What are the most innovative ways to research keywords for Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

2 Leverage user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is any content that is created by your customers, prospects, or fans, such as reviews, ratings, comments, testimonials, or social media posts. UGC can be a valuable source of keyword research, as it reveals the actual language, pain points, questions, and feedback that your audience uses when they interact with your brand, products, or services. UGC can help you uncover long-tail keywords, modifiers, qualifiers, and triggers that can improve your ad relevance and conversions. You can use tools like BuzzSumo, Mention, or Social Animal to monitor and analyze UGC across different platforms and channels.

3 Experiment with voice search

Voice search is becoming more popular and prevalent, especially with the rise of smart speakers, voice assistants, and mobile devices. Voice search can affect your keyword research, as it tends to be more conversational, natural, and question-based than text-based search. Voice search can help you find new keyword opportunities, as well as optimize your existing ones, by focusing on the intent, context, and tone of the voice queries. You can use tools like Google's Voice Search API, VoiceBase, or Voicebot to test and analyze voice search and generate keyword ideas based on the voice patterns, phrases, and commands that your audience uses.

4 Analyze your competitors

Competitor analysis is a crucial part of keyword research, as it helps you identify the gaps, strengths, and weaknesses of your rivals in the SEM space. Competitor analysis can help you discover new keyword opportunities, as well as avoid or challenge the ones that are already dominated by your competitors. Competitor analysis can also help you benchmark your performance, quality score, and bid strategy against your competitors and adjust your campaign accordingly. You can use tools like SEMrush, SpyFu, or Ahrefs to conduct competitor analysis and generate keyword ideas based on your competitors' ads, landing pages, and keywords.

5 Track your results

Tracking your results is the final and most important step of keyword research, as it helps you measure the effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability of your keywords and campaigns. Tracking your results can help you optimize your keywords, as well as test new ones, by analyzing the data and metrics that matter to your goals and objectives. Tracking your results can also help you identify and eliminate the keywords that are underperforming, irrelevant, or costly, and allocate your budget and resources to the ones that are generating the best ROI. You can use tools like Google Ads, Google Analytics, or Supermetrics to track your results and generate keyword insights based on your impressions, clicks, conversions, and costs.