Keyword Expansion – Get Access to Google Search Console
To start, it requires you to have access to Google Search Console. For those who don’t know, Google Search Console is an amazing SEO resource where you can see the search queries that are matching to your site, how much organic traffic you’re getting over time, what pages these users are going to, what ranking you’re on, etc. Google Search Console just reports on Google search data, not to be confused with Google Analytics which provides reporting on all traffic, but limited insights into Google search.
Keyword Expansion – Review Search Query Performance
Once you have access to Google Search Console. Next is to go to your Search Query Performance report over the past 3 months. See the example from my blog. Once you’re there, you want to add columns for impressions, clicks and click through rate. See screenshot below.
When you do this, make sure you have three months of data then export the file into an excel format.
Keyword Expansion – Identify Top Performing Search Queries
Once you’ve done this, filter your search queries by only showing search queries that have at least several clicks, and filter down by click through rate. 
Once you’ve done this, you can see search queries that users are responding to by clicking. In this small sample of data from my site, I see that people respond very well to the following search queries:
- how to advertise shopify store
- advertise shopify store
- diy digital marketing
Given the CTR rate is strong, this tells my that if I bid on these from a paid perspective, they should perform very well. Additionally, this report will share average position. If these keywords’t aren’t ranking in the top spot, paid search could be a helpful way to get immediate visibility for these keywords.
Keyword Expansion – Conclusion
Some of these keywords you may have already identified through other research tools, however I can almost guarantee that you’ll find additional keywords, likely long tail, that you haven’t thought about in the past. Also, given you already have free performance data (via organic), you can be pretty certain that these keywords should perform for your campaigns.
Helpful Google Ads Resources
For more helpful resources, check out the blog posts and articles below.
Google Ads Support
Google Ads Management
Google Ads How to Guides
Google Ads Optimization Tips
- Top 14 Google Ads Search Optimization Tips
- Auction Insights: What are they and how to make them actionable
- Google Search Partners
- AdWords Express vs. Google Ads
- Google Ads and SEO Synergies
- Google Ads – Questions and Answers
- Google Search Ad Copy – Best Practices
- Top 5 Critical Search Settings to Check
- Google Customer Match
- In-Market Audiences
Google Ad Formats
