How to Find High CPC Keywords

To find high CPC keywords, open Google Keyword Planner, choose “Discover new keywords”, enter a few words about your business or a competitor’s website, and set the location and language you care about. Then sort the keyword ideas by “Top of page bid (high range)” from largest to smallest. Google describes that column as an approximation of the 80th percentile of what advertisers have historically paid for a top-of-page bid on the keyword, based on the last 30 days and your location and network settings. The keywords at the top of that sorted list are your high CPC keywords for that market.

Finding them is the quick part. The harder part is reading the number correctly and deciding what to do about it, and that depends on who you are. An advertiser sees a high CPC as a cost to be justified, while someone who earns from ads on their own website sees it as possible income. This guide from SEO Company To-The-TOP!, a Calgary practice that has worked in search since 2007 and holds Google Ads certification, covers the method step by step, what each column actually measures, and how both kinds of reader can test whether an expensive keyword deserves their time.

Finding high CPC keywords in Google Keyword Planner, step by step

Keyword Planner sits inside Google Ads, and Google’s help page notes that you have to finish setting up the account, including billing information, before you can use “Get ideas for new keywords”. Once that is done, the steps are straightforward.

1. In Google Ads, open the Tools menu and select Keyword Planner, then choose “Discover new keywords”.
2. Enter a handful of seed terms that describe what you sell or write about, separated by commas, or switch to “Start with a website” and enter a competitor’s site so Google suggests keywords from its content.
3. Before you look at any numbers, set the location and language for the results. Choose the area you would actually target, such as Calgary, Alberta or Canada, because the bid figures are calculated for the location and network settings you pick.
4. Select “Get results”, then sort the keyword ideas by “Top of page bid (high range)” so the most expensive terms come first.
5. Add a filter if the list is long. Google’s own example is filtering for keywords where bids under a dollar may be enough to reach the top of the page, and the same filter works the other way round to show only keywords above a figure you choose.
6. Download the list or add the keywords you want to keep to a plan, so you can compare them side by side and look at forecasts later.

What the bid columns actually measure

Keyword Planner shows two bid figures, and Google defines both in its help page on Keyword Planner forecasts. “Top of page bid (low range)” is an approximation of the 20th percentile of what advertisers have historically paid for a top-of-page bid on that keyword, and “Top of page bid (high range)” is an approximation of the 80th percentile. Google adds that these statistics come from the last 30 days and only count bids that resulted in an ad showing among the ads at the top of the first page. In other words, the high range is a bid-range statistic rather than a cost per click. It describes the expensive end of what advertisers have historically paid for a top-of-page bid, not the average or actual CPC you should expect to pay.

That distinction matters because what you would actually pay is a different number again. Google’s definition of actual CPC says you pay only what is needed to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the Ad Rank of the advertiser directly below you, and that thresholds are typically higher for ads above the search results. Every auction has its own thresholds, competitors and search context, and Google also weighs the quality of your ad and landing page each time, so your own CPC on a keyword with a high top-of-page bid can land well above or well below that figure.

Two cautions from the same Google page are worth keeping in mind. Keywords with little historical bid information may show no bid range at all, and Google warns that its traffic forecasts are less accurate when you target a small geographic area, simply because there is less data behind them. A city-sized market like Calgary can run into both problems, so if the Calgary view has gaps, the Alberta figures are useful as context, as long as you remember they describe a wider market than the one you actually serve.

Why the location setting changes which keywords look expensive

A list of “the most expensive keywords” published by a software company or an ad network is usually built for the United States, sometimes years ago. The same seed terms sorted for Calgary can come out in a different order, because the advertisers bidding in Calgary are not the ones bidding in New York or Toronto. A trade that is fiercely contested in one city may have only a couple of advertisers in another.

It is also worth checking which currency your Google Ads account uses before comparing your figures with anyone else’s. A column of US-dollar bids and a column of Canadian-dollar bids look exactly alike on screen, so a Calgary business reading an American list and its own Keyword Planner export side by side can easily compare two different currencies without noticing.

Other places to find CPC data

Keyword Planner is Google’s own planning tool for keyword and bid estimates, but it is not the only place you will see a CPC column. Most paid SEO tools and browser extensions show an estimated CPC beside each keyword, and free checker tools will return a figure for a single term. Those numbers are estimates from each tool’s own data, so they often differ from Keyword Planner and from each other. They are fine for sorting a long list quickly and spotting which topics attract money, but they are a poor basis for setting a budget.

If you already run Google Ads, your own account is better evidence than any tool. The keywords report shows the average CPC you actually paid, and the search terms report shows which real searches triggered your ads. The auction insights report shows which other advertisers appeared in the same auctions and how often they showed above you, although it does not reveal their bids. Once you have a shortlist, it is worth reading more about what a keyword costs once you start bidding, because the cost per click is only one part of the monthly bill.

