How To Do Google Ads Keyword Research

Key Takeaways

I first started running Google ad campaigns 15 years ago and since then I've personally created hundreds of campaigns and I can tell you that if you want to succeed with Google ads and with search campaigns in particular you have to get your keyword research right and in this video I'm going to show you exactly how to do that okay so let's start by actually explaining what keyword research is because it's it's a term that's sort of thrown around a lot and if you're relatively new to Google ads and you haven't done keyword research before you might thinking what actually is it what's the point so keyword research is what you're trying to do with keyword research is you're trying to determine which keywords you want to Target with your ads effectively what Search terms when people are searching in Google do you want your ads to be shown for because there are many different Search terms people could search for that would describe your products and services and you want to find the ones that are likely to yield the best results for your businesses because there are lot Search terms that yeah maybe someone who searches for that is interested in my products and services but maybe not is it the best keyword to Target are we going to make money targeting that keyword so as part of keyword research you're doing that you're trying to find different keyword options a lot of people start with thinking about okay well what would I search for in Google if I wanted to find my products and services and that's a good place to start but of course that's not going to give you the full range because people phrase things differently people are going to be looking for the exact same thing you might be looking for but they're going to search differently in Google they're going to phrase it differently so you want to find all the various options that might apply um for your business you can also see lots of other information like what's the competition levels like like for that particular keyword are there lots of other advertisers bidding on it therefore it's quite expensive or is it relatively undeserved in which case I might be able to pick up um clicks relatively inexpensively so with keyword research we're looking to answer all these questions and narrow down a list of keywords that we want to Target that based on the data points that we've been able to look at we're very confident will deliver great results for our business when people search for that keyword and then they click on an ad that's been shown to them based on on their search they are then highly like to become a customer of ours become a lead take whatever action it is um that we want them to take now the best tool for this is a free tool that Google provides called the Google Keyword Planner so I'm just going to go ahead and jump into one of our example Google ad accounts I'm just know you this doesn't have any campaigns because I said it's it's an example ad account and once you have an ad account you do need an ad account to be able to use um the Keyword Planner um if you're not familiar how to do that by the way I'll include a link in the video description below to another video that shows you how to set up a new um Google ad account if you don't already have one uh but as long as you do you can come into your Google ad account and you can click on tools and then we've got under planning you can see here it's automatically gone straight into to the Keyword Planner and this is the tool that most Google advertisers are going to use um exclusively for their keyword research there are alternatives but to be honest we use this and that seems to do the job just fine okay so when you first come into the Google Keyword Planner and first thing you need to decide is which of these three options at the top you want to use now I'm going to go ahead and use discover new keywords and that's what i' recommend you use and I think most people who would be interested in watching this video will need to discover new keywords and that's the the place we spend the most time and that's the The Logical First Step so if you already had like a list of keywords and you wanted to find out more information about them and and and things like that and other keywords you can get get search volume um and forecast if you already had like a seed list of keywords as it were so we're going to go ahead and click discover new keywords now there's a few different ways we can get started here so you can see it says start with keyword so let's say I wanted to advertise a particular product or service I could just put in a keyword that is very descriptive of that product or service and get started um so for example if I was to advertise our Google ad Services I could literally put in here Google ads services to get started okay and then I can go ahead and click get results and based on that one keyword that I entered that is very descriptive of Google ad Services because literally what it's called Google is then going to create a number or find I should say a number of keywords that it believes are relevant and that we might want to Target as well based on that information that we provided which is a really useful tool by Google saves a lot of time and it's why the Google Keyword Planner is very handy for doing keyword research I do however want to quickly go back before I go into that that is what I'm going to use and just give a nod to the other option instead of start with keywords up here you can click start with website and then you can go ahead and pop your website in there so for example I could pop in you know Heath media. cuk which is the website um of my agency now we can either either decide to use the entire site or we could use a specific page if I was to use the entire site but I wanted to create a Google ad campaign that advertises our Google ads services that wouldn't make sense because if you come through to our website you see that we offer Google ads Services we also offer Facebook and Instagram advertising services so if I use the entire site Google's going to find the copy that's on my website and they're going to generate keywords that are um including yes Google ad services but also Facebook and Instagram advertising services and that's all going to be a bit messy so I wouldn't do that in that scenario I would want to get more specific um and use our Google ads specific page um so I'd enter in that URL for that particular page and then I want to select use this page