How to Find the Best Keywords for Facebook Ads in 2024

The hard core of any marketing campaign is thorough keyword research. No one wants to throw money into the air, we all need clicks, sales, and conversions. Today we will discuss how and where to find the best keywords you will bid on throughout your Facebook advertising campaigns.  Running a few steps forward, keyword research is a fusion of art and science that you can master rather quickly.

At this point, marketers are equipped with a myriad of instruments and tools to facilitate the challenging task. By understanding potential customers, their interests, and behavior, you can ensure that your ads will be shown to the right people and at the right time — more precisely when people search for services or products you promote. So, you need to learn how to find out and predict the words and phrases people type in a search box.

Facebook Ads Keywords vs. Search Keywords

Until now, some marketers are sure that keyword research is a universal procedure that suits all types of platforms and they believe that keywords they selected for on-site SEO and PPC ads will deliver great results in social media campaigns. In fact, this is a common misconception. There is a huge difference between social media keywords and search keywords; further still, there is a difference in keywords between social media platforms as well. Hence, your keyword research should be specific to the platform you are going to advertise on.

Keywords for Facebook Ads: Step-by-Step

Being the largest social ecosystem with over 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook obviously holds a unique position in the advertising space. The platform offers its extensive active audience and the most sophisticated targeting options to advertisers of any scale. Facebook Ads allows marketers to target people following multiple criteria, such as interests, behavioral patterns, demographic data, etc.  Actually, the demographic data seasoned with information about interests represent a solid ground for keyword research.

Facebook continues working on the functionality of the platform and added the keyword search tool that was designed specifically to filter the most relevant content, including posts, photos with descriptions, and even link shares. However, keyword optimization strategies for Facebook Ads and Facebook Page are different.

Let’s begin with keywords for Facebook Ads campaigns. So, below there are things you need to focus on while conducting Facebook Ads Keyword Research:

• Audience Insights. You can find insights on the Facebook Ads area.
• Facebook Insights provided on your Page.
• Suggested Keywords. You can find suggested keywords in the Detailed Targeting subcategory.

If you create a new Facebook Ad, you can see targeting options (including demographics) within the Ad Set block, in the Audience category.  

Pay closer attention to the audience engaged with your Page — you can find the data in the Insights.

Next, you go to the Audience Insights (in the Ads area).

In the popup window tick Everyone on Facebook. Thus, you make research based on the interests of everyone. Next, in the Interests section, you insert a keyword and perform further research on other keywords.

Andrea Vahl, the author of the Facebook Advertising Secrets Course, recommends checking Page Likes to see other interests of people who are interested in a selected keyword. Now you see "some keywords you may not have thought of otherwise." Check other demographic information about people with this keyword in their profiles.

Andrea notes that there is no specific number of fans the Page should have to be used as a keyword.

Another method to find keywords is to see the suggested keywords when you type your keyword in the Interests section (Facebook Ad Audience category). Use the given suggestions for browsing some categories.

You will see the following window:

The keywords you see in the Interests section are related to pages that people liked or topics they mentioned in their profiles. If you hover a cursor over the specific keyword, you can see the size of the audience and what the data is based on:

Now that you have collected keywords, you need to test their performance. To select the best keywords for your Facebook Ads campaign, you should make a split test. Keywords can be grouped into similar sections, for example, similar interests together, behaviors together, and so on.

Sure, you can test every keyword separately, but it will blow your test budget. Practically, you discover the best-performing keywords and then continue testing different creatives and descriptions.

Besides optimizing your Facebook ad campaigns with the right keywords, you also want your business page to be visible to potential customers. As we mentioned above, the keyword research used for social media ad campaigns is very different from a keyword strategy used for website SEO, YouTube, or any other platform. However, your Facebook Page SEO optimization can be done using familiar SEO tools. You need to add keywords in your Page’s About section, Description, Headlines, Captions to shared Images, and Notes. Don’t forget that ad descriptions represent a powerful instrument to get the attention of the relevant audience. Facebook’s keyword search feature helps people to find businesses or products they need. However, you need to facilitate the process from your side and use the right keywords that will help the search engine drive interested people to your page.

Use keyword search instruments, such as SEMRush, Soovle, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, or SECockpit, to help you discover the competitive and effective keywords. Go with long-tail keywords to ensure that your page will get relevant traffic. For example, instead of "dessert recipes" opt for "chocolate desserts without baking" or "simple sugarless desserts." Then, you can check selected keywords by running a search on Facebook. If competition is still high, look for more specific keywords with lower search volume.

It can be beneficial to add some broad keywords to your campaigns. Broad keywords are usually single words or short phrases with high search volume. Conversion rates for broad terms are lower; however, the combination of long-tail keywords and general keywords seems to deliver the best results because long-tail keywords can deliver only a handful of clicks.

Summary

With the combo of granular Facebook targeting options and the right commercial keywords, the Facebook audience is a jewel for businesses of different scales and in any niche. With the help of online keyword search tools and impressive Facebook Ads functionality, you should get a long list of keywords. Split them into groups, run tests, and — ta-da! You have a bunch of targeted keywords to generate more relevant traffic and conversions.