Adwords Keyword Research - Impressions, CTR

[BobGW]

Hello,

In my Adwords Keyword Research (spending $300 to find out any keywords I'm missing using mostly exact match keywords)

am I looking for impressions or Click Through Rate, or both?

Please explain.

[flowsimple]

Your question isn't clear. What is the intent of your research?

If it is just keyword research how are you getting data on CTR? If you're using the Keyword Tool, you will only see data on Impression Volume. And if you're looking for keyword opportunities, then it it's both the estimated Impressions and the CPC that are relevant data points for your research.

If you're currently advertising already and looking for some insight as to how that should affect your SEO, then yes CTR is also something to look at, but I'd actually look at Click volume, and ensure that your SEO efforts are targeting those keywords.

[Olaf]

Do you mean, you spent $300 to find out the search queries?Then you beter can check Google Analytics to see which keyword phrases brought you the best visitors (in terms of conversion).

[BobGW]

Hi Olaf and Pashmina,

I see that my question wasn't clear.

I'm doing keyword research for organic SEO. I want to find the top keywords that I'm not yet targeting.

Does that help?

[Olaf]

What's a top keyword? That's the question... It's not always the keyword with the most traffic.

You can use the Adwords Keyword tool (for example) to find related search queries and the search volume. But even when their is a lot of traffic, it's not sure it's a 'good' keyword for you.

When you are running an Adwords campaign you can find search queries "Tab Keywords -> See Search terms".  This Search queries are also in Google Analytics, but with information about conversion, time of site visit, etc. So you can use Adwords + Google Analytics to find 'converting' search queries. Thereafter you can start optimising (seo) for this search queries.

See also http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/advanced-seo-keyword-research-tips-and-ideas-14216 for a lot of information.