only down here and then I can go ahead and click get results and then Google's going to create a list for us in much the same way that I just showed you when you entered in um the keyword so if you have a website that or a page that's very representative of what you offer you can go ahead and do that you might get some extra examples than if you just enter in a keyword I think most people though are going to want to get started with keywords as opposed to using the website um because the results you get are just more likely to be accurate in in my opinion websites have lots of extra information on there don't they and that could cause Google to generate for you a list of things and you think oh some of these don't really apply yes there's information about my website but doesn't really fit like for example with our website we have um like case studies of clients so sometimes Google will pick up on some of the copy of that and then drag That Into You Know potential keywords Target and you're like oh no no no that word only applied to our client doesn't quite work so anyway so I think most people going to start with keywords but I just wanted to demonstrate that that is an option I've jumped back over here put in Google ad services and let's do this get results and like I said Google is going to produce for us a list of keywords that are related to the Google ad Services one that I put in 949 keywords to be precise um in this example now obviously there are going to be different numbers depending on what it is that you enter here um there are more keywords in some places less in others but once we've started with that we can then start going through the process so before we go through the various options and don't worry we're not going to go through all 949 keywords um on this video um that would be a bit painful to uh to watch although I will explain what to do with the the keywords that you get um that you that was produced when you go through this process before we do that I want to have a look at the data okay to get a sense of um the information that Google provides and explain what those metrics mean and how that impacts the selection that we're going to make around the keywords that we want to uh to choose okay so if we scroll down and we can see that the keyword that we entered Google ad Services has been given an average monthly searches of 110 now these volume estimates are they're accurate but they're misrepresentative and I'll tell you what I mean so they're accurate in terms that there will be about 110 average monthly services for the exact search Google ad services in the targeted location I'll explain more about locations in a second but it's misrepresentative because if you were to Target the keyword Google ad Services you could have your ads be put in front of thousands and thousands of searches a month way more than 110 because Google won't just put your ads in front of people that search exactly and only for the words Google ad Services they'll also put your ads in front of people that search for Google ad services in the UK or Google ad services for e-commerce or Google ad services for local or um Google ads agency or all sorts of different variations right that add up to thousands and thousands of searches so these average monthly searches this this volume metric that Google provides you is useful when you look at keywords in relation to others so we can very safely say that there are far fewer people searching for exactly Google ads Services than there are local service ads or Google local Services there are far more people cuz you can see the average searches are much higher all of these numbers will be way lower than the actual amount if you targeted that keyword but that's just the first thing to uh to note okay is that you can get relative information even if the exact number is accurate but misrepresentative also Google here I haven't entered in a location Google here is defaulted to the whole of the UK uh depending on your business I me that's because we're based in the UK and this add account set up there but depending on your business you're going to want to change this so you might want to include multiple locations like when we're advertising our Google ad services for example we would not just advertise in the UK we would advertise in the US and a whole bunch of other countries you know we work with people in countries all over the world Western Europe and um the Middle East Australia New Zealand Canada South Africa India Like You Name It We we've got clients in those locations right um so I'd go through and add in the various locations and when you do that you'll see that one of the things that happens is that the average monthly searches changes um significant which is not surprising I've just gone from just the UK to adding in the US as well so the overall population has increased massively and um and yeah the data is going to change so before you come in and have a look at the data make sure you get your location set up right then we see some really interesting information around 3month change and year-over-year change that's what y change means year-over-year change and that gives you an a sense of people searching for this are there more and more and more people searching for this or less and less and less and that's really useful to know that if you're going to be creating Google ad campaign you obviously want to be bidding on keywords where it's a growing keyword where there's more interest it means there's more potential customers so we can see here that with Google ad Services specifically year-over-year change is up 51% I mean that's really big bearing in mind Google ads has been around for 20 plus years at this point it's not a it's not a new thing or thing that business owners don't understand so that's really promising from from our standpoint so it's always good to look at both the threeyear and uh the three month and year- ofe change then we have a look at the competition levels now competition levels means how many other advertisers are bidding on this keyword and this is going to give you an idea of how easy it will be to get your ads to rank within for that Target keyword and for people searching because you are competing against other advertisers there's only so many slots available for ads at the top of a Google um page or Google search results page and if there's not much competition it's going to be a lot easier probably won't have to pay as much if there's more competition it's going to more