How to Find Profitable Keywords? (2024)

In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, there is an endless list of things to learn. But before you dive into the bottomless pit, it’s imperative that you get acquainted with keyword research first. This should be the foundation of your advertising efforts, and everything that happens with your ads thereafter is underpinned by your keyword research.

Do it right and you will lay the groundwork for successful, profitable campaigns. Do it wrong, and you may just go bust, spelling disaster for your marketing, and possibly your business as a whole.

In this article, we’re going to find out why PPC keyword research is important, and then show you how to do keyword research for Google Ads.

Ready? Let’s get cracking.

What is Keyword Research?

A keyword is a word or phrase that people enter into search engines when they are looking for information — they are user search queries. Great content includes keywords that are closely aligned with user intent, making your content more relevant to your target audience, and also making it easier for them to find in search engines.

Keyword research is how we find these terms for our content creation, marketing, and advertising. Before we dive into that, you should understand how keywords can be classified.

• Head terms — Usually one word. These are broad terms that have a high search volume but poor targeting. (e.g. football)
• Body keywords — 2-3 word phrases that have a decent search volume. (blue leather football)
• Long-tail keywords — Longer phrases of 4+ words that have a lower search volume, but it is very targeted. (e.g. men’s blue leather football boots)

As you can see, longer phrases are more specific and therefore will attract more targeted traffic.

Getting Started with Keyword Research

Knowing your audience is crucial. Once you have identified your niche and created detailed audience personas, you can look to create a spreadsheet and compile a keyword list that has a good balance of head terms, body, and long-tail phrases.

Here are ten tips to ensure you end up with a set of keywords destined to succeed.

1. Never Underestimate Keyword Relevance

If you want to rank for a specific keyword, then you should build relevant content around that keyword in the form of a valuable blog or service page. In advertising, relevance has a major impact on your quality score, so you only create ads that are relevant to viewers.

2. Check Keyword Search Volume and Competition

In every keyword research tool, you can view metrics for each keyword. Two of the most important values to consider are search volume and competition.

• Search volume — Take care to select keywords that will drive more traffic to your site. If the search tools indicate your preferred keyword doesn’t get many monthly searches, try some synonyms, as they may have a higher search volume.
• Competition — By conducting a quick Google search with the personalization option disabled, you can see who is currently ranking for specific keywords. This will give you a basic overview of your competition.

3. Find Related Terms by Latent Semantic Indexing

Search engines use latent semantic indexing (LSI) to provide closely-related pages whenever people search. A solid keyword strategy should involve finding good LSI keywords for your content, as it helps strengthen your content with greater relevance and reach.

4. Aim to Maximize Keyword ROI by Considering User Intent

As long-tail keywords are more specific, they attract people further along the customer’s journey. By controlling the keywords of each page on your site, you exercise control over the types of users that arrive on that page.

So, to attract users at the beginning of their search process you can use broader terms that are less action-oriented. Conversely, if you want to boost conversions, consider including a call-to-action (CTA) in your key phrases for that page.

5. Identify Negative Keywords

Just as you can consider user intent to discover search terms your ideal customers are using, you can also identify search queries that are being used by unqualified leads.

These terms are known as negative keywords. Finding these terms and adding them to your ad campaigns helps filter out irrelevant traffic, which benefits you in several ways:

• Saves you money otherwise wasted on irrelevant ad clicks.
• Ensures your traffic is more qualified, and therefore more likely to convert.
• Makes your content and ads more relevant to viewers.

With these benefits in mind, it is clear negative keyword research is no afterthought – you should spend just as much time on it as you do on normal keyword research.

6. Gauge Performance in PPC Tests

In the beginning, there is a certain amount of guesswork as it’s hard to know which phrases will be popular among users.

If you want to quickly discover potentially lucrative keywords, try running some PPC tests on Google Ads. Gauge their performance to see which terms show the most promise for use in organic search marketing.

7. Create Scalable Keyword Groupings

After you have identified some popular terms, you should look to create a solid group of keywords that is scalable. Ideally, this will be a batch of high-value keywords that you can create content on for the foreseeable future with the view to boosting your website authority on a niche topic.

8. Know the Trending Topics

Regardless of your niche, the most popular terms will probably already be fiercely competitive. By keeping a close watch on Google Trends and Twitter, you can determine trending terms and topics, which makes it easier to create relevant, current content that has little competition but a lot of interest.

9. Make it Location based

Honing your focus to target location-based keywords tends to garner better results, as you compete with fewer people, and cater to a very segmented audience.

10. Use Branded Key Phrases

Forging your own brand identity is vital, and you can expedite this mission by creating and using your own branded keywords. Once you populate the top search spots for your own brand terms, you can leverage your reputation to combat any negative feedback or poor reviews.

Top Tools for Keyword Research

So, now that you’re ready to get started with keyword research, you just need to pick the right tool. There are plenty on the market, many which offer free trials.

Here are some of the best to try out:

1. SEMrush
2. Ahrefs
3. Google Keyword Planner
4. Google Trend
5. Moz Keyword tool
6. KWFinder
7. Spy Fu

How PPCexpo Can Help You

When you have completed your initial keyword research, the next stage is to measure performance. By integrating reports from PPCexpo, you can get deeper insights into your campaign performance, which will allow you to make smarter marketing decisions. Consider using some of these reports:

• Keyword Period Over Period Report – do a thorough historical analysis of the keyword
• Top Movers Report – What campaigns, ad groups or keywords saw the largest moves
• What’s Changed Report – Identify the components that are involved in driving significant changes.
• Most Significant Keyword Report – this report helps to identify the keywords which contributed significantly to your account’s performance

Ultimately, keyword research is the foundation of any successful PPC campaign. But it doesn’t stop there, as you must analyze performance and look to identify the most significant keywords to maximize your return.