5 Steps to Do PPC Keyword Research

PPC keyword research can feel like a daunting task. But this plays a huge role in every successful paid advertising campaign. Did you know that 46% of clicks come to the top three pay-per-click ads in Google search results?

With this, you can drive high website traffic, clicks, conversions, and a higher return on investment (ROI). Firstly, you need to determine the keywords to target.

With proper pay-per-click (PPC) keyword research, you can create PPC ads and landing pages to encourage customers to take specific action. In this blog, we’ll look at five steps to conduct PPC keyword research.

What is PPC Keyword Research?

PPC keyword research is the process of identifying keywords to target within a pay-per-click advertising campaign on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and other search engine marketing platforms.

You need to identify the keywords you bid on to display your PPC ads when customers search for those terms. More importantly, you need to analyze the keywords that customers use when searching for brands, products, or services related to your niche. By this, you can avoid wasting your ad budget on keywords that won’t drive customers to your website.

Why PPC Keyword Research Still Matters?

Keywords define what your brand is about and what you sell. Even though zero-click searches gain importance with AI Overviews, generative engine optimization (GEO), and Answer engine optimization (AEO), they still rely on keywords that customers type in the search bar.

When the right keyword is typed, your paid ads can appear in front of the target audience. Choosing the wrong keywords can drain your budget for irrelevant clicks.

Here are some important factors why PPC keyword research still matters in 2025:

1. Search intent

Search intent is crucial to understanding what keywords work best for a PPC campaign. Customers search for products or services from different perspectives (to buy or for information), and your keywords need to align with your customers’ intentions.

Here are a few ways to categorize keywords related to search intent:

• Informational – Customers looking for an answer to their queries related (e.g., “how to cook rice with a rice cooker”).
• Navigation – Customers looking for a specific website or brand (e.g., “Google Ads login”).
• Commercial – Customers search for a product or service to compare or determine which is best before making a purchase. (e.g., “best mobile phones under 40000)
• Transactional – Customers search with intent-to-buy words “buy” or “purchase” to take specific action (e.g., “ticket booking”).

By following these search intents, you won’t waste your bid on the wrong search intent. More importantly for PPC keyword research, you can target keywords related to commercial and transactional search intent to maximise your ROI.

2. Match types

Google Ads allows you to target highly specific keywords depending on your product, services, or brand. You have three match types to control how your keywords trigger paid ads:

• Broad Match – This helps you to display your ads for phrases related to your keywords. It maximizes your reach but attracts irrelevant website traffic.
• Phrase Match – This expands your selected keywords so your ad can show up for many variations of customer search terms. You can control paid ads while still allowing keyword variations.
• Exact Match – This helps you to display your ads for the exact keyword you choose. It can bring lower volume doesn’t waste your ad budget.

3. Negative keywords

Negative keywords are keywords that instruct Google not to display your ad for them. Adding negative keywords is crucial to filter out irrelevant traffic, high ROI, and improve conversion rate without wasting money.

For example, if you’re promoting your online digital marketing course, you can use any match type for paid ads. But you’ll want to instruct Google not to display your ads for terms like “offline” or “in-person” by adding them as negative keywords.

4. Keyword length

Keywords are divided into two types: short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are the popular way to search for information, products, services, etc. They have high search volume but are expensive and competitive. On the other hand, long-tail keywords are a less popular way to search for information, products, services, etc. They have low search volume and less competition.

If you’re a startup or small business, don’t go for short-tail keywords, but you can use long-tail keywords (e.g., “black women’s ankle jeans”. This keyword is more specific and can yield better results with a low budget in a PPC campaign.

How to Conduct Keyword Research for PPC?

If you have no idea about keyword research for PPC, it doesn’t matter at all. Here is the step-by-step process for PPC keyword research. All you need is a keyword research tool to conduct keyword research.

In this guide, we’ll use Google Keyword Planner for PPC keyword research.

