PPC keyword research

The first (and I must say) most important thing to do when it comes to pay-per-click search engine marketing (known as PPC for short) is keyword research. In order for you to avoid paying a high cost-per-click (also known as CPC for short), you need to do extensive keyword research to select low-paying keywords that you can bid on.

Often times, these low-paying keywords are also long-tail keyword phrases (meaning that each keyword phrase consists of 3 or more words, such as “How do I potty train my dog?“, “fly fishing for beginners“, etc.). Sure, keywords have a lower search volume, but the people searching for these key phrases are much more specific (and therefore these people are much more likely to buy from you because they know exactly what they want).

When doing keyword research, you can use paid tools or free tools.

In this post, I will share with you the top 3 free tools that you can use to carry out the entire keyword research process.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool

You should make use of the Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool when doing your keyword research, because in my opinion, this tool is the most versatile free tool available on the internet.

All you need to do is enter the keywords you are looking for in the search box (if you are searching for more than 1 set of keywords, please enter them on separate lines), followed by entering a few characters as seen below the search box and hit the “Get keyword ideas” to start generating a list of related keywords based on the keywords you entered.

This tool will then return a list of keywords related to the keywords you are searching for.

You will see basic information such as:

advertiser competition – If the box is filled with green, it means that the advertiser’s competition is very high for that particular keyword, and if you want your ad to show on the first page for that keyword, be prepared to pay a high amount of cost for clicking.

Local and global search volume – This figure is a rough estimate of the number of searches for that particular keyword in a month. Please note that the figures are only an estimate.

In addition to the basic information above, you can also retrieve the following information about each keyword result that the tool returns:

Estimated ad position – Shows the estimated ad position your ad will be in if you bid on it.

Estimated Average CPC – An estimate of how much you need to bid per click for your ad to show in the ad position as specified in the estimated ad position.

Search Volume Trends – Shows a bar chart of the search volume for that keyword over a 12-month period.

Highest volume occurred in – It tells you in which month of the year there are more searches for a particular keyword.

2. Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool

Another free tool that you can use is the free keyword research tool Wordtracker – in the free version, you will only get a maximum of 100 keywords on a particular keyword research that you perform.

The search volume displayed next to each keyword is an estimate of the number of searches performed over the past 12 months on the various search engines.

3. Keyword Discovery Keyword Research Tool

Like the free Wordtracker keyword research tool, the free version of the Keyword Discovery keyword research tool only returns a maximum of 100 keywords for a particular keyword search.

This tool is also similar to the free Wordtracker tool in that you can only search for one keyword at a time.

Search volume indicates the number of searches that have been performed for that particular keyword in the last 12 months.

The above are 3 keyword tools that I recommend you use extensively in your PPC keyword research.

By making use of the 3 free tools I just shared with you above, it should provide you with enough keywords that you can bid on in your pay-per-click search engine marketing campaigns.