Keyword Research

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is keyword research?

So now we know what keywords and keyword lists are, and why they’re important. But if you’re just starting, how do you go about creating these all important lists? We are now entering the realm of keyword research.

Keyword research is the process by which lists of keywords relating to a product or service are created, using tools like the Google Keyword Planner.

PPC and SEO keyword research

Now, depending on whether you are pursuing a PPC or an SEO strategy, the way you conduct your keyword research will be different because these two types of searches are fundamentally different.

PPC

Since PPC is of course paid, it focuses on driving search traffic with direct commercial intent. This is so you can try to quick drive sales, leads, or enquiries from the money that you invest in your PPC campaigns. We don’t typically include a lot of keywords when people are at the early stages of researching and it could be many days, weeks, or months before they go ahead and buy. PPC keyword choice is usually more about driving a quick ROI and getting sales in fast.

SEO

SEO can include a commercial aspect, but it can also focus on non-commercial, research-based search queries that will result in conversions over time. These organic results can take longer to optimize and feature more structured data points, such as the knowledge graph, and other rich snippets or cards.

Organic search results are also created automatically from your site content, your metadata, as well as being influenced by other factors such as links to your page and the user’s search history. But with paid search, the results are created from a list of specific keywords and the ads that you write in the advertising tool. It’s much more straightforward.

Combining the two

Having an optimized paid and organic search experience working side-by-side as part of a digital marketing strategy, drives incremental improvements across both channels. That’s because your brand will feature more heavily on the search engine results page, or SERP, which gives consumers more avenues to clickthrough to your website.

However, it’s important to focus your PPC keyword research and choices mainly on conversion or action-based keywords. This is because it can be hard to justify spending a lot of money on keywords that don't drive conversions. Most of the time your bosses and clients will want to see sales or leads coming directly from PPC activity, so they can justify putting an ROI against it. In other words, “We spent X and we got Y back”. But if your PPC keywords don't appear to generate sales or conversions, it can be difficult for the owner of the media budget to justify that spend.

So, typically we use SEO content to help people discover the brand and help them decide by reading longer-form content search-engine-optimized for your website. When your consumers have made up their mind and take action after engaging with your SEO content, they will start searching for more purchase or action intent based keywords. These conversion-focused keywords are the types of terms we include in our PPC campaigns.

So while SEO does much of the heavy lifting in terms of discovery and consideration, PPC is primarily focused on closing the deal. When we adopt this mindset, we can use both search channels together at different stages of the purchase journey and invest in PPC to ensure that we complete the sale and maximize our ROI.

PPC keyword research with Google Keyword Planner

So, how do you ensure you’re spending your paid search budget on the right keywords? Well, this is where the Google Keyword Planner is going to be your friend, and it is the best place to start!

The Google Keyword planner is an extremely efficient keyword suggestion tool that’s built right into the Google Ads interface. It allows advertisers to input some initial keywords they might want to target, and Google will use these as a basis to provide a list of related keywords, which advertisers can then use as they see fit.

To begin, you can input your top three keywords that you believe your consumers are likely to use when searching for your product or service. You then click the CTA button to get your keyword ideas, and Keyword Planner will return a number of suggestions around keywords and search queries that you can consider targeting in your campaign. You’ll also be able to see the typical monthly searches for these keywords and the seasonality over the last 12 months or so.

This first chart shows the seasonality of the keyword lists that Google is suggesting. We’re then presented with several keyword ideas that we can choose whether to include in our campaign or not. There’s some data around the competition level for those keywords, as well as their search traffic and their numbers or monthly search volumes. And remember, this is all market-specific because up at the top you can specify the language and the location of the people that you’re trying to target.

Search volumes and competition will differ from market to market, and we can also see where the demand lies, what keywords get a lot of searches, and what ones don't. This is where you get the data that allows you to structure your PPC campaign.

Keyword Planner benefits

Now let’s look at the specific benefits of the Keyword Planner for digital marketers.

Structured research

First, it organizes your keywords and provides more structured research options. Structure is important because, as a search marketer, you are going to be spending a lot of time on keyword research.

Keyword volume trends

Second, it provides Keyword Volume Trends and breaks them down month by month. This is really valuable data for many businesses, especially those with seasonal products or industries.

For example, you might realize that nobody searches for your product or service in the run-up to Christmas, so it really won’t be worth your while investing in PPC at this time. That’s one of many important insight that you could draw from the Keyword Planner’s Data. 

Keyword suggestions

And finally, it suggests keyword ideas that you might not have previously considered. It does this by analyzing vast amounts of data based on current, historical, and emerging search trends that can be included into your campaigns.

For example, while you might think that ‘guitar straps’ is your main keyword to target, the Keyword Planner might spot an opportunity for you to target ‘vegan guitar straps’, based on the search trends it sees around that term. It’s also worth noting that while you can organize your keywords by search intent and the various modifiers such as ‘buy’, ‘cheap’, and ‘best’ within the Keyword Planner itself, Microsoft Excel is an easier and more efficient way to add bid modifiers to your keyword lists.