difficult that doesn't mean you should be put off by high competition keywords and here's why High competition means there's lots of competitors but it also most likely means that it's quite a profitable keyword to Target because why else would all these other businesses be running ads to people searching for that keyword well they're doing that because they have found historically or believe that people searching for that keyword are highly likely to convert into cash into revenue for for the business okay so you don't need to be just going on after low competition keywords and avoiding high or anything like that but it is useful to have a look at competition um in there and then of course you can look at that in relation to top of page bid low range and then top of page bid um high range now when you're looking at Google ads Services you can see that you know we got a top of page bid high range here of just under £24 that's really quite high if you're looking at this and new to Google ads and you're thinking I'm going to pay £4 for a click and because that that's what that means by the way that's that's what you're likely to pay per click um depending on your industry it's likely to be significantly lower than that and and that's one of the things about Google ads is because you're advertising on a search Network and there is intent as advertisers we can massively distinguish between different searches and their value so if someone's searching for a car wash for example um advertisers aren't going to be able to pay anywhere near as much to advertise someone searching for a car wash just because it's not worth it as much to their business as an adverti who offers Google ads Services can for someone searching for Google ad Services because a Google ads client could be worth tens of thousands potentially even hundreds of thousands of dollars um if you can retain that client for a long time and they spend a lot of money okay so just keep that in mind and don't let that that freak you out and again you can have a look at these topof page bid um ranges and get a sense between different keywords of like okay this one's much more expensive than this one we offer these four different Services let's start by focusing just on these two Services as opposed to these other two ones because um it's way cheaper to Target these on Google really useful information to have and you will see quite a bit of variation often between some of the different keywords right so if we take a look for example at this one here right Google guaranteed coming in at £ 2149 in terms of top of page bid range versus Google ads agency coming in you know 2 and 1 half times as expensive at just under £54 well that makes sense right cuz Google guaranteed is like a verification badge that you can get yes people will be offering a service to help you get that um but that's not going to be as lucrative as someone who's literally actively looking to hire a Google ads agency like I already mentioned they those customers can be worth uh potentially a lot of money depending on on the size of the business so like I said you can go through and uh check those things out and it's really useful um information if you were already running Google ads you would see ad impression share is how much of the Impressions available for that keyword are your ads already showing for because this is an example add account and we don't have um ads running we don't have that information here um and that's effectively it there are other things you can add in but as a default you know we've just got account status down here but we don't need to worry about that um as a default that's the information you get and that gives you a really good sense of where the search volume is for that keyword where it's heading and how expensive it's going to be to Target that keyword okay so now that we've been through that the next step is to start removing keywords that obviously don't apply to our products or services and we want to start narrowing this keyword list down now there's 900 actually since we changed the location to include UK and us it went up to 960 different keyword ideas so that's a lot there but there are some um tips and techniques and things you can use to help speed up the process I'm going to show you in a second so just quickly running through some of the examples we've got here to show you the sort of thing that we're we're looking to do and what we're looking to get rid of um remember the example we're using here is our Google ad services so we're advertising on Google people searching for Google ads Services searching for Google ads agency because they might want to hire us that's what we're looking to do and obviously change that to your business to make it make sense but that's that's the context around this right so if that's the case would we want to bid on local service ads I don't think so local service ads is someone searching for that or things that are closely related to that I mean that could apply to Google but it could apply to all different other types of advertising that maybe we don't do so that doesn't really apply um Google local Services again there's no mention of ads in there there's no there's not specificity around it being Google ads not something that we'd want to do Google ad specialist that sounds like a really good option Google guaranteed well I already mentioned that's like a verification process from Google not something that we do um not something we would want to bid on uh Google PPC ppc's payer click yeah absolutely fine that sounds good Google ads agency yes Google local service ads the fact it's got ads in there makes that much more appealing Google create paper clicks fine um Google Isa I believe that is um that's not something that we're going to want to um advertise on assuming that that's Isa is and what I typically know an Isa is for I might need to look into that Google local ads yes that sounds good Google ads marketing sounds good Google ad campaign manager yeah touch and go uh depends if they're looking for a campaign manager is in a person or they're looking for like a feature um within like they're looking for the Google ads account manager dashboard might not be the best option get Google guaranteed would obviously not be a good option and you start S see the sort of thing that we we're going through here and and you can easily filter out uh a lot of options when you start going line by line before we do that though I do want to take a look over here at this