Keyword research is essential when expanding PPC accounts. There may be many terms relating to your product or services that advertisers or agencies may be unaware. This is where keyword research can be beneficial. How do you perform keyword research? There are multiple tools that advertisers and agencies can utilize to in order to find keywords to expand their PPC accounts.

The primary tool for keyword research is Google’s Keyword Planner. This tool is easily found in AdWords under the “Tools” menu option.

Image of keyword planner option

The Keyword Planner shows list of ad group and keyword suggestions based on 1 or more words provided. Additionally, Google lists the estimated number of monthly searches for these keywords as well as suggested bids. These estimates provide advertisers or agencies with ideas of how competitive these terms may be as well as how they should bid on them. See this example of the multiple ad group suggestions Google gives if we’re selling boots.

Image of keyword options

If we choose to create an ad group “Boots Sale,” the Keyword Planner suggests the following keywords for this ad group:

  • boots for sale
  • boots on sale
  • sale boots
  • boot sales

Two additional great ways to see how your customers are talking about certain products or services are:

  • Search Query Reports
  • Google’s Search Autocomplete

Downloading search query reports is a simple task that will tell you a lot about customer search intent. Not only will these reports show the exact terms being searched but you can also see how these terms are performing. This type of keyword research is quick and easy and will provide terms that will be beneficial for your PPC accounts.

Lastly, Google’s Autocomplete could be very helpful when finding keywords for a PPC account.

Image of Google autocomplete

As you can see, searching for “shoes for sale” provides two additional keywords that may be beneficial in this account: shoes for sale online and shoes for sale cheap online.

These are just a few ways to do keyword research. There are a number of other tools and strategies to utilize to find keywords to expand your accounts.