Is a high CPC keyword worth it for an advertiser?

A high bid range tells you that some advertisers have been willing to bid a lot for a top-of-page spot on that keyword. It does not tell you why, or whether those clicks paid off for them, and it says nothing about whether a click would be worth the same to you. A law firm can afford an expensive click because one new client may be worth a great deal to it, and a business with smaller jobs or a lower close rate cannot simply copy that bid. At best the price reflects somebody else’s arithmetic, and you can see the answer but never their working.

So the useful test is your own break-even CPC. Multiply the gross profit from a typical sale by the share of enquiries you close, then by the share of clicks that become enquiries. Take an illustrative Calgary renovation company (these numbers are an example, not data from any real business) that makes $2,000 gross profit on an average job, closes one enquiry in four, and turns 8% of ad clicks into enquiries. Its break-even CPC is $2,000 x 0.25 x 0.08, which is $40. A keyword with a top-of-page high range of $25 sits comfortably under that ceiling, while a keyword that settled at an average of $60 a click would, at those same close and conversion rates, cost more than it brings back unless something else in the funnel improved. The same keyword could be a bargain for a competitor with larger jobs, which is exactly why the column alone cannot answer the question. For benchmark figures by industry and more on this calculation, see the guide to what counts as a good CPC.

There is no fixed dollar line where a keyword becomes “high CPC”. It only means high compared with the rest of your own list, for your own location, and a figure that looks steep for a coffee shop is ordinary for an insurance broker.

If you earn from ads on your own site

Many people searching for high CPC keywords run a blog or a content site and want topics whose ads pay well. A high CPC in Keyword Planner is a reasonable signal that advertisers value the audience, but it is not what the site owner receives. Keyword Planner’s bid figures describe search ads at the top of Google’s results, while ads on a publisher’s pages are sold in a different setting, and Google’s AdSense help page explains that AdSense pays publishers an effective cost per thousand impressions (eCPM) for advertiser bids, which is a different measure from the search CPC in Keyword Planner.

The same AdSense page sets out the revenue share. For AdSense for content, publishers receive 80% of the revenue after the advertiser’s buying platform takes its fee, and when advertisers buy display ads through Google Ads, publishers keep about 68%. A topic with $20 search clicks will not put anything like $20 per visitor into a publisher’s account, and the actual figure depends on which ads show, how many visitors see them and how often they are clicked.

There is a second catch. Commercial topics often attract well-funded publishers as well as advertisers, but the CPC on its own cannot tell you how strong the organic competition is. Look at the pages that already rank, how closely they match the search and how established their sites are before you commit to a subject. For a new site, a topic with a moderate CPC that you know well is often a better bet than the most expensive topic on the list.

Using the CPC column for SEO

For anyone working on organic search rather than ads, the CPC column is most useful as confirmation rather than discovery. If you already suspect from your own sales that a query brings buyers, a high bid range shows that other businesses have reached the same conclusion with their own money, which is better evidence than a tool’s opinion score. Good keyword research uses it that way, alongside search volume and a look at what the search results actually show.

The mistake is letting the column choose the subject. Keyword Planner’s Competition column counts how many advertisers showed on a keyword, and the bid ranges reflect what they paid, but neither measures how hard the keyword is to rank for organically. A keyword can be expensive in ads and still have weak organic pages, or inexpensive in ads with a results page full of strong sites. Pick topics from your own business first, then use the CPC to rank them.

There is also a simple economic argument in favour of SEO for expensive keywords. In a Search campaign charged per click, each click keeps costing money for as long as the campaign runs, while organic visits from the same query carry no click charge from Google. Earning and keeping that ranking still costs time and money, since a contested commercial keyword takes sustained work, but it does mean the most expensive keywords on your list are often the ones where organic visibility is worth the most.

Common mistakes when hunting for high CPC keywords

Most errors come from reading the list too literally. These are the ones worth avoiding:

• Sorting with the location left at a default country instead of the market you actually serve, so the list reflects someone else’s competition.
• Treating the high range as the price you will pay. It is an 80th percentile of top-of-page bids, and your actual CPC depends on your Ad Rank and the advertiser below you.
• Comparing a Canadian-dollar export with a US-dollar list of “most expensive keywords” without converting.
• Reading the Competition column as SEO difficulty.
• Choosing a topic only because it is expensive, without knowing the market behind it or what a customer is worth.

Talking it through with To-The-TOP!

A sorted list of expensive keywords is a starting point, and the question that settles it is what one customer is worth to your business once they call. Sometimes the answer points towards paid search, and To-The-TOP! offers Google Ads management for those cases. Other times it points towards search engine optimization, so the business earns its position on the queries that would cost the most to buy. To-The-TOP! is a solo practice, so the person who looks at your keyword list is the person who would do the work. If you would like a second opinion on a list you have already built, call (403) 308-5949.