How to Find AdWords Keywords: A Practical PPC Guide

Finding the right keywords for your Google Ads campaign is all about getting inside your customer's head. You have to think like they do, right? It starts with brainstorming those core ideas—what we call seed keywords—that really get to the heart of what people are looking for.

From there, it's a game of strategy, using different match types (broad, phrase, and exact) to make sure the right people see your ads without blowing your budget on clicks that go nowhere.

Build Your Keyword Strategy Before You Spend a Dime

Jumping straight into Google Ads without a keyword plan is a classic rookie mistake. It's the fastest way to burn through your money with absolutely nothing to show for it. A killer campaign is always built on a foundation of smart, carefully chosen keywords.

So, before you even glance at bidding or start writing ad copy, take a step back. What problem is your customer actually trying to solve? What words would they type into Google to find you? These gut-instinct ideas are your seed keywords, the starting point for everything.

Grasping User Intent and Match Types

Once you've got a decent list of seed keywords, you need to think about intent. Is the person just kicking tires and looking for information, or are they ready to pull out their credit card? A search for "best running shoes" is worlds away from "buy Nike Air Zoom Pegasus." Your keywords have to match where they are in that journey.

This is where match types become your secret weapon for controlling costs and getting quality traffic. They're basically instructions you give Google about how strictly it should match a search to your keyword.

Here's a quick rundown of the main players:

• Broad Match: This is like casting a huge net. Google will show your ad for searches related to your keyword, including synonyms and other random variations. It's fantastic for discovering new search terms you hadn't thought of, but watch out—it can also bring in a lot of junk traffic if you're not careful.
• Phrase Match: This gives you a lot more control. Your ad shows up when a search includes the meaning of your keyword. Words can come before or after, but the core idea has to be there. It's a happy medium.
• Exact Match: This is your sniper rifle. Your ad will only appear for searches that mean the exact same thing as your keyword. You'll get way less traffic, but it will be highly-qualified people who know what they want.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet to keep them straight. I reference this all the time when setting up new campaigns.

Keyword Match Type Cheat Sheet

Getting a handle on match types is crucial because it lets you dial in your targeting. A good campaign structure often uses a mix of all three to catch people at different points in their buying process.

Choosing the right match type is a constant balancing act between reach and relevance. A well-structured campaign often uses a mix of all three to capture users at different stages of their buying journey.

Getting this framework right from the start is half the battle. Once you've mastered the strategic side of things, you can get into the nitty-gritty tactics. For a deeper dive, check out this comprehensive guide to Google Ads keyword research. Building this foundation first ensures every dollar you spend has a purpose.

Uncovering Opportunities with Google Keyword Planner

Everyone starts with Google Keyword Planner, but let's be honest—most advertisers barely scratch the surface. They treat it like a simple list generator when it’s so much more. If you know where to click, you can turn this free tool into an absolute powerhouse for finding your best AdWords keywords.

The first trick? Stop just plugging in your own seed keywords. Think like a spy. Grab the URL of your top competitor and feed it to the planner. This forces Google to scan their landing page and reveal the exact terms they’re likely bidding on. Instantly, you get a peek behind the curtain at their entire strategy.

Reading Between the Lines of the Data

Once you have a list of keywords, the real work begins. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and just chase the biggest search volume numbers. Don't fall for that trap. High volume almost always means brutal competition and sky-high costs.

What you're really looking for is a smart balance between three key metrics:

• Avg. monthly searches: This is your potential audience size.
• Competition: "Low," "Medium," or "High" tells you how many other advertisers are fighting for that same click.
• Top of page bid (low and high range): This is Google’s way of giving you a reality check on what it'll cost you to even get seen.

The sweet spot—the real money-makers—are usually keywords with solid search volume but "Low" or "Medium" competition. These are the affordable gems your competitors are probably ignoring. For a deeper dive into the tools that can help you pinpoint this data, check out our guide on the best keyword tool for Google Ads.

