How Important is Keyword Research For PPC Services?

The customers of today are seen to buy products/services from websites that rank high on the Search Engine Result Pages. This has resulted in a situation where every business worth its salt wants its website to appear on the top of search results. Since reaching there organically can be a difficult and time consuming proposition, why not use a quick fix solution? As businesses look to get quick results for their money spent, engaging PPC advertising services can be the desirable option. However, to ensure the PPC management services give you the highest campaign returns, conducting proper keyword research is essential.

What are keywords & their importance in running PPC advertising services?

These are the search terms used by your target customers on search engines to get specific pieces of information. For example, should you be looking to hire the best digital marketer in India to promote your brand, products or services, then you can use the phrase ‘top digital marketing company in India’. Incorporating keywords that represent your brand, products or services in the PPC campaign can help you garner better leads. Let us understand how proper keyword research can help your PPC campaign.

PPC management services & keyword research

At the outset, you should do proper keyword research using tools like Google keyword planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Accuranker among others to identify keywords that are relevant to your business. The research can be based on a slew of parameters such as Cost Per Click (CPC), the average monthly searches, keyword trends, and visibility etc. While doing keyword research, it is advisable to expand the range of your business relevant keywords by adding synonyms. This helps to increase the visibility of your PPC advertisement to your target customers. For example, if your internet marketing agency wants to highlight the SEO aspect in your PPC campaign, it can use similar search terms that a user who is unaware of the more technical aspect of SEO, is likely to use – top rank on search engine etc.

Furthermore, keyword research can help you to select specific keyword match types to ensure your PPC campaign remains focused and effective. Let us understand the keyword match types in some detail.

Broad match: This type of keyword match lets your PPC advertisement to feature on search engines whenever similar words – misspellings, singular/plural, synonyms, relevant variations etc are used in the search query. You can declare a keyword as a broad match should you want the widest possible users to look at your ad. And yes, this can be a costly proposition.

Phrase match: This type of keyword match shall trigger your ad only when the searches include the exact order of the keyword. For example, if ‘digital marketing’ is declared as a phrase match, then searches that include ‘digital marketing agency’ or ‘digital marketing company’ shall trigger your PPC ad to be displayed on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

Exact match: The keyword match type shall trigger your ad only when the search queries are exactly similar to your keyword.

Broad match modifier: This particular keyword match type can help you to control the display of your ad when the keywords are similar or closely related. This helps you garner a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) and better leads and/or conversions. This match type can fill the gap between a broad match type and phrase match type. It is set up by using the ‘+’ sign to highlight the keyword that should mandatorily be part of the search query. For example, if you use “+digital +marketing” then your ad will get triggered for search queries that have both the words ‘digital’ & ‘marketing’ in them.

Benefits of keyword research in your PPC campaign

Keyword research can help your PPC campaign in the following ways –

Set up bids: After identifying the business relevant keywords to be used in your PPC campaign, its time now to set bid value against your keywords. You have three options to choose from – first page bid, top of page bid, and first position bid. The CPC will be the highest for the first position bid. However, you should set the “Max CPC” as per your budget to optimize the display of your ads across the SERP.

Intelligent use of negative keywords: Your PPC budget can go for a toss if you do not account for the negative keywords. To prevent irrelevant clicks, it is crucial that your PPC management company includes related yet not associated search terms under the ‘negative keywords’ field in Google Ads. For example, if you are a provider of digital marketing services, you can find out the negative search terms like ‘courses’, ‘training’, ‘information’ etc and include them in the negative keywords list. Thus, you can use the provision of ‘negative keywords’ on Google Ads to prevent false clicks and optimize spending.

Conclusion

Post setting up your business relevant keywords and eliminating the negative ones, you should be ready to reach out to your customers quickly and effectively through the PPC campaign. However, should you find the keywords not delivering the desired results, try changing them with new ones suggested by Google Ads. This is where engaging experienced PPC management services can help you to get the best returns for every penny spent.