Any successful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign hinges on choosing the keywords most likely to result in clicks and conversions. If you’re looking for PPC services in Raleigh, you should make sure that the company you’re looking at knows these methods of comprehensive keyword research.
Brainstorm a PPC Keyword List
The first step to keyword research is to look through the landing pages that your keywords will link to. Scan each page and get keywords from your copy. Keywords are organized into the following types:
- Brand terms – Keywords with your brand name and trademarked items.
- Generic terms – Keywords relating to any products or services you offer.
- Related terms – Keywords that aren’t directly related to anything that you offer, but that your users may be searching for.
- Competitor terms – Keywords with the brand names of your competitors.
A good idea would be to include variations and synonyms in your keyword list. You should also consider specificity when selecting keywords, as broad keywords could be used by people searching for items irrelevant to your brand. A very specific, long-tail keyword phrase, on the other hand, might only get a handful of searches per month. This would make the user more likely to follow through with a purchase.
Use the Latest Keyword Research Tools
Now that you have a decent list of terms, you should now use keyword research tools to determine which keywords you can use and which you should drop. There are several tools that you can use to give insight into how popular certain keywords are.
One of those tools is Google’s Keyword Planner. This tool has statistics for search volume and “Competition” rating. The higher the search volume, the more people are searching for that term per month. The “Competition” rating has three ranks, from high to medium to low. The higher the rank, the more that advertisers are bidding on those keywords, which means you’ll have to pay more to get your ad to the top spot.
Add Negative Keywords
An important part of any campaign is negative keywords – keywords that you don’t want your ads to show up for. This is to keep your ad targeting as relevant as possible and to prevent your ads from showing up alongside irrelevant search queries.
Some tips for finding negative keywords are:
- Watch over your search query reports. When you see words in your search query report that you know don’t fit your brand, set them as negatives.
- Learn your negative match types. The match type you assign to each negative keyword has a great impact on its traffic. Use broad match negatives to disqualify any query that contains your negative term.
- Explore negative keyword options. The more negative keywords you set before your campaign kicks off, the more money you save right off the bat.
PPC advertising is an art form. You can avoid missed sales by understanding how to do PPC keyword research with care. Great PPC keyword research also helps you tailor your keywords, ads, and landing pages and hone the customer journey.