Using Filters to Find Your Goldmine

Okay, this is where you separate yourself from the amateurs. The default lists Keyword Planner spits out are a complete mess, full of irrelevant junk. Smart filtering is how you cut through the noise.

First off, always filter by location. A good rule of thumb is to only look at keywords with at least 30 average monthly searches in your target area. Anything less than one impression per day is usually a waste of time. You can get super granular here—targeting specific countries, states, or even a handful of cities at once to align with your campaign goals.

Pro Tip: Don't sleep on the "Year-Over-Year Change" column. If you spot a keyword with a massive YoY spike, you might have just stumbled upon a new trend you can jump on before your competition even knows what's happening.

Filtering by keyword text is another game-changer. Use it to include or exclude certain words and laser-focus your list.

For example:

• Include: Add words like "quote," "pricing," or "services" to zero in on people who have their wallets out, ready to buy.
• Exclude: Get rid of informational terms like "free," "how to," or "DIY" if your goal is immediate sales, not just blog traffic.

By layering these discovery and filtering techniques, you stop treating Keyword Planner like a blunt instrument and start using it like a scalpel. It helps you find not just any keywords, but the right ones—the ones that are actually valuable and affordable for your business.

Mine Your Search Terms Report for Hidden Gold

Keyword research tools are fantastic for getting started, but your absolute best keyword ideas are probably already hiding inside your Google Ads account. This is where the Search Terms Report becomes your best friend. It’s a literal goldmine showing you the exact queries people typed into Google right before clicking your ad.

This isn't about forecasting or making educated guesses—it's about looking at raw, unfiltered data from real customers. Making a habit of checking this report is a game-changer. It turns your own campaign data into your biggest competitive advantage because you get to see what’s actually working, not just what you think should work.

Turning Real Searches into New Keywords

As you start scrolling through the report, you'll immediately spot search terms that are driving clicks and conversions but aren't actually on your keyword list. For example, maybe you're bidding on "men's running shoes," but you see a click from someone who searched for "best lightweight marathon sneakers." That long-tail phrase is a high-intent keyword you just discovered, courtesy of your own campaign.

When you find these gems, don't just leave them there. Add them directly to the right ad group as either phrase or exact match keywords. Doing this consistently helps you:

• Grab more qualified traffic by bidding on terms you already know are effective.
• Boost your Quality Score since these new keywords are hyper-relevant to your existing ads.
• Discover how customers talk, giving you incredible insights for writing better ad copy.

This isn’t a one-and-done task; it’s an ongoing loop of refinement. The more data your campaigns gather, the more opportunities you'll find. For a deeper dive, check out our complete guide to mastering the Google Ads Search Terms Report.

Spotting and Plugging Budget Leaks

Finding winners is great, but spotting the losers is just as crucial for your bottom line. The Search Terms Report is your number one tool for stopping wasted ad spend. You’ll quickly find completely irrelevant searches that are triggering your ads and costing you money, click by click.

Think of it this way: if you sell premium leather boots, you don't want to pay for clicks from people searching for "free boot repair manual" or "vegan leather boot reviews." Each irrelevant click is a tiny leak in your budget, and those leaks add up fast.

When you find these budget-draining terms, take action. Immediately add them to your negative keyword list. This is a direct instruction to Google telling it never to show your ad for that query again.

Making this a weekly habit is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your ROI. You’re systematically cutting out the waste, making sure every dollar you spend is focused on searches that could actually turn into a customer. It's how smart advertisers get more and more efficient over time.

Use Negative Keywords to Stop Wasting Money

Smart PPC isn't just about what you target; it's just as much about what you don't. Finding the best AdWords keywords is only half the battle. The other half is aggressively blocking the wrong ones from ever triggering your ads. Think of negative keywords as your campaign's shield, protecting your budget from those random, irrelevant clicks that will never, ever convert.

Adding negatives isn't just a money-saving tactic, either. It directly pumps up your campaign's performance. When you stop your ads from showing up for junk searches, the relevance of your actual traffic goes way up. That naturally boosts your click-through rate (CTR), which in turn, gives your Quality Score a nice little lift.

