Google Ads Keyword Research for 2022 [How to Complete Your Keyword Research the Right Way]

Hello, friend. It's Aaron Young here from Define Digital Academy and I am your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Today I want to talk to you and teach you how to do proper keyword research for your Google Ads campaign. And I actually sort of call this teaching. Keyword research done right. And this is actually a really, really important element for you to be able to have success in Google Ads. It's actually so important that before you even dive in and set up a and start your Google Ads campaign, you need to do your keyword research first. So much so that you need to have all of your keywords broken into different campaigns and ad groups. And the reason for this is so that you can actually use what I call the one keyword theme strategy, which is a strategy in Google Ads which is just going to set your campaign up and business for success. But before we get into the teaching today, what I wanted to also let you know is if you stick around to the end of this video, is that I actually want to give you a free gift. And this is actually my Google Ads Optimization checklist. I've been doing Google Ads now for, As I said, 15,000 hours and 12 years. And this is a system and a process that I put together quite a few years ago. And it's actually a system and a process that I still use today. I use it on all of my campaigns that I manage from my really small clients who are spending under $1,000 a month, all the way up to my. My large multinational clients who are, some of them are spending up to $85,000 month. What this process and checklist actually takes you through is it gives you a guide and a reminder and also a schedule on what optimizations you need to complete every 72 hours, every week, every month, and every three months. So it's a really valuable tool and I want to give you that for free. All you need to do is just stick around to the end of the training so I can let you know how you can access that and implement it in your Google Ads campaign. So we. So let's get right into it. I'm going to jump into a screen share and start taking you through keyword research done right. Keyword research done right. Now, despite what you think, you actually don't start this process in Google Ads. The way that I actually start this process and the way that I've always found I've had the most success in Google Ads campaigns is when I've actually completed, before I've even gone into Google Ads and used the Google Search Keyword tool that have actually gone in and you have a quick look. This is the website that we're going to be doing some keyword research today. This is a pest control and also an air conditioning business based here in Southeast Queensland. They service Brisbane, Gold coast and Sunshine coast to complete their keyword research. What, what we actually do and what I would recommend is that you actually first go into Google Docs. So I just use Google Docs. You could use, you could even write it down if you wanted to, but I find Google Docs is easier. So that way you can copy and paste it into the Google, Google's search keyword tool. So essentially what I've just looked at is, you know, they're doing pest control and then I've just written in the different location modifiers. So pest control, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Ipswich, Gold coast, and then air conditioner cleaning and then also those location modifiers. That's what I've put down as my baseline keyword research. So then what we actually do do is we then go into Google Ads and you select on this Tools and Settings button and then you go over into Planning and then you go into Keyword Planner. So we wait for that to load up. Now you've got to have two options. You're going to have this first option which is Discover New Keywords. And then the second option is the Get Search, Volume and Forecast. Now, as I said before, the ideas, the keywords that I've written down are just a start, so that I always use this Discover new Keywords. And, and the reason for that is because I'm just, I've already got some ideas, but I want to see and look at what are some other potential ideas that I haven't thought of from what I've originally put down. So we click on Discover New Keywords. Now, if you want to, you can also either start with keywords or start with a website. The reason why I actually do start with keywords is because it actually gives you the option to also put in the website. So I'll generally just cut and copy the website. We paste that in here and then the other thing that we do do from here is that I get all of my keyword ideas, I copy them and then you just straightaway paste them into here. Now, one thing I do want to let you know, as you can see here, is that I've actually pasted the limit of 10 keywords, but you've only got a maximum of 10 keyword ideas that you can, can put in, which isn't a problem. Because you can, you know, you can repeat this process. So if you've got more than 10 keyword ideas, you have to do this in a couple of, a couple of goes. So first you put in those keyword ideas that you've got and then you just quite quickly go down to this get results button and then what Google Ads will start doing is that it basically goes through and looks out at your potential keywords. So what you need to look at here is that you've got, you've got some different columns, so you've got the keywords by relevance. So up this top sections, it's got the keywords you provided and then it actually goes into different keyword ideas and these are ones that we haven't written down but that Google is recommending because they're very close to what we've, what we've got in. Now when you look at through here is it, it's got the average monthly searches. So you can see here for pest control. Now this is obviously Australia wide. I could break that down to Queensland or I could break that down to Brisbane and Gold coast, but to be honest with you, and this, at this part of it, what we're really just looking at is we're just looking at trends. And what I, the trends I want to see is firstly the average monthly searches, what I'm looking at through there. And if you scroll over, you can kind of see what's, what's happening. And this kind of gives you an idea of what's happening seasonally. So you can see here, Pest Control's got 22,200 searches on average per month. But you know, moving into the summer months, November, it does get up higher to, you know, 33,000 and just 35,000. Now because I'm doing this