Pay Per Click: What are some creative tactics to use when conducting keyword research and expansion for a client in a very specific and niche market?

Keyword research tactics are going to vary based on the given niche and competitive landscape of that market. Scenario 1 - Competitive Market If it's an entrenched niche, with lots of competitors (say, cloud storage apps), you should be focused mainly on differentiation. This is where 3rd party tools such as Spyfu, SEMRush, or AdGooroo are helpful, as they can help you identify what keyword auctions your competitors are bidding in, which are probably the same high volume, valuable keywords that you have in your campaigns. More importantly, you should look for keywords that they're not bidding on that you can also monetize, or monetize better than the competition. More often than not, this means that if your keywords, search ads (and really your product) can address some problem or question in your niche that isn't being met by the competition, you can carve out a dominant position on queries that work well for you but not others. Scenario 2 - Emerging Market If, on the other hand, your client is in an emerging market, one where there isn't a lot of competitors or a lot of volume, you should be more focused on predicting what queries are going to pick up. The best place to pick up on this is to monitor social conversations online in and about your niche (Twitter, Quora, blogs, discussion boards) since that is where new search terms will be born. If you're waiting to spot a trend in Google Trends or in keyword tools, you'll be 2-3 months late to the game at that point. Consider the emergence of the buzzword 'Big Data': So imagine if you are advertising as an analytics solutions provider in late 2010. You catch on to the term by keeping up on talks, discussions, etc. (See: ) and notice it gets picked up on in the press. At this point you would start building out keyword lists as well as content for organic search to ensure that you're found first when people start searching for information about 'big data'. has a great video on how to approach this at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/predicting-keyword-volume-before-data-is-in-adwords Scenario 3 - Market Leader: Not necessarily a PPC tactic, but if your client is in a position where they're the current market leader in their niche, or they have an tremendous amount of resources, you could potentially take it a step further and try to define the language that searchers and content producers use through . A prime example of this is the concept http://www.zeromomentoftruth.com/download-both. You can see on http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22zero%20moment%20of%20truth%22&cmpt=q that the search volume basically materializes out of nowhere, coinciding with Google's launch of the e-book. Following up with a PPC campaign would require relatively scant keyword research, since the keyword lists would be defined in the content marketing strategy at the start.

Doing Keyword Research while considering a Niche and specific market...apart from the tactics given above... you should find your competitors on the same targeting market and using competitors name, url etc in your keyword list would give you a chance of increasing potential traffic. The best method is to create separate campaign or adgroup listing all the competitors name, url's and their variations in your list and bid accordingly.

I'm not sure if this is considered creative or just standard practice but we like to use PPC to test the water for new keywords. PPC will allow you to generate traffic for specific keywords without shifting your on-page SEO. Using this you can test new keywords for conversions before you make the on-page changes. Obviously we should assume your content is relevant. Another great tactic I see as standard practice but I've heard of SEOs operating without is checking key phrases on Google using allintitle. This method allows you to find keywords that may get decent traffic but not have a lot of "formal" competition.

One approach, If applicable, is to perform keyword research around seasonality. Many niches notice sizable bursts in traffic around certain holidays, seasons or annual events. Invest some time in detecting and profiting from these spikes by creating content around these events, investing in a seasonal PPC campaign and increasing your rankings for profitable keywords and phrases.