refine keywords um tool and this can help save a lot of time cuz yes you can go through all 9 60 but let's see if we can trim that down first to end up with a end up with a smaller keyword list that we then go through line by line so there's different categories here that Google um has provided within their Keyword Planner and sometimes you can just take things out completely so brand or non-brand okay so for example do we want any keyword that include the word YouTube well maybe we do because YouTube advertising is part of Google advertising so we're happy in this case to leave that in but do we want any keywords that include the word Facebook probably not we actually offer Facebook advertising Services as well but we would want that in a separate campaign so we can go ahead and remove that out same applies to Microsoft obviously Microsoft have um their Bing ad Network which is going to be similar to Google ads but maybe we want a separate campaign for that maybe we don't so we might want to remove that same is going to apply to um to Reddit and then we can keep going through some of the other options right so do we want any keywords that contain Google search yes obviously someone could be searching for Google search ads in which case that' be a great keyword to Target but Google Maps maybe maybe not and I would always when you're going through lists like this and making calls be overly cautious as in if you're not sure about a keyword or a grouping of keyword best to get rid of it um there's normally going to be plenty of search volume going after the very best performing keywords you don't need to Target of ones around the edges unless you're advertising locally to a specific area in which case obviously there's not as much search volume and then you need to be a bit broader but that's something you can address later on so we probably would remove Maps um we most likely remove Gmail yes as part of the Google ads Network you can actually run ads that will appear um in Gmail but if someone searching for something that specific are they looking for Google ads Services Google ads agency maybe maybe not so probably get rid of that obviously things like GoDaddy we want to get rid of um Google sites go either way on that but things like you know Blu host Fiverr um even Google play that's getting really quite specific and you can see there's 18 more we want to get rid of MailChimp Shopify and you can see there's multiple keywords for a lot of these so we are saving time I'm not going to go through every single one there because there's a whole bunch but there you can just take out a lot of the Branded stuff and start reducing our keyword so just by clicking a few boxes there and there's other ones we could do we just got rid of 29 um keywords very quickly there's not that much brand brand related keywords for the term Google ad services but other things there are tons of brand related keywords so like let's say for example you sell uh running shoes like most of the keyword terms are going to be brand related and if you're like oh we don't sell Nike running shoes you can deselect Nike and that's going to get rid of like half of your running shoes uh keywords and save you a lot of time now there are other things we could use right so tools we've got AdWords and AD sense so AdWords is like the old name for Google ads it used to be called called Google AdWords and got renamed to Google ads but people might not be aware of that that's fine we can leave that in AdSense is effectively the other side of Google advertising so AdWords what's now Google ads is like advertisers paying to um advertise on Google their product Services Etc AdSense is like the other side of the coin so it might be someone that's got like a Blog a Content website and they're running ads on their website well those would be AdSense ads the same applies to like ads that run on YouTube videos for example those are um AdSense is how you earn the money on the side of things so in in our scenario we would want to deselect AdSense now there might be people that don't understand they're searching for kind of the wrong thing but I imagine there would be a lot of keywords that have AdSense in that are for people looking to make money from Google putting ads on their stuff as opposed to paying Google to advertise their stuff so we would want to get rid of those and that just removed what 125 um different um keywords again saving us a lot of time then you can go through all these different various categories now depending on which keyword you entered initially or the website URL you used you are going to see different categorizations for refined keywords so here we've got ad search ads display ad YouTube AD mobile ads obviously want to leave those in but there will be businesses where you still have an ad section and you want to get rid of um a bunch of those because they won't apply service we've got PPC absolutely fine um SEO that's not something we provide we focus on the advertising part of Google not on the search engine optimization uh part of Google uh so SEO and then sem search engine marketing we can get rid of both of those and that's going to save us um a bunch of keywords again narrowing down the list I'll keep going through because I think this is useful shopping as PBC strategy yep going to leave those in campaign we've got search campaign remarketing campaign shopping campaign yeah we would do all of those for our clients as part of Google ad strategy and then others that we might have in here so we've got the word cost we can leave that in um no might be people searching for things like how much does Google ads cost and that's like a borderline keyword but I don't wanted to get rid of that all 50 of those keywords as a category I'd rather then go through each individual line and refine those ad lead is fine but here we get into some things um like specific categories so we've got things like lawyers we've got real estate agents we've got HVAC now we're happy to work with those types of business so we would leave them in but if you did only work with specific categories or or probably what's more likely to apply is you don't work with specific categories you can go ahead and uh and delete those out okay all right that's um the various refined keywords that still saved us a bunch of time and I think if you go through this with your business most people doing this will be able to refine their keywords and save themselves significantly more time than I've been able to um here just based