Ahoy, SEOmoz UGC blog lubbers! In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, today's post will show you how to unlock a secret treasure trove of SEO keyword research data from your own company’s AdWords account! Avast!
Great SEO always starts with great keyword research – unfortunately, getting high-quality, actionable keyword data can sometimes be challenging for several reasons:
- Google’s keyword tool is an undependable source – it doesn’t always provide complete, accurate data.
- Google analytics is an unreliable source, no longer showing all of the data for organic search referrals. Also, your Google Analytics data, by definition, tells you about what you’re already ranking on, not what you're missing out on!
- Keyword suggestion data in general is unreliable from a conversion perspective – it can tell you how popular a keyword is relative to other terms, but it can't tell you how it will perform on your specific site.
For these and many other reasons, mining your existing Google AdWords campaign data can be incredibly helpful in determining keyword targets for SEO.
In my article today, I’ll show you how to unlock a secret treasure trove of SEO keyword research data from your own company’s AdWords account!
Keywords vs. Search Queries
Before diving in, I’d like to first call attention to an important distinction in PPC regarding the difference between keywords and search queries.
In SEO, the term "keyword" is usually synonymous with the specific term you're targeting. However in an AdWords campaign, every "keyword" is like a pirate-ship packed full of many different user search queries that triggered your ads, including synonyms, related terms, misspellings, word variations, plurals, etc. of the main keyword.
The keyword metrics you see in AdWords, like clicks, impressions, cost, conversions, etc. are a blend of the performance metrics for the entire set of search queries associated with your keyword.
The key point here is that in order to get our hands on the secret SEO keyword research treasure trove, we'll need to first unpackage the AdWords keywords into their constituent search queries.
Arrr Now Surrrrrender the Booty! (Accessing Search Query Data in AdWords)
Getting your search query data in AdWords is a bit hidden – a bit like trying to find a buried treasure! Here's how to unpack your keywords into their underlying search queries:
- Set the date range to as large a date range as possible, to download as much search query treasure as possible.
- With “All Campaigns” selected, navigate to the keywords tab
- Find the “Keyword Details” button, and then click the “View All Search Terms” option, as illustrated here.
From there you can see the specific search query terms that users searched on, right before clicking on your ads! Every search query comes with all kinds of great data that we can use to help with SEO keyword research, including impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, conversion rates, etc. as shown here:
The above search query data is much more valuable than the fool's gold you get from the Google Keyword Tool and other free keyword tools, because it’s real campaign data for your own site! Key advantages include:
- Geo-Targeted Volume Data: Most companies target specific countries, states, or cities in their SEO efforts. One neat feature in AdWords is that you can target specific regions or cities, so, the keyword impression data that you’re getting is reflective of only the markets that your business caters to.
- Actual Performance Data: The search query data contains real outcomes on your websites. For example, you can you can see what search queries actually led to happy outcomes, like a lead capture or completed sale.
- It's Proprietary Data: The search queries are unique to your website. Your competition does not have access to it.
- Cost-Per-Click Data: This gives you a true sense for the value your company and your competitors place on different types of keywords and can be used to justify the value of SEO in a very concrete way.
Now it's very likely that you're looking at a crap-ton of search query data here, having just expanded you keywords into their underlying search queries – if your company is spending a few thousand dollars per month on paid search, there could easily be thousands or hundreds of thousands (or possibly even millions) of search queries here.
If you’re finding that there are just too many rows of data here, it’s important that you sort or filter out some of this data so that your pirate ship doesn’t sink from the crushing weight of all this keyword research booty.
Search Query Booty Filtering Ideas
If you have conversion tracking on, the instant metal-detector way of finding the doubloons in the search query data is to just filter out non-converting search queries. This means that all remaining search query data has all proven itself to be both valuable and relevant to your business.
If you don't have conversion tracking on, or if the number of conversions in your account is too low (i.e. too many of your search queries are being filtered out), I recommend filtering out search queries with very low impression volume and/or spend, for example, search queries with fewer than say, 2 impressions, or with less than a few dollars in spend. Both of these tactics will help weed out the 1-off keyword searches which typically make more than half of the rows in your search query report data.
The following screenshot shows how to apply search query filters in AdWords, using the built-in filtering options:
Once you’ve gotten your search query data down to a more manageable level, download it to Excel.
Panning for Gold (Search Query Analysis)
Now that you've exported your filtered AdWords search query data, it's time to analyze this data to prioritize a few SEO targets.
In SEO keyword research, there are tons of metrics that SEOs use like KEI, or Global Google Monthly Search Volume Estimate, or keyword competition, or keyword difficulty, to help in picking what keywords to target in their content creation efforts.
