PPC Keyword Research for Google Ads: A First-Timer’s Guide

PPC keyword research is the process of finding the exact words or phrases people type into Google when they’re looking for something related to your product or service. It helps you target the right audience, avoid wasting money on irrelevant clicks, and attract people who are actually ready to buy.

When I asked experts for their #1 PPC tip for beginners (see my introduction to search ads), many said it’s smart to focus on keywords that are less popular, more specific, and cheaper. This guide will help you find those keywords, and avoid wasting money bidding on ones you already rank for organically.

Google Keyword Planner is free and a popular choice for PPC keyword research, but it doesn’t always show the full picture, especially for low-volume or niche keywords.

One downside of using Google Keyword Planner for PPC keyword research is that it often shows broad search volume ranges, which makes it hard to judge how popular a keyword really is.

For instance, for the keyword “crypto wallet” it shows a broad range of 10k-100k searches.

Google Keyword planner showing a wide range of search volume.

Tools like Ahrefs (that’s us!) can give you a clearer picture of a keyword’s popularity, making it easier to choose and prioritize the right ones for your campaign.

Ahrefs showing a more precise search volume.

The Keyword Planner also tends to group similar keywords together, which can result in vague or overly broad suggestions that don’t reflect what people are actually searching for, especially when you’re looking for long-tail or niche keywords.

On top of that, the tool doesn’t provide data on your competitors, so you can’t see who’s bidding on which terms or how tough the competition is. All of this makes it harder to find precise, low-competition keywords that are actually worth your ad budget.

That’s where a combo like Ahrefs and ChatGPT really shines.

With Ahrefs, you can find more keyword ideas, get more precise volume estimates, and paid keyword reports for any competitor’s domain, and even translate for other markets on the spot.

Then, with ChatGPT, you can quickly filter, cluster, and prioritize those keywords based on business value, search intent, or even funnel stage.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to put this process into action step-by-step.

Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer to find affordable keywords that people search for when they’re likely ready to buy, and that your website doesn’t already rank for on Google.

Let’s start with a few broad keywords related to your business (seed keywords). You can brainstorm some yourself and use Ahrefs’ built-in AI to help expand the list.

Next, go to the Matching terms report. Make sure you’re looking at results for the country where your core audience is. If you’re planning on running international or multilingual campaigns, we will translate the keywords in the following steps.

Matching terms report in Keywords Explorer.

Exclude keywords where you rank in the top 10 and select intents: commercial and transactional. The two intent types typically mean the searcher is close to making a purchase. You can also filter out expensive keywords using the CPC filter.

If you’re not sure how much you should pay for a click, you can figure out your maximum CPC with some simple math:

Using product price. Max CPC = (Product price x Profit margin x Conversion rate)
Using your max budget and expected number of conversions. Max CPC = (Budget x Conversion rate)/ Expected number of conversions

Finally, select all keywords and add them to a new keyword list.

Tip

If your organic rankings are close to the top 10, you can optimize your content to move up. But you could also bid on those keywords in the meantime. Since you already rank for them, your ads will likely get a higher relevance score.