on the options that you're going to get and taking out things like branded keywords and things that uh that don't apply so then we end up with a somewhat smaller list most people going through this going to have less than 782 and what we would typically do now is we would go ahead and download we would export this list keyword ideas to then go through in a little bit more detail now we're about to go through this keyword list line by line and remove the options that we don't think we would want to Target or don't think would produce the best possible results for our business and if all this sounds like a ton of effort and you're thinking I would just much rather have a business do this for me get me the leads and sales I'm looking for and not have to worry about keyword research or setting up campaigns or anything like that that's what my company does you obviously that going through this video that we offer Google ad services but it is worth specifically mentioning and if you are interested there is a link in the video description below you can click on that come through to a page on our website and book in a free no obligation call with one of my team members to find out more uh about how we might be able to help and just do all this for you take that workload off your hands and help you get much better results than if you did it yourself anyway so if you're interested go ahead and book a call and hopefully we get a chance to work together soon okay so now that we've exported that data um and I just did so into a Google sheet is one of the options when you click on the down download keyword list um option we can now go through this line by line and work out which keywords we do and don't want to Target now um I'm not going to demonstrate every single one here that would obviously take forever and I'm just going to demonstrate the process and explain some of the thinking so that you can replicate this yourself so if I just scroll down let's say to0 30 because I already went through some of those top options didn't I before we exported the list and talked through that so actually number 30 let me just expand this out we've got Google guaranteed business no that is not what we want to Target it's verification service not something that we want local ad Services nope not something that we want either um I'm actually just going to insert a row so you can see above this and there just a little break there I'm ignoring the ones above that for demonstration purposes Google Lead Services yeah I think that sounds pretty good um Google local Services ad great Google advertising Services uh fine local Google service ads Google payperclick advertising Google paid search uh Google local service ads cost local Services um ads Google become Google guaranteed obviously one we want to get rid of uh let's delete that out Google local advertising yeah Google paid advertising yeah Google advertising platforms yes Google PPC agency yes uh local Services by Google I don't think so I think that's too far away local search ads now that's interesting because local search ads is most likely referring to Google um search but maybe not so with without there being Google in there it's a I'm not so sure kind of one uh for me personally so what I would typically do with this keyword is when we're kind of not sure could go one way could go the other is we'd have a look at the other data effectively how expensive is it to bid on so you know the upper range of £39 I mean that's pretty expensive I know obviously we're looking at keywords here that in general are really quite expensive but I kind of look at that and think yeah if that was a relatively inex expensive keyword maybe we'd leave it in but because of how expensive it is I think it really needs to go so that's when we start to look at the the corroborating data to help make our decisions uh Google local search I've talked about local service ads by Google yet Google ad management Google PPC campaigns Google ad company Google adword specialist Google ads agency near me ads local Services no that's too broad there's no mention of Google ads it could be any platform someone's looking for not something we're looking to do so then you keep going through this process for each and every single one of the keywords on this list yes that is going to take a bit of time not actually as long as you might fear you can see when I'm going through a lot of those like I can rattle through 10 pretty quick be like yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes is no a lot of this is common sense is logic you don't need to overly overly think about it for the ones that you're not sure either get rid of them or have a look at the corresponding you know top of page bid range information if it looks like an inexpensive keyword and you're not sure maybe leave it in if it's expensive and you're not sure definitely go ahead and um and get rid of it but go through this list and the advantage of doing this is you only really to do this once yes there adjustments you're going need to make your keywords you might need to do some more research um later down the line but you don't need to you know this is not an activity that you're doing every month or every six months even like this is something you get it done and then you've got this keyword list that's ready to go you don't even need to use all those at once you can um use them over time so yeah definitely worth doing you have to get your keyword research right if you want the best possible results from your Google ads and that is the process that I'd recommend you go through now once you've refined your keyword list down and often we will be getting rid of at least 50% of the the keywords that we've exported sometimes as many as 80% of the keywords we exported we've really tried to to be quite um specific where possible but once you've refined that down you're going to then need to group those keywords into ad groups because that's going to allow you to create ads that are very relevant and match with the keyword so the messaging within the ad um very much correlates with the keyword that's being searched for uh to show you exactly how to do that how to group your keywords into ad groups I'd recommend you check out this video here in that video I show you my ideal Google ad campaign structure so it shows you your keywords your ad groups ads Etc and if you haven't already strong hand you go ahead and check it out it's going to help with that next step after you've done your keyword research