STEP 1: Define your PPC campaign objective

Before starting with PPC keyword research, you need to decide what you’re trying to achieve with your campaign.

Ask yourself:

• What is the goal of your campaign?
• What is your bottom-of-the-funnel goal?
• What action do you want customers to take?
• What is your budget?
• What is your target cost per conversion?
• How much are you willing to spend on paid ads per day or per month?

By knowing this, you can target keywords based on average cost-per-click (CPC). Once you have an idea about your cost per conversion and CPC, you can set a daily or monthly ad budget.

STEP 2: Identify seed keywords

Now, identify some seed keywords related to your brand. Here are some tips you can follow to brainstorm keywords.

• Put yourself into your customer’s shoes and look at what kind of words or phrases and queries they would type into the search box to bring your website.
• Start with broad keywords, then move to the specific keywords. For instance:

Boots > women’s boots > women’s ankle boots > women’s black ankle boots

• Next, include all the variations in your keyword list. Google search engines can make connections between related terms (“boots” and “ankle boots” are the same product). For instance, take a keyword “women’s black ankle boots”, for this you can include variations like:

Women’s black ankle footwear

Women’s black ankle shoes

Women’s black ankle heels

Women’s black ankle leather boots

Women’s lace-up black ankle boots

Women’s black ankle boots with heels

Consider specific keywords after selecting keywords in a broader view. Sometimes it can be beneficial to include broad match (usually short phrases) because they have higher search volume but higher competition. Broad keywords like “boots” can be used by customers searching for men’s boots, women’s boots, kids’ boots, and so on, so your product won’t be relevant to them.

On the other hand, specific or long-tail keywords like “women’s black ankle boots” might get low search volumes per month, but the customer will click on your ad and make a purchase. And more importantly, these long-tail keywords are less competitive and have a lower cost.

STEP 3: Expand your keyword list with keyword tools

Now, you have come to do PPC keyword research with keyword tools. Once you have a list of seed keywords, expand it further to uncover high-potential keywords for your PPC campaigns. You have tons of free keyword research tools available, both in free and paid versions.

Here, we use Google Keyword Planner (a free tool) as an example to do keyword research for PPC.

Go to Tools > Planning > Keyword Planner.

You just need to enter a seed keyword in the “discover new keywords” and click the “Get Results”. This tool lists thousands of keyword ideas related to your seed keyword.

While choosing keywords for your PPC campaign, you need to check out the following list:

• Monthly search volume: How many searches does this keyword receive per month?
• Competition: Look at the level of competition for placing an ad – it can be low, medium, or high.
• Cost-per-click (CPC): How much you’ll pay each time a customer clicks your ad?
• Top of page bid: How much you’ll pay to bid on a particular keyword to appear ad in search results?

STEP 4: Refine your keywords

Next, you can refine the list of keyword ideas that Google Keyword Planner provides you. While displaying keywords, you can see a box on the right side titled “Refine Keywords”.

You can use the “Refine” button to remove keywords that are not related to your campaign. For instance, you can remove all brand-related terms like “Adidas” or “Nike” from the keyword ideas. By this, you can remove various unrelated keywords to refine your keyword list.

STEP 5: Add negative keywords

By adding negative keywords, you can control which keywords Google should exclude from displaying your ads. Through this, you avoid wasting ad spend and get a higher ROI and more profitably. You need to use negative keyword options when using broad or phrase match types.

To add negative keywords:

Go to Campaigns > Audiences, keywords, and content > Keywords.

Then, visit the “Negative keywords” tab.

Here, you can add your negative keywords and save them so that your ads for the particular keyword.

Start Your PPC Keyword Research Today!

Through this, you can note that PPC keyword research is important to a successful PPC campaign. So, if you’re a startup or small business, keyword research is the first place to advertise your product or services online.

If you’re looking for PPC services, reach NB Marketing Solutions now. We experts perform PPC keyword research, create high-performing ads, bid on your ad spend, and make changes to drive conversion and high ROI.