Proactively Building Your First List

You don't need to wait for bad clicks to start piling up before you take action. You can build a pretty solid starter list of negatives before you even launch a campaign. Just take a few minutes to think through what your ideal customer is definitely not looking for.

This is where a tool like Keywordme comes in handy, letting you manage and organize these terms from day one so they never even have a chance to waste your money.

Having a central place for your negative keywords is a game-changer. It means you can stop wasteful terms before they ever sneak into a campaign.

Here are a few common types of disqualifying terms to get you started:

• Price-Related: Selling a premium product? You’ll want to immediately add words like free, cheap, discount, and low cost.
• Informational Searches: If you're after buyers, not researchers, consider excluding terms like how to, DIY, guide, tutorial, or examples.
• Employment Seekers: Unless you're actively hiring, add negatives like jobs, careers, hiring, and salary to fend off clicks from job hunters.

A strong negative keyword list is a living document, not a set-it-and-forget-it task. It plugs the leaks in your budget, ensuring every dollar spent has a better chance of finding a real customer.

Using Match Types for Negative Keywords

Just like your regular keywords, negatives have match types that give you different levels of control. Using them the right way is what separates the pros from the amateurs. For a deep dive into every scenario, our detailed breakdown of Google Ads negative keywords has you covered.

Let's run through a quick example. Imagine you sell high-end "wooden office chairs."

• Negative Broad Match used: This is your sledgehammer. It will block your ad if the search term has the word "used" anywhere in it, like used wooden office chairs. Simple and effective.
• Negative Phrase Match "cheap office chairs": This one is more specific. It blocks any search containing that exact phrase, like where to buy cheap office chairs, but it would still let a search for cheap modern chairs through.
• Negative Exact Match [office chairs for sale]: This is your scalpel. It only blocks the exact search office chairs for sale and its absolute closest variations.

When you combine this kind of proactive list-building with the real-world data you get from your Search Terms Report, you create a powerful defense. You finally stop paying for clicks from people who were never going to buy, which frees up your budget to double down on the keywords that actually grow your business.

Create a Cohesive and Profitable Keyword Structure

Great keyword research doesn't stop with a giant spreadsheet. That list needs to become a living, breathing campaign structure that actually makes you money. This is where we shift from just having a flat list of terms to building a dynamic, layered strategy you can constantly improve.

The real secret to sky-high Quality Scores and lower ad costs is organizing your keywords into tightly themed ad groups. Think of it like this: a grocery store doesn't just dump all its food in one giant pile. You have aisles for "Dairy," "Produce," and "Bakery." Your Google Ads account needs that same kind of logical organization.

Each ad group should contain a small, focused cluster of keywords so similar that they can all be served by the exact same ad. For instance, "blue suede running shoes" and "suede running sneakers in blue" are a perfect match. On the other hand, "men's dress shoes" absolutely needs its own separate ad group.

This tight theming isn't just a best practice; it's non-negotiable for success. It ensures your ad copy is hyper-relevant to what someone just typed into Google, and that's precisely what the algorithm rewards with a better Quality Score.

Balancing Your Keyword Portfolio

A profitable structure isn't just about being neat and tidy; it's about balance. You need a healthy mix of keyword types to catch customers at every stage of their buying journey. Your portfolio should have a mix of quick wins and long-term growth drivers.

• High-Intent, Long-Tail Keywords: These are your money-makers, plain and simple. Phrases like "buy leather messenger bag online" are super specific and signal that someone has their wallet out. They might not bring in a ton of traffic, but their conversion rates are much higher, giving you those immediate wins.

• Broader, Top-of-Funnel Terms: Think of keywords like "men's work bags." These capture a much wider audience that might still be browsing or in the early research phase. They won't convert on the spot, but they're essential for filling your funnel with potential future customers and building brand awareness.

The goal is to build a structure that delivers immediate Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) from your long-tail keywords while simultaneously nurturing future customers with broader terms. It's a two-pronged attack that drives sales today and growth tomorrow.

