How to do Keyword Research? [Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing with Google Ads]

By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on March 1st, 2022 11:06 am | 4-min read

Digital marketing is the need of the hour for businesses today. No matter which industry you belong to, it is important that you exploit the potential of digital marketing and get your business out there so that your prospective customers can see what you have on offer.

In this post, we are going to talk about how to use Google Ads, digital marketing, how to do keyword research with Google AdWords keyword tool, and more! This post can serve as a free digital marketing course for you to learn digital marketing with Google Ads.

What is Google Ads?

Let’s start with the basics – what is Google Ads. If you have had even a very limited exposure to the world of digital marketing and keyword research, you must have at least heard about Google Ads. Google Ads is an online advertising platform from Google. On this platform, advertisers can pay to display their small ads with service offerings, complete product listings, add video content and even get app installs within the Google Ad network.

For a more detailed introduction to Google Ads, you can watch this video.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

Types of Ads

There are basically three types of ads available on Google.

Search Ads

These ads appear in the search results when people type and search for certain keywords. Google search ads typically do not include any images or videos, but have all the relevant details like web site address, phone number etc.

Display Ads

Whenever you go to a website and see different images appear on the site with interesting copy and colorful imagery on it, you are seeing display ads. Google display ads are pretty popular form of advertising for businesses of all scale and size.

Video Ads

These are the video commercials that pop up on YouTube when you are watching a video, or while you are using an app, or even when you end up on a landing page.

For more detailed information on types of ads, watch this informative video below.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

How to set up a Google Ads Account?

Before you start setting up your Google Ads account, you must evaluate whether you are actually ready for it. Here are the things that you need to have, before taking the Google Ads leap.

• A well designed, relevant, functional website

• You have time and money for a long-term commitment

• You have dedicated human resource available for PPC

Follow the steps below to setup your Google Ads account:

• Go to Google Ads

• You can setup your account with an existing email address or create a new one

• Once your account is setup, go to settings

• Select your time zone and currency preferences

• Set up the billing information

• Choose your preferred payment option

• Automatic payment, where you are charged once you have reached your billing threshold or 30 days after your last payment (whichever happens first)

• Manual payment, where you prepay Google Ads and the campaign charges are deducted from the prepaid amount. Once the amount in your account is exhausted, all campaigns stop automatically

Here’s a video that will help you how to set up your own Google Ads account.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

How to find keywords that suit your business?

Before you decide to run an ad campaign on Google Ads, it is important that you know what keywords are best suited for your business. If you end up running an ad campaign with the wrong keywords, all that money you have invested will go to a waste. For example, let’s say you are an auto insurance agency, and you choose insurance policy and insurance agencies in Chicago as the keywords, chances are you may get a large number of clicks from people who came looking for life insurance, home insurance or health insurance. Start counting your losses!

Let’s try and understand how to do keyword research for your business.

List out relevant topics

Start by listing out about 5-10 topics that are important for your business and you want to rank for. To come up with these topics, it is a good idea to place yourself in the position of your customers or buyer persona.

Come up with keywords for each topic

Once you have the broad topics that you want to focus on, you should now come up with keywords for each of the topics you want to rank for. These should be the keyword phrases that you believe are important to rank for, so that customers searching for those keywords can find you easily.

Explore related keywords

Once you have exhausted yourself in coming up with keywords and are struggling to find some more, related keywords can help you out. When you type your keywords on Google search engine, as you scroll down to the bottom, you would see a list of related keywords. Find inspiration there and look for keywords that you can add to your list.

Combine head terms and long tail keywords

Head terms may get more search queries, but long tail keywords help you get better quality leads. It is a good idea to combine the two for a balanced strategy that brings you some short-term wins and long-term gains.

Conduct a competitor ranking analysis

It is not important that you rank for the same keywords as your competitors, but it is good to know which ones they rank for. If they rank high for the keywords you are targeting, it is prudent that you work harder on those to outrank them. However, if you see some of the keywords that they seem to ignore, treat it as an opportunity.

Use Google AdWords keyword planner

In the Google AdWords Keyword Planner, you can get relevant information like search volume and traffic estimates. Using this tool, you can choose to rule out any keywords that have too less or too much search volume.

This is how you can come up with just the right keywords related to your business, which you can use not just for your SEO efforts but more importantly for your digital marketing campaigns.

If you are looking for more details, here’s a helpful video about finding keywords that suit your business.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

How to use Google Ads to set up an ad campaign?

Now that you have everything ready, it is time to start your first ad campaign. Here are the steps to create your first ad campaign on Google Ads

• Sign in to your Google account

• Go to Google Ads

• On the left, in the page menu, click on ‘Campaigns’

• Click the + (plus) button and select ‘New Campaign’

• Select one or more goals

• In case none of the goals are a fit for your campaign, you can choose ‘Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance’

• Select a campaign type, then click ‘Continue’

• Select your campaign setting, then click ‘Save and continue’

And you are all set to go!

Conclusion

This is an era of Digital marketing and Google Ads is one of the most powerful tools for acquiring new customers. However, it is important that you plan your campaigns well, otherwise you may end up spending way too much of money without much of an ROI to show for it.

Hence, it is important to supplement what you have learned here, try out practical ideas, test them and then optimize them frequently for better results.

If you are looking for alternatives to Google Ads as an advertising platform? Try out Appy Jump and start making money on your digital estate!