What is the importance of keyword research?

For any PPC ad campaign, keyword research is important and keyword tools are indispensable for conducting keyword research. The tools not only help you identify the latest trends but can also let you know negative keywords and give you a whole host of suggestions that you can use. A successful campaign requires a lot of research and sticking to just Google Keywords Planner is not advisable, even though it is a very useful tool.

Before you use any tool sit down and brain storm ideas of what your prospective visitors might use. Ask your customers and staff. Make 2 columns. One for Main and one for extension. The main can form the basis of your campaign and extension the ad group. With these words you can start to use the tools below

Proper research, by using multiple tools, can supercharge your campaign

Search query reports

If you are already using Adwords or Bing Search query reports (SQRs), from both Google and Bing, can also help you to find new keywords. The reports tell you what queries triggered your ads and which of them matched the keywords that you already incorporate and to what extent. In particular, you can find out more specific keywords that you can employ instead of just general ones. For example, “willow tree surgeon” instead of just “tree surgeon”.

Google trends

This tool is very useful if you are looking to find related searches that are either very popular or whose popularity is rising. It shows the results for both topics of interest as well as search queries. Of course, it also tells you how popular your own keyword is and is useful for figuring out outdated keywords as well as trends by geographical location.

Below, you can find an example of campaigns and ad groups to consider for tree surgeons

Bing Ads Intelligence

This is a tool similar to the Google Keywords Planner. It is available for download as an Excel plug-in. While it is free, you do need to be running a Windows operating system.

Internet Marketing Ninjas keyword tool

This tool is very useful for anybody who wants to quickly generate a list of keywords from just a few base words. It is available for free. You just have to enter two separate lists of base words and the tool will give you all possible combinations containing one phrase from each list. This is a great time saver.

The below images show an example of the way this tool works:

Your website’s internal search engine

The search engine in your website is also used by visitors who will indicate search behaviour your prospective users are using.

Use Google predicated searches

With increased mobile use the predictive searches are being used more and more. These can be added as themes or added as negatives if not relevant.

Other tools to consider

• Webmaster tools of Bing and Google
• Google Correlate
• Keyword IO. This is so good we have a whole blog post dedicated to it.