PPC Keyword Tips

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Choosing appropriate PPC Keywords can be difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, Connectica LLC has some advice to help ease the process! You can learn to create an effective keyword list in no time with these PPC keyword tips.

Firstly, choosing the right PPC keywords is imperative when it comes to bringing traffic to your website. It is one of the most effective tools in google advertising for businesses globally. However, to make keywords effective, you need to regularly update and refine your PPC Keyword list. Media and language is changing all the time, and as trends come and go, so do popular keywords! You need to make sure you that are keeping up to date.

Researching Your Keywords

Some people begin with Microsoft Excel to start their first list of keywords. A more popular tool is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, this tool allows you to view keywords associated with your site if you type in one or more keywords. It provides a list of keywords and estimates the competition of these words and whether you should bid on them.

For a start, let’s say you’ve opened up Google’s Keyword Planner and you now need to type in a few words and phrases that relates to your website. The next question is, how will you choose the best keywords? Well there are several types that are arguably better than others. It depends on what kind of website you have. For example, pretend we have a florist with an online business where people can order flowers. This website will need different types of keywords in order to generate the appropriate traffic.

Types of Keywords

We recommend using a variety of different keyword types to round out your SEO strategy as you will want to attract different pieces of the sales funnel throughout your site.

• Long- and Short-Tailed Keywords

  Keywords can be long-tailed and low-cost (meaning highly specific, hence not very popular). An example would be “buy bouquet of carnations”. On the other hand, keywords can be short, generic and broad, and more popular. A good example of these would be simply: “buy flowers”. These generic keywords are often known to be ‘competitive keywords’, as these would be used by competing websites. Remember that these advertisements are competing with other florist sites with their PPC keywords. You should invest in both types of keywords if you want to target a wider market.

• Branded Keywords

  Branded keywords have higher conversion rates at low cost. A branded keyword is a keyword that includes your brand name or a derivative of your brand name.

• Commercial Intent Keywords

  Commercial intent keywords are used by someone who intends to buy something immediately. These buyers know what they want and they will not wait around. You can tell by the way the words are phrased. For example, if someone showed a bit of interest in buying flowers for a wedding, they would type something like “wedding flowers”. This shows little intent. The buyer is not entirely sure what he/she wants. However, if someone were to type “buy wedding bouquets near me”, this buyer has already set a commercial goal.

  There are three basic types of commercial intent keywords:

  • Navigational Search: these keywords are used to locate a specific website.
  • Informational Search: these keywords are used to find an answer to a question, or to learn something.
  • Transactional Search: these keywords are used to find something that you want to buy.

• Seasonal Keywords

  Since you can update your PPC ads, seasonal keywords are also good to consider when creating a list. Seasonal keywords would be specific to points in time, could be seasons related to weather or months as well as when a particular service is more popular. Using the floral shop example, their peak seasons are event driven with Valentine’s Day and “Wedding Season” as two examples. During these times, they will want to push keywords that relate to those particular events.

• Negative Keywords

  Negative keywords may not sound useful, but these are just as important as other keywords. They are used to filter out any unwanted customers, such as customers searching for free flowers. A negative keyword phrase for this website would simply be “free flowers”. You’ll have a lot of unwanted traffic coming from unnecessary clickers if you do not invest in these! An effective method to creating negative keywords can simply be brainstorming, as well as using a Search Terms Report on AdWord. This tool shows you the actual keywords used by customers that triggered your ads. You can use this to create both positive and negative keyword lists too.

How to Create Your First PPC Keyword List

Now that you are aware of the different keywords, it’s time to brainstorm and get creative! Remember to do the following when creating your list:

1. Make sure that you have included plural and singular versions of certain keywords (e.g. flower, flowers, bouquet, bouquets). You will expand your flow of traffic to your site by doing this.


2. Next, think of some synonyms or any words that you might use to get to your own website and add them to the list. Continuing with our example, what would be the first search phrase that comes to your mind if you were going to look for flowers?


3. Think of generic terms too, some people may not be sure of what they are looking for and so their keywords may be quite generalized. But overall, it’s about balance.


4. You can expand your network of PPC keywords, creating a wider audience, but then you may have more people clicking on your ad unnecessarily. If you decide to make your keyword pool too specific, this will make your pool of customers smaller- reducing traffic.

You will need to explore all of these methods and see what works best for your site. Now that you have somewhere to begin, get going with your keyword list! If you feel stuck, or need a bit of help, contact Connectica LLC. We are a creative agency with extensive knowledge and experience in Search Engine Optimization, and will be able to assist you in your PPC keyword journey.