The Google Ads keyword planner is the best place to start when building out an optimised keywords list for your PPC or SEO campaigns. It’s a great tool for finding new, long-tail keywords that have the most potential to drive traffic. This will help you find the right audience and fine-tune your campaigns quickly and easily.
Our keyword research process typically starts with a brainstorming session, where we identify the target keywords for our campaigns and then dig into the keyword planner to find related terms that will help us reach potential new customers.
The Google Ads keyword planner makes it easy to find a list of keywords that are related to your business and the products or services you offer. These can be broad terms like “Insurance” or more specific ones like “Car Insurance for Teen Drivers”. The keyword planner can also find words that are more obscure and less searched for on a regular basis, but still represent potential opportunities for your business.
It all depends on what you’re looking to accomplish with your PPC campaigns. If you want to reach new customers who aren’t actively searching for the products or services you offer, then you’ll want to use more broad and general terms. If your goal is to generate new leads, then a wide range of keywords will help you reach both searchers who are actively looking for your product or service as well as people who may not have considered using it before.
The keyword planner is a powerful tool, and you can use it to find related keywords that are much more specific or long-tail than the terms you came up with on your own. If you’re just getting started and aren’t sure how to choose the right keywords, the planner makes it easy to find “what if” queries that can help you refine your approach and fill in any gaps.
So, what are those target keywords? Is there a list of terms that would be appropriate for your PPC campaign? If so, feel free to copy them directly into the Google Ads keyword planner. If not, identify the top 3-5 product or service keywords that you want to target with your PPC campaign. For example, if you’re a plumber looking for new clients in Boston, consider using terms like “plumbing” and “plumber near me”.
Next, brainstorm a list of high-level topics related to your product or service. For example, if you’re a plumber looking for new business in Boston near Brookline, some additional keyword ideas might be: “plumbing repair” and “plumbing services near me”.
Once you have a list of target keywords, it’s time to enter them into the Google Ads keyword planner and run a search campaign.
Google’s keyword planner will show you the number of searches for each term that it finds. But, more importantly, it can help you find related terms and phrases that aren’t mentioned in your initial list. This is where the real power of this tool comes into play.
Here’s how you can use it as well:
Step by step guide:
1. Log into your Google Ads account and click Tools and Settings
2. Click on Keyword Planner
3. Select your account and click on Discover New Keywords
4. Enter your target keyword(s), location(s) and language(s) and click Get Results
5. Tick the keywords that you want to include in your plan. There’s no right or wrong answer regarding metrics like competition and average monthly statistics. However if you’re on a tight budget then we recommend sticking to the lower competition keywords with lower bids.
6. Select Plan or Existing Campaign depending on whether you’re ready to go live with the new keywords immediately or just want to include them in a plan for now. Select the match type and click Add Keywords
That’s it, you have now built an optimised keywords list that is catered to your campaign. You are all set now to continue building your plan or launch your new campaign. Good Luck!