In AdWords, there's many different search query metrics to choose from. There are too many to list out, but here's some of key search query metrics that I pay most attention to for SEO keyword research, and why:
- Conversions – Any search queries that convert might be good candidates to target via SEO. Even the terms that are converting at high cost per conversions via PPC could be good terms to target via SEO.
- Conversion Rate – High performing search queries in paid search will likely enjoy similar conversion metrics in relative terms when targeted via SEO.
- Impressions – Use keyword impression data to get a better sense for actual search query volume in your targeted region.
- Click Trough Rates – if you’re seeing very high click through rates that means your ad is resonating and should give you some ideas for content creation.
- Cost Per Click – I have found that this is generally directly proportional to SEO keyword difficulty. Meaning, the higher the cost per click, the harder it will be to rank organically on that same term.
- Total Cost – By successfully targeting keywords for which your company is already spending money on paid search, you can easily justify the value of SEO to your boss or client in a very concrete way.
Using these and other metrics, you can get a really great sense of which terms have the most overall value to your business, as well as a handle on the effort required to be successful, and even content creation angles to pursue.
Grouping and Organizing your Keyword List into Themes
Once you’ve pulled out or rank-ordered the different terms that seem to look promising based on your analysis, you may want to re-organize that data to make sense of it, especially because you’ll probably still have a ton of keyword data.
For example, say you find that you have a bunch of promising keywords, like:
- best Internet marketing software
- top Internet marketing software
- internet marketing seo software
- ... (etc.)
These search query variations are similar ways for searching on internet marketing software – it would be nice to try to roll these and other similar search queries into top-level keyword themes, instead of having to process hundreds of similar search queries.
It's kind of the opposite of what we did early on in this process, when we expanded our PPC keywords into their constituent search queries – it would be nice to somehow repackage our final list of promising looking search queries back into categories and sub-categories based on keyword themes.
An easy way to organize your keyword data is to drop it into WordStream's Free Keyword Grouper, which will not only group your keywords into relevant clusters but also shows you which clusters of keywords from your list are the most profitable (you can enter in the keyword and corresponding visits, which in this case you likely want to use impression data for):
You can use this tool for free 10 times. And heck, because the SEOmoz community is so awesome, if you run out of free credits, just shoot me an email this week (lkim at wordstream dot com), and I’ll generate a free 1-year license for the paid version of my Keyword Research Suite (valued at $329 / year) which includes this keyword grouper tool.
The key point here is using a keyword grouping tool such as this one, you can take up to 10,000 search queries and package them back into a more manageable number of higher level topics and sub-topics, and you can use the resulting taxonomy to map out keyword groupings into specific pages on your site in the same way you would with any keyword research process.
Summary: The Pirate's SEO’s Guide to Keyword Research using AdWords Data
Mateys: In my article today, we covered:
- How to find and unpack your company’s AdWords keywords into valuable search query data
- Tips for filtering out some of the noise from your AdWords search query data
- Tips for analyzing and prioritizing your search query data
- How to repackage and organize your analyzed search query data back into topics, for use in SEO content creation efforts
By following these steps to super-charge your SEO keyword research, I think you’ll be yo-ho-ho’ing all the way to the bank!
Arrrr.... About The Author
Captain Larry Kim be the Founder/CTO of WordStream, provider of PPC Management Tools, including the 20 Minute PPC Work Week, and the AdWords Grader.
You can follow him on Twitter or Google+.
In observance of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, all comments must be in the form of Pirate-speak! :)
Shiver me timbers, this is great stuff, arrr!!! Thanks for sharing and thumbs up for bringing the Talk like a Pirate Day to Youmoz.
Cheers from Germany :-) Sven
arrrr thanks targi42 for this note!
This needs to get promoted to the main blog!
Nice article i think this will really great help for us to choosing perfect keywords for the PPC campaign. Keyword grouping is really helpful for us to find out keywords related to our niche. Thanks for the providing us great reading.
Arrrrrrrrgh..... Avast ye scurvy knaves!....Now that I've gotten that out of the way, one of my favorite things to looks at when sorting through search queries (that have produced conversion) is the Per Visit Value. This helps me gauge how much I should potentially be bidding in Adwords on that term if I do want to add it to my campaign.
Fun post...Now walk the plank!
thanks for this note. these are very powerful ideas. conversion data is the ultimate test of relevancy, and using conversion rates on converting terms to predict value per visit, to inform bidding, i think is very smart!
I have been using Adwords data for SEO keyword research for a few years, I mean Adwords data is probably one of the first places to start when you do keyword research, I think what holds many SEO company's back is the limitation to access the data because they simply do not run Adwords campaigns.
ARRRRggghhh!!!! This is definitely the case in many companies but in my experience, I've also found that there are plenty of companies are sitting on treasure troves of adwords campaign data and not exploiting it for SEO simply because different people, departments, or an outside agency handles PPC.
