Pay per click (PPC) marketing looks easy on its face, but there is strategy and effort involved. For example, keyword research is essential in any good PPC campaign. That’s because keywords are the foundation of pay per click advertising; without good keywords that users search for, a paid ad won’t produce a satisfactory return. Fortunately, Google makes some great keyword research tools available to help – not just with PPC, but with all types of search-based internet marketing. Here are a few that stand out:
Google Trends
Google Trends is not the same thing as the keyword research tool on Google AdWords. What it does is provides data on search volume and traffic over time. It’s a good way to see whether a keyword is gaining or losing popularity with searchers. With the help of Google Trends, you can figure out which high-volume keywords are the best ones to target in your PPC campaign. Take note, though: long-tail keyword phrases don’t have enough aggregate data to show up on Google Trends. For those types of keywords, the tool below may work better.
Google Insights for Search
Google Insights for Search has been called “Google Trends on steroids.” That’s because it shows trend data in addition to the top keywords and phrases related to the term you enter. On the left column, Google Insights for Search displays Top Searches; on the right column, it displays Rising Searches. Each one of the Rising Searches is accompanied by its percentage of increase in search volume. This is a great PPC keyword research tool! Use the data to determine which keywords to bid on for your PPC campaign, and to identify ineffective keywords you should “negative” out of your Google AdWords account.
Google Contextual Tool
Internet marketing veterans may recall the Google Wonder Wheel, a tool that created visual maps of keyword sets and their connections to each another. For PPC providers, the Google Wonder Wheel was great because it helped categorize ad groups for PPC accounts. Unfortunately, this tool was discontinued in 2011 (please note: the site GoogleWonderWheel.com is not affiliated with Google in any way). The good news is, Google brought back the Wonder Wheel function with the . This new version works by finding related terms to your keywords before grouping them into ad groups. It’s not perfect, because some keywords may not always be relevant; however, any good Internet marketing provider can quickly pick out and eliminate any irrelevant terms.
PPC services are still a hot commodity for Internet marketing companies to offer, and they’re still an effective way for business owners to get their websites visible quickly to searchers. With the right Google keyword research tools, you can take your (or your client’s) PPC campaign a long way in a short amount of time.
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