PPC keyword analysis is crucial for driving targeted traffic to websites and boosting conversion rates. By bidding on the right keywords for your pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign, you can increase your brand’s visibility, placing your offerings front and center on search result pages (SERPs). But how do you determine which PPC keywords to bid on?
In this article, we discuss the different types of PPC keywords, how to identify the best ones for your campaign, and our top PPC keyword research tools. With these insights, you’ll be well-equipped to optimize your keyword strategy and reap the benefits of PPC.
Key Takeaways
- PPC keyword research enables businesses to identify high-performing, highly relevant keywords to target interested customers and increase conversions.
- Regularly reviewing and updating keywords based on performance metrics is crucial for long-term success.
- PPC research and paid ad management tools like Google Keyword Planner, WordStream, and SpyFu provide actionable data to optimize campaigns.
Table of Contents
What Are PPC Keywords?
PPC keywords are search terms you bid on to secure your PPC ad placement at the top of SERPs. By identifying and bidding on high-performing keywords with strong search intent, you can attract consumers who are actively searching for relevant products or services and reap the benefits of PPC. When you bid correctly, your PPC ads will appear in front of the right people at the right time, increasing the likelihood of converting them into paying customers.
Additionally, you can use these keywords to craft compelling ad copy and optimize landing pages and calls to action (CTAs) for maximum conversions. Effective PPC keyword analysis will help enhance ad targeting, streamline ad spending, and increase return on investment (ROI).
Types of Keywords in PPC
PPC keyword research involves a deep understanding of different types of keywords to utilize them correctly. There are six types of PPC keywords:
- Brand keywords
- Generic keywords
- Long-tail keywords
- Locational keywords
- Competitive keywords
- Negative keywords
1. Brand Keywords
Brand keywords include your brand name and other search terms (the words your user types into Google) related to your brand. Brand keyword examples include “Nike.com” and “Nike shop.”
A brand-plus keyword includes your brand name and a qualifying phrase. Examples of brand-plus keywords include “Nike running shoes” along with many variations, including:
- Brand + product name (“Nike Air Max”)
- Brand + long-tail keyword (“Nike Air Zoom running shoe size 13”)
- Brand + sale (“Nike discount” or “Nike sale”)
- Brand + coupon (“Nike coupon”)
- Brand + review (“Nike Air Jordan review”)
- Brand + website (“www.Nike” or “Nike website”)
2. Generic Keywords
Generic keywords are non-specific search terms relevant to your brand’s products or services. These short-tail and broad terms have high search volumes and can be difficult to rank for in a crowded industry. However, incorporating them into your keyword strategy will help you gather data on consumer behavior and identify more specific niche keywords with lower competition.
Let’s say you own a retail store for sports and fitness. When you begin the PPC research process, you can list common terms such as “running shoes,” “yoga pants,” and “compression shorts” to start.
3. Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are highly specific terms often three words or longer, and they cater to niche markets. They generate lower search volumes compared to generic terms and are less competitive, but they fetch higher conversion rates because they indicate very strong purchase intent. When you target long-tail keywords, you can more precisely target audiences, attract more qualified leads, and increase ROI.
An example of a long-tail keyword is “Nike running shoes for a triathlon.”
4. Locational Keywords
Locational keywords allow marketers to target audiences based on specific cities, regions, and even neighborhood terms that potential customers may use. You can use these to push your ads to potential customers in relevant locations, attract local traffic, and increase revenue.
Examples of locational keywords include “retail store San Francisco” or “sports retail stores near me.”
5. Competitive Keywords
Competitive keywords are search terms that are relevant to your brand’s competitor(s). Investing in these keywords allows you to put your brand and offerings front and center for users looking up your competitor’s products or services.
For example, when a user searches for “Sony TV,” a Samsung TV PPC ad with a message like “Switch to Samsung TVs” can appear. Samsung’s tongue-in-cheek approach may entice those who are not fully committed to purchasing a Sony TV, convincing them to consider a Samsung TV instead.