Ahoy Larry
We are all "sea dogs" but your post reveals treasures to be discovered!
Thanks for your job.
May you and your infamous mates have Fair Winds
claudio @ MD (Argentina)
Great overview of the process, which speaks to the merits of an overall integrated approach to SEM
Ha! That was a fun post - you had me several times. Way to make a topic like this more enjoyable and relatablle. The only problem I have with it is this minor detail:
"It's Proprietary Data: The search queries are unique to your website. Your competition does not have access to it."
Nothing to walk the plank about, but Google is some people's biggest competitor these days and they definitely have access to this data. Nothing you can really do about that, just something to keep in mind I guess.
Now I just have one question - how did you get to line up your blog publication date here so well!?
WOW great point. u should be promoted to admiral pirate!!!
I guess i was thinking of competition more in terms of competing websites within your space. But you're right, that google has both access to the data, and that there's not much we can do about it.
i submitted the post a few weeks ago with a pirate theme and Jen suggested running it today in observance of national talk like a pirate day. aren't the seomoz community mangers so awesome?! :)
Thanks for this Larry. I was just thinking about more mini projects to tackle for the month. This will definitely be on the list of things to do ;) I'm going to look into using word stream now as well ;)
Greg
Excellent guide.
Some great tips, thanks.
Excellent Post!!
I've already downloaded our Google Adwords campaign keywords, and now I'm ranking the most important ones for our new layout and content!!Our site is: https://www.brmobile.com.br ! Our core business is iPad and Tablet Rental in Brazil!
Regards,
Rony Breuel
Congrats and good luck!
"Keyword Details” “View All Search Terms” gives Awesome insights and I have been using it to increase target keyword pool. (What is its official name though?)
I just wanted to make 2 points.
Subject: Using Average CPC
Questions arise when looking at the "Competition" data.
1. How competitive is it when it says a keyword is "High" Competition?
2. Is there a set number of advertisers that will trigger a particular keyword to be "High"?
3. Is it taking into account the industry that the keyword resides?
=> The Appox. CPC data provide answers to above questions.
Subject: CPC for Non-commercial Keywords
Like Larry said, generally, the higher the CPC, the harder it will be to rank organically. This general rule, however, applies to the keywords with commercial intent. When targeting keywords with informational intent, CPC becomes obsolete.
For example, non-commercial intent keyword, [how to arrange flowers], has Low Competition and Approx. CPC of $1.45, but it is a High competition keyword organically.
"Any search queries that convert might be good candidates to target via SEO."
I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb to work by. Just remember that it takes a lot longer to do well with SEO than it does with PPC, so don't get discouraged if you don't see the great conversion rates right away. And keywords are not set in stone! You don't have to stick with keywords that don't work in your SEO campaign forever just because you're targeting them with your PPC.
ARRGHhh indeed!
I've been on the fence about the accuracy of Google's keyword tool for now time now. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent post Larry, thanks again!
Just to let others know what results I came across...before filtering my data, I had 24K+ search queries so I was happy and surprised! After filtering those down by conversions, my results returned only 224, or a 1% conversion rate. I am happy with the data, saw a few things I can add to my research!
You found the treasure!! congrats. :)
Loved the tips - many thanks Kim!
Aye cpta'n, thankey for the info!
Very informative article Larry. There were some definitely nuggets in there that I will use. After spenting the last 2 hours going through WordStream and seeing all the useful functionality that it has I was curious to know if I can convince you to reopen your offer an a 1-yr free license on Keyword Research Suite? I know I missed International Talk Like a Pirate Day but would dressing my cat up like a pirate on Halloween count? Because I actually did :-)
Again, great article. I like your writing style.
Hi Larry,
thanks for the nice post. I think that method can give better results for websites/market having high number or searches to deal with.
As for the Keyword Research Suite I'll give it a try :)
Bye now,
E
Just Wonderful, I already done the proccess and I was surprised of the amount of keywords I never could imagine. Thanks for the info. Good job
Newbie question: Does anyone know if it matters whether a keyword is added as an exact match, broad match or phrase match in order to utilize this sort of analysis?
Wonderful guide Thanks mate for sharing :)
Hey Larry,
Just wanted to say this is still useful, and thanks for the tips! :)
Ayeee good-arr article Larry! The program looks promising.. let's use it!!
Thanks a lot.
Phenomenal Captain! This is amazing....
Finding keywords that will work particularly for your website is almost an impossible task to do as it is very much dependant on the human behaviour who takes every website differently so tools cannot analyze this and come up with the relative data.
I like the idea of mapping the human behaviour thought a PPC campaign and track what will work and what will not.
From start to end a complete worth reading post...
thanks!
Experiments.. experiments.. and lot more experience.. Thanks for this Article!!!
This is my main strategy as well for clients. First start off with an AdWords campaign, for immediate results but also indeed as a valuable resource for SEO efforts. I love it!