in Australia, that's our summer months. So it makes sense that people are wanting to get outside more. So they look to get their pest control happening and also before Christmas and those things. So there are the seasonal keywords. So it's important to note that these monthly searches, it's not that 22,000 searches every month, it's, that's what the average has been over the previous 12 months. And then when you're looking at this competition, obviously it's got three levels, low, medium, high, pretty self explanatory. Obviously it just lets you know how many other people are actually bidding on this keyword, whether there's a lot of advertisers or only a couple. Now then you'll see these two columns. The first one is the top of bid page, which is the low range, and the top of bid page, which is the high range. Now the bid is what you would call your cost per click. So this is giving you an idea of what is the estimated cost per click or the amount that you're going to have to pay to, to win each of those auctions for that keyword. Now the difference between the low range and the high range is the low range. So the top of pages, your top four positions and so the low range is positions three and four and the top of page is positions one and two. So you can see here there is actually can actually be quite a large variance between that position four rank and also that position one and two rank. So that's the columns explained from there and then it's just a matter of going through and going, okay, what are the keywords that we want to select? Now you can see through here all of the ones that I write down have got some good volume, so I want to include those. But what I do also look at is you can see here for this vast one of pest control and also this other one of air conditioner cleaning. Now with pest control, I've decided not to select this one. You could, or you, you know, that you could leave this up to you. But the reason why I haven't selected it is because I'm looking at here when I, you know, that's a really, really high competition and it's also a really, really high bid. So it's going to cost a lot. Whereas we look here, some of these more targeted keywords like pest control, Sunshine coast and Brisbane, we've got some really good search volumes, but the, the, the clicks are a little bit more, a little bit cheaper as well. And same for now, but when we look at air conditioning cleaning, it's not as high. So I'm happy to keep that in, especially considering that that cost per click is down at about that 2 to $6 range, which for this, this example is really, really good. Now what we're actually starting to look at here as well is there's other keyword ideas that we can include. Is this pest control near me, which I'm not not including. And the reason for it, once again, it comes back to volume. If these were all really, really low and we're only getting, you know, sort of 40 or 90 searches a month, I would include that. But I'm not doing that because it's just not required. Exterminator look, that's another keyword theme that I could go into if I wanted to. But to start off with, you know, when I'm looking at it, I just go, we've got heaps and heaps of search volumes, so we don't need to add those in. And then I just start going, look, I know this company doesn't do termite treatments, so we're not including that. You know, we don't do B, so I don't need to control that. And then you just basically start going through and going, is there any other of these keywords which we think would be worthwhile? AC cleaning? I go there, yep, that's. That's worthwhile. Aircon cleaning, some of the variations. And then ants. No, we don't do ants. So basically I select those and then the next option is, is that you actually want to add these to your plan. So to do this, I always create a new ad group and it's just a matter, I just go, 99 people, we create this ad group. And then it's a matter of just adding those keywords. We wait for this to add and then you can see here that these are in our plan and these are saved. Now if you wanted to, you can actually go back and say, for example, air conditioning maintenance service, you can add these in. So you can basically delete a couple of these if you wanted to, and then you can add in some of these extra variations if you wanted to, just to continue to do the search. So once you've done that, what you actually need to do then is you need to actually go up into your forecast and if you want to have a quick look, you know, you can have a quick look here of what it's, what it's going to cost you for those current keywords. You know, you can use this sliding bar. So let's just say you do have a set budget. Now, this budget is per month. And let's just say that your budget was set at $2,000 a month. You can just bring that back down and then you can actually see how the clicks change depending on your different budgets from there. So the next option is that you do actually have an option to create your campaign, but I don't use that option. And the reason for it, and this is what I said in the intro, is I like to actually use what's called the one keyword theme method. So to, to do that. And essentially what this, this strategy is, is that we're actually breaking all of those individual keywords into different campaign segments and ad group segments. And the reason for why we do that is it, it's twofold. One, it actually makes optimizing your campaign a lot easier, especially for a company like this where they have some really specific service areas. So, so you know, if you're not familiar with the Brisbane area, you know the Gold coast through to the Sunshine coast, you're looking at around about a 3 1/2, 4 hour drive away from those locations. So it makes sense to segment those into different campaigns. And the other reason for that, depending on the way that the business is structured, if you've got different budgets, you can then set those budgets to different areas. And another real good, really good option for it is that when it comes to your reporting, you, you can really start easily breaking down and going, look, we're getting really good results in Brisbane. We need to work a little bit more in Sunshine Coast. So you get your, you get my picture is that by creating it now, just putting it all in one campaign, you're just going to make it a lot harder for future optimizations down the track. So what I do is I actually download this and you can either download it into a CSV or a Google Sheets but personally I find it easier to download it