. But what’s the best way to do it?
There are many tools to help you with this vital task. Google’s Keyword Planner is often cited as a useful start - in addition to giving keyword ideas, it uses analytics to make predictions and improve suggestions.
The problem with Google’s tool is that thousands of others use it, so there will most likely be plenty of competition for your target keywords. Relying solely on this tool also restricts your reach, as it only provides limited keyword samples.
Fortunately, there are many other methods of finding the right keywords to target. Implementing these can give your AdWords campaign a major competitive advantage, since most advertisers don't bother. Let’s get started!
- Question and Answer Sites
Quora is an excellent way to find common questions that prospects are asking.
A search for “kitchen remodeling” yields the following results:
Browsing through Quora results provides rich keyword suggestions that you may have otherwise missed. These queries can then be plugged into Keyword Planner to generate even more ideas.
For example: if your business does kitchen renovations, then after reading related conversations, you might include keywords such as “cost of kitchen remodel” or “finance a kitchen remodel” in your ad groups. These are also excellent topics to create blog posts around.
Yahoo Answers is another popular question and answer site you can use to find keyword ideas.
- Google Keyword Suggestions
When typing in a search query, Google displays keyword suggestions in the search box.
This is another way to find related keyword ideas based on your initial search query. Entering in different letters of the alphabet displays additional results. However, typing in each letter and copying the results can be rather tedious.
KeywordTool.io is a free keyword research tool that uses Google Autocomplete and other search engines including YouTube and Amazon to generate a comprehensive list of keywords. This tool parses the results so you can easily select relevant keywords and export them to a spreadsheet.
Here is an example of Google Autocomplete results:
And results from Amazon:
One thing to keep in mind is keyword intent and type. Simply adding every single keyword to your ad groups is a recipe for disaster. Instead, think about the intention behind your keywords and whether they apply to your business.
- Competition Research
There is one source you should never overlook: your competitors.
Competitors in your industry are more than likely using AdWords to bid on relevant keywords, so keeping an eye on your competitors can provide additional keyword ideas. Identify competitors by searching for your target keywords and entering their URLs into SEMrush.
Here is an overview of top organic keywords for trekkinghero.com:
And top paid keywords:
Note that the tool only provides limited keyword data. To see a full report, you need a paid subscription to the site, but you can perform basic keyword research for free.
- LSI Keywords
Search engines are getting increasingly sophisticated.
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are phrases semantically related to your main keywords. For instance, if a page contains keywords like “Apple”, “Macbook”, and “computer”, Google knows the page is about technology rather than fruit, and won't deliver it to the wrong people.
Use tools like LSIGraph to generate a list of LSI keywords:
These keywords can not only be added to your campaign, but included within the content on your page to help it rank better in organic search results.
- Your Own Search Data
If you have a Google AdWords campaign running, then you already have potentially valuable keyword data at your fingertips.
You can view actual search terms that have triggered your ads from the Campaigns menu. Simply click the “Keywords” tab, and then click the “Search terms” button:
The Search Terms report shows queries that are triggering your ads.
This information is valuable for two reasons, as you can:
- Identify search terms with high profit potential
- Identify irrelevant terms to add as negative keywords
Be sure to regularly comb through your own data to find more valuable keywords to add to your PPC campaign.
Conclusion
Finding the right keywords is essential to gain measurable results, and it doesn’t take much effort. Less than half an hour of your time can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your ads, so there simply are no downsides to doing the research. Take advantage of your new knowledge, gain an edge on your competitors, and get started today!
Learn more with these related OMI classes:
Fundamentals of Measuring Search ROI
Creating and Curating Content People Love
Visit the Online Marketing Institute to browse over 400 classes in the digital and social media marketing space.