Arrgh! A treasure of a post. Thanks for the new way to use "old" data!
thanks ken!
Larry, as someone who's trying to learn & apply the intricacies of both SEO and SEM/PPC for my clients, this was an excellent tutorial! I had just had this notion not too long ago (look at my client's historical keyword data in his AdWords account), but was stumped about how to make it actionable!
(*um... do Pirates actually thank each other? How does that work?)
ARRRGGGHH - I'd jump off the plank to try your tools.
just email me and i'll generate you a free key (until Wednesday only). instructions are in the post.
Always like to see new approaches to existing tools. I have been trying a similar method to use the Adwords data in the past, but this article shows way more data gathering opportunities than I got when I did it.... savvy?
thanks eververs!
Very appropriate post for last week's big day, National Pirate Day!
Thanks scott!
Great Post,
Even though Adwords is typically not good for SEO in a lot of aspects, I find myself using Query Analysis all the time for larger adwords outreach campaigns. I can also typically use the Average CPC as a great indicator of keyword competition.
Keep Getting Yer Pirate ON!
thanks Zach! (i mean AARRGHHghhh) - i love average CPC, it feels much more real than some of the other metrics, like global estimated search volume, and I too have found that it can be used as a proxy for keyword competition.
Hey Larry, nice tools. I think I need to spend a little more time on your site to see what else WordStream has to offer. Thanks.
thanks George. if you shoot me a note i can generate you a free 1-year license of our keyword research suite (for free!). just for this week though, in observance of national speak like a pirate day arrgggh!!
Nice post, there was speculation that Google introduced (not provided) results in Analytics to increase the use of Adwords, conspiracy or possibility?
Question for you re the Wordtracker Keyword Grouper: Adwords now have a keyword grouping feature (Ad group ideas beta) as part of their keyword tool now - can you comment on how it compares/differs? Thanks!
Hi David, thanks for your comment. The keyword (not provided) accounted for 58.6% of my seo traffic yesterday. It makes SEO more difficult to measure and optimize relative to paid search which doesn't obfuscate search query data. So yes, i think it could increase use of adwords to the benefit of Google.
The adwords keyword grouping tool is good. Another one to try out is the Keyword Niche Finder.
I think the difference primarily has to do with the volume of long tail keywords returned.
Thanks for the article. I've been using Adwords for a while for both CPC and Keyword research and testing. It's a great free tool.
https://Keyworda.com This tool allows to use keyword density analysis to find search terms your competitors are using on their pages, where each term is used and weights of every term in various types of page content. It also allows to select the keywords of your interest and compare their stats against your page.
Thanks for pointing us to the tool. Definitely worth bookmarking.
Just checked them out, pretty cool. Thanks for the share.
Arrrr...thank you for the post!
arrhgh!! you're welcome.
Killerrrr post matey!
Nice touch!I am using Adwords for some time now but didn't thought of that.Thanks!
Great post, however, is there any standard numbers of clicks,impressions,CPC and so on to say that the keyword is profitable? I am just starting to learn SEO, I will be really glad if you will answer my question, Thanks!
The best way to know if it's profitable is if you have conversion tracking in place and can actually see if that keyword produced leads/sales.
different keywords do differently for every business. if your company already has an adwords account, using the search query data as i have outlined can help you figure out which keywords or keyword themes to prioritize for SEO.
Nice.. Thanks for sharing this information. I need to some time to clear all the points. how it works.. thanks.....
Arrgh you kidding me? This is awesome. I just spent 15 minutes running through some of your ideas and came up with a GREAT list of new keyword ideas.
thanks!
Nice one Larry!, In the past I wrote one on Keyword Discovery in Adwords. Though I didn't write it as eloquently as you. If you care to have a look Keyword Discovery Adwords.
So whats the time frame on the campaign before you start looking at the keywords for treasure?
cheers!
good article! I hadn't seen that so thanks for sharing.
I would set the time frame for all available data if possible. the idea here is you're paying for that valuable data, so why not at least start out by leveraging all of it.
You can always filter out the 1-off searches or the less valuable non-converting stuff later in the keyword researching process. what do you think?
Great article. Thanks for the tips on using adwords data. I hadnt thought about it before and i gotta say it makes a lot of sense. In this day and age you need all the info you can get in order to constantly optimize your site.
[link drop removed]
Very valuable information. What if you're only bidding on Exact Match phrases. Any way to get more information out of it?
Not only is it well worth the analysis and time to figure out keyword trends from AdWords for SEO, it's often very worthwhile to run AdWords for the specific purpose of figuring out an SEO strategy. Running an AdWords campaign can get you data on the keywords you want to target that you can't get any other way, but data which can prove whether or not it's worth pursuing rankings on those keywords.