[How to] Find the Right Keywords For Your PPC Campaign

It can be seen that the keywords in a PPC campaign are one of the most important aspects of a PPC campaign along with others such as the landing page. It is the keywords in pay per click advertising that make it contextual. You choose keywords that helps Google identify the type of people you are targeting. By choosing the wrong keywords in a campaign can make your campaign quite inefficient. Your CPC may increase as well as the chance of click fraud on your adverts increasing too. Therefore, it is wise to choose the right keywords for your campaign. 
 
One of the best ways you can figure out what keywords to use is through experimenting and by running multiple campaigns. With each and every campaign you run in this experiment, make every aspect of each campaign the same except the keywords you use. Therefore, with the help of analysing your landing page’s statistics, you can determine what keywords produce the best results. You will also identify what keywords have the highest/lowest  CPC and what keywords have the best CTR. All in all, you will learn what keywords are best for your campaign.
 
Once you have discovered all the statistics about all your possible keyword contenders, you can then look to see what keywords you will want to include in your campaign:
 

• If you want fast instantaneous traffic, choose keywords with the highest CTR and page impressions (but mainly keywords with the highest CTR because you can have thousands of page impressions for some keywords but without a high CTR, it is worthless). Instant traffic is one of PPC’s benefits!
• If you want steady long term traffic, choose keywords with a consistent CTR and page impressions. This will ensure that your traffic to your landing page will stay consistent for a long time.
• If you want to have a efficient-running PPC campaign, choose keywords that your know the CPC of. By knowing the CPC of your keywords will enable you to bid less than the highest bidder (being the CPC). Therefore, your advert won’t be the first and highest on the webpage which is most effected by click fraud reducing efficiency.
• If you want value for money, choose the keywords that have the lowest CPC. This will ultimately mean you will get more clicks for your money’s worth. Although, this is the cheapest option, it may not always produce the best results.

 
Along with all these stats, you will need to consider other factors about your keywords. They may have a high CTR which is very desirable for short-term and instant traffic PPC campaigns. However, you need to make sure that the stats visitors produce on your landing page from your PPC traffic is healthy traffic with a good conversion rate. If you don’t have a good conversion rate, all the above information is pointless. Before you do anything, make sure all your possible keywords have good conversion rates. You can then look more into detail at their CPC, CTR and page impressions to fully optimise your PPC campaign for success (with the help of above).
 
It is also important to not automatically stay away from high paying keywords. High paying keywords have high CPCs for a reason. Advertisers must get good results from these keywords to pay so much for them. Therefore, it can be seen that the higher the CPC, the more successful the keyword is to other advertisers. The lower the price of the keyword, the less effective it will be in gaining conversions.