Adapting to an AI-Driven World

The game has definitely changed with the rise of AI in Google Ads. We've seen advertiser behavior shift significantly, especially with campaigns like Google's Performance Max, which is now used by over 80% of accounts. This tech automatically optimizes how it uses keywords, often by balancing different match types.

As a result, we've actually seen broad match usage drop by over 11%, signaling a clear trend toward more segmented, data-driven strategies. Features like remarketing lists and customer match, now found in 72% of campaigns, push the average ROAS to around 4.5 by targeting audiences with laser-focused keywords. You can read the full research on how advertiser strategies are shifting.

This hierarchy diagram really drives home how negative keywords act as a gatekeeper, protecting your budget from wasteful clicks and making sure your money is only spent on relevant traffic.

As you can see, a strong negative keyword strategy acts as a shield. It directly filters out the bad clicks to protect your budget and boost your campaign's performance from the ground up. When you structure your campaigns this way, you're building a resilient and profitable system ready for whatever comes next.

Your AdWords Keyword Questions, Answered

Alright, so you’ve got your initial keyword lists built and your campaigns are structured. This is where the rubber meets the road, and the real-world questions start popping up. Let's dig into some of the most common hurdles I see advertisers run into when they're trying to wrangle their AdWords keywords.

Think of your keyword strategy less like a finished painting and more like a garden. It needs regular tending to keep it healthy and producing fruit (aka, profit).

How Often Should I Be Tinkering with My Keywords?

There's no single, perfect schedule, but building a solid routine is what matters most. I've found the sweet spot is a weekly quick-scan of your search terms report. It's a fantastic habit. In just a few minutes, you can spot any garbage queries that are burning cash and add them as negative keywords on the spot. This is also where you’ll find those surprise-winner search terms that you can promote to their own ad groups.

For the bigger picture stuff—like a deep dive into ad group performance, keyword bidding, and overall strategy—you should block off time at least once a month. The one exception? Brand new campaigns. When you're just starting out, you'll want to be in there far more often, watching that initial data roll in like a hawk.

What’s the Magic Number of Keywords for an Ad Group?

Honestly, forget about a specific number. The only thing that matters is keeping your ad groups incredibly tight and thematic. The best ad groups I've ever built usually have a small, laser-focused cluster of keywords—somewhere between 5 and 15 terms—that are so similar they can all be served by the exact same ad copy.

Here's the ultimate test: Does your ad feel like a perfect, direct answer to every single keyword in the group? If not, that's your cue. It’s time to break that ad group into a new, more specific one.

Sticking to this discipline is exactly what Google's algorithm loves. It leads to higher Quality Scores, which means you end up paying less for each click.

Is It a Good Idea to Bid on My Competitor's Brand Name?

It can be a really slick move, especially if you're trying to poach customers who are right at the finish line, wallet in hand. When you bid on a competitor's name, you're basically jumping in at the last second and saying, "Hey, what about us?"

Just know what you're getting into. It's almost guaranteed your Quality Scores will be in the basement because your landing page has nothing to do with their brand. That translates directly to higher costs-per-click. It's a strategy that’s definitely worth testing with a small, controlled budget, but you have to watch your return on ad spend obsessively to make sure it's actually making you money.

How Do I Find Keywords That Actually Lead to Sales?

The secret to finding AdWords keywords with high buying intent is to look for terms that have "buying modifiers" baked right in. These are the little words and phrases that signal someone is done with their homework and is ready to pull the trigger.

You want to hunt for keywords that include terms like:

• buy
• for sale
• pricing or cost
• quote
• Specific product models or serial numbers

There's another great clue hiding in plain sight inside Google's Keyword Planner. When you see high suggested bids for a term, that's a huge hint. It means other advertisers have already figured out that keyword converts and they're willing to pay a premium for that traffic because they know it leads to sales.

Ready to ditch the spreadsheets and start optimizing your campaigns up to 10x faster? Keywordme pulls all your crucial PPC keyword tasks into one simple platform. Start your free 7-day trial and see for yourself!