What Is a Keyword?
First of all, what is a keyword in digital marketing jargon? A keyword is a word or a phrase that is searched for by Google users (or users of other search engines). Have you used Google today? What did you type into the only field there before you hit the search button? Whatever you typed there, it was a keyword. It can have one word, like “weather” or it can have more than a word, like “weather in Chicago today”.
What is Keyword Research?
Now to keyword research: You need to have the relevant keywords in your campaign so that your ads will be triggered when Google users search for terms that relate to the product or service that you sell. But how do you know what people search for? There are tools for this. The main one is the Google Ads Keyword Planner.
The Google Ads Keyword Planner
In order to have access to this tool, you need to have a Google Ads account. And in order to see accurate search volume data on it instead of just annoyingly wide ranges, you need to be running a campaign on your Google Ads account.
So this is what the keyword planner looks like:
As you can see, I spread a few numbers across elements of the Keyword Planner. Here is what each element is:
- This is the initial search term. Here you will fill in what you imagine that people who are looking for your product/service would search for on Google when looking for it.
- This is the geographical location where you are aiming to target Google users. You can choose locations as specific as towns or radiuses around specific addresses. See below:
- This is the language spoken by the audience you want to reach. You might be trying to reach Spanish speakers in Florida, for example. Or English speakers in Brazil.
- Google has search partners, which are websites that have a Google Search field. Here you will choose whether you want to see search volumes only for Google or for Google and its search partners.
- In this column you will see the keywords found by the Keyword Planner that are relevant to the seed keyword you filled in.
- In this column you will see the number of monthly searches for each keyword found.
How Do You Do Keyword Research?
Let’s say you sell all types of bikes except electric bikes. Now look at the first screenshot here. Which keywords should you rule out of your future campaign? Take this question as if it were homework. First think, answer, and then read below.
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These should be ruled out:
e bikes for sale
sell my bike (this is the opposite of the people you want to click on your ad. It’s someone who wants to sell his bike)
e bikes for sale near me
electric bicycles for sale
electric bikes for sale near me
In the next post, I will show you how to group these keywords into ad groups so that you can build your campaign.