6. Negative Keywords
Negative keywords prevent your PPC ads from appearing in searches that are unlikely to result in conversions. By excluding these irrelevant terms, you can minimize wasted ad spending and target consumers more effectively.
For instance, if you own a beachfront villa and are creating PPC ad campaigns for the target keywords “beachfront villa” or “beachfront vacation,” you’d want to avoid appearing in searches for terms like “hillside villa” or “hillside vacation.” You can add them as your negative keywords.
How To Do PPC Keyword Research for Your Ad Campaigns
PPC is favored by marketers and business owners to increase visibility and target relevant audiences. Competition across industries is fierce, which is why it is important to develop and deploy effective paid ad campaigns.
The most crucial element of a successful paid ad strategy is finding the right keywords. Here’s a step-by-step guide to keyword research for PPC:
- Define your PPC goals
- Establish your audience
- Understand search intent
- Brainstorm keyword ideas
- Perform competitor research
- Conduct keyword research
- Group your keywords into ad groups
- Track keyword performance
1. Define Your PPC Goals
First, determine what you want to achieve with your PPC campaign. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Boost revenue? Improve lead generation? Define SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals that will guide your PPC strategy.
For example, you want to increase the number of leads generated from your latest PPC campaign.
- Specific: Specify the type of leads you want (e.g., signups, contact form submissions, reservations, etc.).
- Measurable: Quantify your goals so you can track your progress and measure success (e.g., increase newsletter signups by 20% each month).
- Achievable: Set realistic goals based on your current ad performance and market conditions (e.g., you are currently getting 50-100 signups per month, so capturing 10-20 more leads is achievable).
- Relevant: Make sure your PPC objectives align with overall business goals (e.g., more newsletter signups mean more opportunities to convert interested leads into paying customers).
- Time-bound: Set a deadline to maintain focus and urgency (e.g., maintain a minimum 20% increase in signups in the next 12 months). Use PPC tools to track milestones and deadlines to help you achieve your goals.
2. Establish Your Target Audience
When you have a well-defined target market for your PPC campaigns, your ads will reach the right people and achieve better results. Here are some steps to establish your target audience:
- Identify your ideal customer demographics, needs, pain points, preferences, and behavior.
- Study your own customer data, access industry reports, and perform competitive analysis to understand the broader market landscape.
- Collect customer feedback to understand why your current customers choose your offerings over others.
With these details, you can refine your campaign targeting and write ad copy that will resonate with the audience you want to reach.
3. Understand Search Intent
Understanding search behavior and intent is crucial for effective PPC keyword research. These are the main types of search intent:
| Type of Search Intent | User Actions | PPC Strategy | Keyword Examples |
| Informational | Users are looking for answers to specific questions. They are not necessarily looking to purchase anything. | Link to informative content that provides what they need. |
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| Commercial | Users have progressed into the product research phase but are not yet ready to make a purchase. | Use keywords that answer common customer questions. |
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| Transactional | Users are ready to make a purchase and can be compelled to click on ads offering discounts and promotions. | Use conversion-oriented keywords and strong CTAs. |
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| Navigational | Users are trying to find a specific website, usually for brands. | Use branded keywords to capture traffic looking for your site. |
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| Local | Users looking for nearby businesses. | Use location-based keywords to drive in-store traffic. |
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4. Brainstorm Keyword Ideas
Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and think of the terms they’re most likely to type on the search bar to look for your products. It might be overwhelming to brainstorm every single keyword possible, so start with each type we listed above: brand, generic, long-tail, locational, competitive, negative keywords as exact, broad, or phrase keyword match.
Utilize tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs for relevant keywords, search volumes, competition levels, difficulty, traffic potential, and more.
5. Perform Competitor Research
Next, find out what your competitors are doing for their PPC ad campaigns. By performing competitor research, you can find which keywords other websites are bidding on and what they’re ranking for.