into a CSV but for this, so we can keep it online. You just download it into a Google Sheet. So if you want to, you can give the sheet a sheet, a name and we're just going to call 99 people can't type keyword sheet and then we download it. Yeah, as I said, if you wanted to, you could download this directly into a CSV file and then we just open up our, our sheet. Now what you can see through here is this is basically exported all of our keywords that we've added to our account. So look, if you want to I just do a little bit of a tidy up, I delete these columns, don't need these two. So you just do a little bit of a cleanup just so that you can order it how you want to order it and then it's just a matter of so you can see these, bring this out. So then you've got your, you've got your core data that you need there. And then the other thing that, why I do like putting it into this Google Sheet is that you can actually see through here is you've actually got the monthly volume per month. So you can actually see where it actually does start to change. So you know, as we saw before, there is a bit of a ramp up between August and September building it into October. So you can see that, see the different trends there. And that's just another benefit of downloading it into a Google sheet. So then what I do from there is that I basically I add two columns before and we're going to do two things. One, we're going to call this our campaign column and then the next one we're going to actually call our ad group. If you're not aware and you are really, really new to Google Ads. We've got some extra videos on this coming up. But so your campaign is basically a little bit of a higher order than your ad group. So what, what I would recommend for this campaign is I'm going to break my campaigns down by my location. And the reason for that is because the it just allows this client to be able to set different budgets in different regions and then also they can report better in those sections. So essentially what we're doing there, remember that we had, we had the different regions. So we've got, as you can see, Brisbane, we've also got the Gold Coast, Ipswich. And then it's just a matter of basically we're looking at this. Two, we can see that there's two main different ad ad groups that we're working on. There would be the air condition ad group and then there would also be the pest control. So for Brisbane we would go, I would just call this something like pest control Brisbane. And then this one would be we can put it down to aircon Brisbane. Now the reason why I've done that as well is that this way, when you're looking at your campaign at a campaign level, you can see how Brisbane's going to. But then once you see that, you actually don't need to go into that campaign to see how the different keyword themes are going. Because you know that in your air conditioning Brisbane campaign you're only targeting keywords that say air conditioning Brisbane. Same with your pest control Brisbane, you're only targeting keywords that say pest control Ipswich. Now how this really helps is that when you go to actually write your ad copy, you can make it really, really specific because you know that you're only targeting pest control turns for Brisbane. So in your headlines you can then rather than just saying pest control and it being general, you can actually put in there pest control Brisbane versus your Gold coast ad groups where you can actually say pest control Gold Coast. So by breaking it down and only having one keyword theme, one single keyword theme in each of your ad groups, it means that when you come to actually write your ad copy and you can become really, really specific and really, really Targeted and there's so much data out there that shows that the more specific and targeted that your ad copy messaging is, it's going to increase your click through ratio. I've gone through and done just a little bit more cleaning up. So you can see here that I've actually added in the different campaigns and then the different ad groups. And you can actually see here that we've actually got some general terms here. So what I've done and would do is I would go general and then you can see there's two main themes here. There's AC cleaning and then these ones. Remember we didn't include the actual pest control because we decided not to when we were doing the research. But you can actually see there that I've then also opened up a general AC cleaning campaign. If we wanted to target sort of more general area or look at some new areas that we, new locations that we may want to grow the business into. So essentially what you can also then do from there is if you wanted to, you can just select everything and obviously you can use your sort options and we just want to sort this by the campaign. And then you've got all of you. So basically that's done. You got your campaign structure and your ad group structure in a really, really clean, nice format. And so that when you actually go to build your campaign it's really, really easy. You've done your keyword research, you've already built out your campaign campaigns and your ad groups and it's just a matter of copying and pasting that into your Google Ads. Now in this video I will actually include a link to a video where actually do describe how to actually set up your Google Ads campaign. We go through that in a step by step process and you will actually need this list so that you can add that through. But go through, have a, have a look. You know, have a look and try and go through this process. And look, if you do have any questions or, or you got any comments, please leave them in the comment section below. I'll be more than happy to come through and answer any questions that you do have. But remember, before we finish up, I just want as a, as my way of saying thank you for just being part of this teaching and following through this whole video is that I've got a free gift that I want to give you and this is my Google Ads Optimization checklist template. And remember as I said, this is a template that I'm still using today and it actually breaks down and gives you a guide of what you need to do every 72 hours, every week, every month, and every three months to make sure that you're optimizing your Google Ads campaign in the best way possible. Always. You need to go to is the Define Digital Academy, the Google Ads Checklist. I'll pop that link down in the in the information Description section below as well. And we look forward to seeing you on our next training. Thank you.