Brainstorming keyword ideas

As you'll hear me say time and time again, choosing and organizing your keywords is one of the most important things that you do when setting up you paid search account. So what we need to do is brainstorm that seed list of keywords, and then we can evaluate their search volume, relevance, and competition, and we can also use that list to start filling out our ad groups, because we can always add and change those keywords as we scale and refine our campaigns. So to get that initial list of keywords, we start by visualizing our audience. Put yourself in their shoes and think about them sitting in front of the computer. What are they thinking? What might they be looking for? And how are they going to go about searching for it? One of the easiest ways to start brainstorming is to let Google do some of the work for you. Let me show you. Here on the Google homepage, we have the opportunity to start typing search queries into the box.

Let's say we're making a keyword list for BMW Z4 Test Drive and this happens to be in Glasgow. So I want to think about some keywords that might be associated with this BMW Z4 that someone might be wanting to take for a test drive. Let's start typing BMW Z4 into Google. Here we can see that it begins to auto-complete my search. It's suggesting that I type BMW Z4 test drive Top Gear, or new BMW Z4 test drive. But we know that we're interested in a test drive at a Glasgow dealership, so I type BMW Z4 test drive Glasgow. Then I might use that as a keyword and build from there. That way, I can have an ad indicating that our BMW Dealership is located in Giffnock, Glasgow and I can match those keywords to the ad language.

Now if we keep typing, let's say I type new bmw z4 cars for sale in glasgow put a space and let's just choose the letter D. Now, we can see other popular terms are Dealership and deals. So I might consider making an ad group around BMW Z4 deals and thinking about what deals I would want to generate for our BMW Z4 Roadsters, I could begin to capture those folks who are searching for that specific term. Oftentimes, people that search start with one idea in their mind, but this auto-complete hijacks their intent. So they might be typing BMW Z4 finance, but they saw deals pop up before they finished their thought, so they're going to click on that.

Now, you can also start with your goal in mind. You want your ad groups to be very focused. So let's say that we're running a deal for the 2020 BMW Z4. We could identify if I simply type finance. But that might not be the only term that someone might search for. If we put ourselves in their shoes, they might simply be looking for finance rates for the new BMW Z4. So they might type BMW Z4 Finance, and now we can see there is BMW Z4 Finance ... deals , offers, options, used. What we can do here is build an ad group that focuses on these other keywords around finance, but make sure that the location is set to not only show ads to people in the Glasgow area but outside as well.

Use the auto-complete to start brainstorming, and then we can take these keyword lists into other tools to identify how valuable they are.