Use SpyFu and Ahref’s competitor tools for a detailed look into your competitor’s ads, including their keyword strategy, ad copy, positions, history, and more.
Conducting a SWOT analysis can provide a comprehensive understanding of your market position and inform your PPC strategy moving forward:
- Strengths: Identify what competitors are doing well, such as the keywords driving significant traffic, ad copy effectiveness, and landing page design.
- Weaknesses: Look at where your competitors are lacking, such as keywords with low engagement or high bounce rates, generic ad copy, and unclear CTAs.
- Opportunities: Leverage trends or seasonal keywords your competitors aren’t using yet and look for long-tail keywords that are underserved in your niche.
- Threats: Competitors with bigger budgets and more established brand recognition may be outbidding you consistently, and new competitors may have more aggressive PPC strategies.
6. Conduct Keyword Research
After brainstorming and competitor research, it’s time to take your keywords list and refine it. To help you with creating your list and deciding on the keywords to use for your PPC ad, use a keyword research tool such as Google Keyword Planner.
With Google’s Keyword Planner, you can discover:
- A keyword’s click-through rate (CTR)
- A keyword’s quality score or the metric to rate your ad campaign
- A keyword’s rate or cost-per-click
- A keyword’s potential impressions or how many times the keyword is displayed on search engine result pages (SERPs)
In this stage, consider which keywords are out of your budget and which are worth spending on. In 2025, the average cost-per-click (CPC) in Google Ads is $1-4.
7. Create Ad Groups
Once you’ve narrowed down the list of keywords you want to target, organize them into PPC ad groups. These are keywords grouped by theme, intent, and granularity to enhance audience targeting and ad relevance.
Let’s say you have an ad campaign focused on an outdoor grill sale. You can create two ad groups for your PPC campaign with two or more ads in each group:
- Gas grills: You can include “natural gas grills,” “propane gas grills,” and variations. These ads will lead users to your gas grill landing page.
- Smoker grills: You can use “meat smokers,” “charcoal smoker grills,” and similar terms that will lead to your landing page for smoker grills.
Ultimately, PPC ad groups assist your PPC optimization efforts by enabling you to choose your target audiences and the specific keywords you can use to capture your target groups. Optimize ad copy and enhance your landing pages to ensure alignment with keywords and increase conversions.
8. Track Keyword Performance
Closely monitoring PPC performance will help you optimize your campaigns, manage your budget, and improve ROI. Monitor the following key metrics to know how your ads are being received:
- Click-through rate: The percentage of people who click on your ad
- Conversion rate: The percentage of clicks that result in a conversion
- Cost per click: The average amount you pay for each click
- Cost per conversion: The average amount you pay for each conversion
- Quality score: Google Ads metric that measures the relevance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages
Furthermore, analyze performance trends for your keywords (high performers vs. underperformers), ad copy variations, and landing pages. Optimize your campaign based on these insights — you can adjust your bid strategy, incorporate new keywords that show potential, remove underperforming keywords, and optimize accordingly.
Custom reports, performance dashboards, and A/B testing features provided by PPC tools will help with these tasks.
Keyword Match Types For PPC
Keyword match types determine how closely search phrases must match your keyword for your ad to be considered in the auction. Each one provides a different level of control over who sees your ads:
1. Broad Match
A broad keyword match combines keywords that include synonyms, misspellings, words that aren’t in order, related searches, and any other search terms that Google considers relevant. It provides the broadest reach but can lead to irrelevant clicks.
For example, if your user searches for “bik shop” (misspelled) or “cycle store” (related search), but the keyword you’re targeting is “bike shop,” your PPC ad will still appear on SERPs.
2. Exact Match
An exact keyword match shows your ad only when the exact search term is entered into Google or when a close search term variant is being used. This provides the highest level of control over who will see your ad.
Again, let’s say your target keyword is “bike shop.” If a user looks up “bike sohp” on Google, which is misspelled, your ad won’t appear. A user would have to correctly spell “bike shop” or “shop for bikes” (the same meaning) to see your ad.
