How To Find The Right PPC Keywords

PPC keywords are the bread and butter of a PPC campaign, and a great keyword strategy can be the difference between high-performing campaigns that drive awesome results, or budget-wasting ads that aren’t performing to standard.

We’re giving you a sneak peek into our Comprehensive Guide To PPC Keywords, which explores all things keyword-related and essential to drive the results you want to see from your paid search efforts.

What Are PPC Keywords?

At the core of every successful PPC campaign lies a crucial component – PPC keywords. These keywords are the backbone of your paid search strategy, helping your ads show up when users search for specific terms related to your business.

Understanding how to choose, optimise, and leverage PPC keywords can make or break your campaign’s success. But what exactly should you be doing to find and optimise the right PPC keywords to drive traffic and boost conversions? Let’s dive in!

PPC Keyword Basics

So, where should you start when first crafting your PPC keyword strategy?

Keyword intent, match types, and keyword relevance all play a huge role in ensuring your keyword strategy is up to par.

Understanding Keyword Intent

Keyword intent is one of the most important factors to consider when crafting your keyword strategy for PPC. The intent of the keyword, sometimes referred to as search intent or user intent, represents the reason for the user’s search and the results the user expects to find with their search.

Keywords fall into four main categories for intent – informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.

Informational	Users are looking to learn about a certain topic, such as ‘what is an MOT?’
Navigational	Users are looking for a specific webpage or address for a location such as ‘Mikes garage MOT address.’
Commercial	Users are researching their options and gathering necessary information to make an educated decision such as ‘best value MOT garages,’ or ‘average price of MOT.’
Transactional	Users are looking to take a specific action and are ready to make a purchase, such as ‘book MOT test Dewsbury.’

As we move down the above categories, we see the different part of the sales funnel, with users more likely to take action or ‘convert’ in the commercial and transactional intent phases.

In our latest whitepaper, we discuss how you taking intent into consideration when conduction your keyword research can help you to best meet your business goals and objectives – find out more here.

Ultimately, understanding the intent behind different keywords and keyword types can be hugely helpful when it comes to targeting the right audience.

PPC Keyword Match Types

Keywords can be added to ad groups as 3 different match types. The match types dictates how closely a search term needs to match the keyword for the ad to be considered in the auction. The match types are Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match.

Broad Match	Broad Match keywords are the most flexible and allow Google to use intent signals, landing page content, and other data points to determine when your ad will be considered in the auction. For example, a broad match keyword such as ‘pink trainers’ will trigger for the same searches as phrase and exact match, plus a wide range of other terms including ‘sports trainers for women,’ ‘comfortable trainers under £200,’ and ‘trainer store UK.’
Phrase Match	Phrase Match keywords allow for a little less flexibility and can trigger ads to show for keywords that include the meaning of of your keyword. For example, ‘pink trainers’ will trigger for the the same searches as exact match, plus ‘trainers for tennis pink,’ ‘sports sneakers,’ and ‘comfortable pink shoes.’
Exact Match	Exact Match keywords are the most strict, with ads only showing search terms that match or have the same meaning as the keyword. For example, ‘pink trainers’ will trigger for that exact keyword, or small variations such as ‘trainers pink’ and ‘pink sneakers.’

Keyword Relevance For Quality Score

Keyword relevance is one of the three key components of quality score, which is an extremely important tool giving advertisers an indication of how well their campaigns and website match with keywords.

Quality score is calculated from three core metrics, which are:

1. Ad relevance: how closely your ad matches to what the user is searching for (keyword relevance)
2. Expected CTR: how likely users are to click on your ad when shown
3. Landing page experience: how relevant and useful your landing page is for the user once they have clicked on your ad

Each of these metrics can be optimised to obtain a higher quality score, which in turn, can lead to a better ad rank, higher position and increased ad performance.

Find out how you improve your keyword relevance in our comprehensive guide to PPC keywords – download here.

Optimising PPC Keywords

So, you’ve done your research and found your keywords – now what?

High-performing keyword strategies are constantly being monitored and improved, refined and updated – all to ensure that the right keywords, reach the right people, at the right time.

Keep on scrolling for some of the ways that you can optimise your keywords to drive the results that you want to see.

Strategies To Refine PPC Keywords

There are so many strategies and preferred ways of working when it comes to developing a keyword strategy, so we’ve shared just a few of the ways in which you can work on refining your strategy to best drive performance.

Monitor Keyword Performance

Regularly check the performance of your keywords to avoid budget being wasted on keywords that aren’t performing, and just as importantly, to allocate additional budget to keywords are driving conversions. If a keyword hasn’t converted but is showing a high CPA, low ROI, or is still spending your budget within timeframe that doesn’t add up to your forecasted trends, make sure these are paused as to not waste any more resource on underperformers.

Avoid Keyword Cannibalisation

Don’t add the same keyword to multiple ad groups. If you do, these keywords can compete against each other in an auction and drive up cost-per-click (CPC). It could also cause you to lose track of the performance of that specific keyword, due to performance data being split.

Consider Campaign Goals

Ensure the keywords you’re using are also relevant to the goals of your PPC campaign. For example, if your goal is to increase revenue from selling protein powder through non-branded keywords, include keywords that would indicate that those searching are ready to buy, such as ‘protein powder for muscle gain.’ More specific, targeted searches like these indicate a user with high intent to purchase.

Using Negative Keywords

Of course, targeting the right audience with your PPC campaigns is key – but so is excluding the wrong audience.

This is where negative keywords come into play. Negative keywords are terms that prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches, saving you from wasting ad spend on clicks that won’t convert.

Some of the ways that using negative keywords in your campaigns can help improve your campaign performance include:

1. Improving relevance: by filtering out unrelated search terms, negative keywords ensure your ads are only shown to users with genuine interest in your products or services.
2. Maximising budget efficiency: instead of paying for clicks that don’t drive value, your ad budget can be allocated more strategically toward potential customers who are more likely to convert.
3. Boosts click-through rate (CTR): when your ad appears in relevant searches, it increases the likelihood of clicks from users genuinely interested in what you offer, ultimately improving your CTR and quality score.

By strategically incorporating negative keywords into your keyword strategy, you can refine your targeting, improve your ad performance, and get the most out of your PPC budget.

We talk more about negative keywords and their impact in our PPC keyword guide, designed to help advertisers to harness the power of their keyword strategy and drive results. Download it here.

A Comprehensive Guide To PPC Keywords

This Q4, we’re leaving no stone unturned and revealing our top PPC tips, tricks, and tactics!

Introducing ‘A Comprehensive Guide To PPC Keywords’ – containing all of the insights you need to have your keyword strategy one to go down in history. Put together by our experienced team of PPC experts, it has everything you need to craft a performance-driving, conversion-boosting keyword strategy.

And we’re sharing it… with you… for free… no strings attached!

Download your copy here.