The second eBook in the Paid Growth and Campaigns category, focused on the search-intent channel. It assumes you've read Paid Ads for Small Businesses and decided Google Ads is your channel. From here it goes deep on the specifics: keywords, match types, ad copy, budgets, conversion tracking and the weekly routine that keeps a small Google Ads account healthy.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 45 minute read
Chapter 2
Choosing Keywords That Pay Back
How to pick the keywords that bring real customers, using how customers actually search rather than how you'd describe your business.
Most small business Google Ads accounts fail at the keyword stage, and the failure looks like success at first. The owner sits down, brainstorms ten phrases that describe what the business does, types them in and sets the campaign live. The phrases sound right. The problem is that the customers were never typing those phrases. They were typing different words for the same thing - shorter, stranger, more local, sometimes misspelt - and the campaign never appeared in front of them. The budget got spent on a different audience entirely.
The fix is to start with how customers actually search and work backwards. Real searches almost always look slightly different from how a business would describe itself, and the difference is where most of the money is. A bookkeeper who calls themselves a "chartered tax adviser to small enterprises" should be bidding on "accountant for self-employed builder near me" and "how much does a bookkeeper cost" - not on the words from their own homepage.
This chapter walks through the small set of habits that get you from how you describe your business to how customers actually search for it, and then to a focused list of fifteen to thirty keywords that earn their place.
The full chapter walks through the four sources of real customer searches, the buyer-intent test that filters serious queries from research queries and the worked example of building a tight thirty-keyword list for a small bookkeeping business.
Four sources of real customer searches
First, your own customers. Pick five to ten of your last twelve months' enquiries and ask each one - by email is fine - what they typed into Google when they were first looking for what you do. Most will tell you, and most will surprise you. The exact phrases they used become the spine of your keyword list. This source is free, fast and more accurate than any tool.
Second, the autocomplete and "People also ask" sections of Google itself. Type a starting phrase from your business into the search bar and read what Google completes it with. Then look at the related questions section on the results page. Both lists are real searches by real people. They're often messier and more specific than what you'd think of on your own. Free, no tools needed.
Third, the platform's own keyword planner. Inside Google Ads itself, the keyword planner shows estimated monthly search volumes and rough cost per click for any phrase you give it. Use it to triage rather than to discover - put your candidate list into it, see which phrases have meaningful volume and which don't, and cut anything with effectively zero.
Fourth, your competitors' ads. Search for your top three or four phrases yourself and read the ads that show. Note the words they use, the offers they make and the angles they pick. Don't copy - use as inspiration to find phrases you might have missed.
The buyer-intent test
Not every search is worth bidding on, even if it's relevant. Searches fall into three rough buckets. People with a problem to solve right now. People doing research before they're ready to buy. People looking for free information. The first bucket is where almost all the customers are. The second is sometimes worth a small bid. The third is almost never worth bidding on.
A simple test: would the searcher reasonably expect to pay for the answer to their question? "Emergency plumber Hackney" - yes, they're going to pay someone soon. "How to fix a dripping tap" - no, they're looking for a video. The first is worth bidding on. The second is worth ranking for organically through search ranking content, not paying for. Most of the wasted spend in small business accounts comes from bidding on the third bucket - free-information searches that look like they're related to your business but never lead to a sale.
Worked example: a bookkeeping business
A bookkeeper for self-employed tradespeople in West Yorkshire might start with their own description: "chartered bookkeeping services." Almost no one searches that phrase. After ten minutes with the four sources above, the real list looks more like this.
Realistic keyword list for a small bookkeeper
bookkeeper for self employed
accountant for self employed builder
how much does a bookkeeper cost uk
self assessment tax return help
construction industry scheme bookkeeping
monthly bookkeeping service
bookkeeper near me leeds
small business bookkeeping prices
do i need a bookkeeper or accountant
tradesman tax accountant
Notice how few of the words come from the bookkeeper's own marketing language. Notice how many include the type of customer ("self employed," "builder," "tradesman"), the place ("leeds," "near me") or the actual question they want answered ("how much does a bookkeeper cost"). That specificity is what makes a small budget bid efficiently. Each keyword is precise enough that the matching searcher is probably ready to spend money soon.
Keyword volume on a small budget
On a small business budget, you don't need high-volume keywords. You need high-relevance keywords with enough volume to deliver a few clicks a day. A keyword with twenty searches a month from people who almost always become customers is worth ten times more than a keyword with two thousand searches a month from people who almost never do. Aim for a list where the total expected monthly volume across all keywords is somewhere between five hundred and five thousand searches. That's enough for a small campaign to run on, not so much that you can't afford to be there.
Group keywords by intent, not by topic
Once you have your list, group keywords into three to five clusters based on what the searcher wants, not on the words themselves. "How much does a bookkeeper cost" and "small business bookkeeping prices" go together because both searchers want a price. "Bookkeeper near me leeds" and "accountant for self employed builder" go together because both want a local provider for a specific kind of work. The clusters become your ad groups. Each cluster shares an ad and a landing page that speaks to that specific intent. This is what makes the relevance score from chapter one work in your favour.
What to do this week
Email five recent customers and ask them what they typed into Google when they were first looking. Spend an hour with autocomplete and related questions on your top three search phrases. Build a list of fifteen to thirty real customer phrases. Group them into three to five intent clusters. That's your starting keyword list. It's almost certainly different from the list you would have written from your own marketing language alone, and that difference is where the next year of efficient ad spend lives.
In the next chapter we cover match types - how Google decides which searches actually trigger your ads - and the negative keyword discipline that protects the list you just built. Prove demand before spending heavily is the recurring principle, and a real keyword list grounded in real customer language is what proves it.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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