3. Phrase Match
A phrase keyword match displays PPC ads only when the words in the search term are in the proper order. Unlike broad match or even exact match, phrase match doesn’t accommodate articles within your target phrase.
For your PPC ad campaign to appear, the search query must exactly match the phrase and contain every keyword or close variant, including abbreviations, singular/plural versions, and close misspellings.
So, if your target keyword is “bike shop,” and a user searches for “local bike shop” your PPC ad campaign will appear. However, if a user searches for “bike local shop,” your PPC ad campaign won’t appear.
Top PPC Keyword Research Tools
Ready to get started on your PPC campaign? Here are our top picks for PPC keyword research tools that can help you narrow down your keyword list and track their performance over time:
1. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner provides insights into keyword trends and how often keywords are searched. It shows 30-day search trends, relevant keywords, and average monthly searches. The refine keywords feature allows you to filter specific attributes related to your keywords.
For example, if you enter keywords related to “oily skin”, you can refine your results by skin type, skin condition, and more. This helps you narrow down the most relevant keywords for your PPC campaigns.
Key Features:
- Keyword suggestions, including relevant variations and relevant terms
- Search volume data and level of competition for keywords
- Historical data and seasonal trends
- Keyword filters
- Ad group ideas
Pros:
- Insights directly from Google
- Seamless integration with Google Ads
- Straightforward interface for users of all experience levels
Cons:
- CPC and competition data are generalized estimates
Pricing:
Google Keyword Planner is free.
2. SpyFu
True to its name, SpyFu takes competitor research to another level. You can look up competing websites, download their PPC keywords, discover how many clicks they get, and see how much they pay for each keyword.
Additionally, you can monitor the keywords your competitors have purchased, view their complete Google Ads campaign history, and check out every keyword that didn’t work out for them. This comprehensive insight helps you fine-tune your own PPC strategy by learning from your competitors’ successes and mistakes.
Key Features:
- Comprehensive competitor insights
- Historical record of competitor ad copy, including changes over time
- SERP analysis and level of competition
- Side-by-side comparisons of multiple competitors
Pros:
- Highly detailed information
- Bird's eye view on competitor performance
- Budget estimations for competitors
Cons:
- Relatively expensive
Pricing:
- Basic: $39/month (billed monthly) or $33/month (billed annually)
- Professional: $79/month (billed monthly) or $59/month (billed annually)
3. WordStream
WordStream is a free tool for keyword research and PPC keyword reporting. Its free, instant report card scores your Google Ads performance across nine key areas and provides tips to help you improve. This tool provides valuable recommendations on how to improve your PPC campaigns.
Key Features:
- Award-winning Google Ads performance grader
- Free keyword tool for PPC and SEO
- Quality score vs. industry benchmarks
- Complete, personalized website grader reports
Pros:
- Google Premier Partner
- Deep insights and actionable steps to improve performance
- Keyword research tailored to industry and location
Cons:
- Limited integrations
Pricing:
Wordstream is free.
PPC Keywords Takeaways
PPC keywords and keyword match types are vital elements of your PPC strategy. To get your products and services in front of potential customers, you must find the right ones for your ads and bid on them.
Spearheading PPC campaigns is resource intensive; partner with the top PPC agencies to leverage their expertise on PPC keyword analysis, paid media strategies, and campaign management.
PPC Keywords FAQs
1. What is the best keyword tool for PPC?
Google’s Keyword Planner is widely considered one of the best keyword tools for PPC advertising. Ahrefs and SpyFu are other popular options.
2. Are SEO and PPC keywords the same?
No, SEO and PPC keywords are not necessarily the same. While they both involve targeting specific words or phrases, SEO keywords focus on generating organic traffic, while PPC keywords are used in paid advertising campaigns.
3. How many keywords should I use for PPC?
Starting with a set of 5 to 20 focused, relevant, and high-quality keywords per ad group is generally recommended for effective campaign management and performance tracking.
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