How Do You Find the Right Keywords for Your PPC Campaigns?

Most relevance problems aren't in the research — they're in what the keyword matches to afterwards. A perfect keyword still pulls junk on loose match with an empty negative list.

Two things I'd change first:
1. Sort by intent, not volume. "crm pricing" and "what is a crm" look similar in any tool, but one's a buyer and one's a student. Pricing/vs/best/buy/near me = bid. How/what/free/tutorial = content, not ads.
2. Build the negative list before launch, not after it hurts. Free, jobs, salary, reddit, template, plus any variant you don't sell. Then add every junk search term you see for the first month.

Tools are for discovery and volume — they can't tell you if a click will convert, because they don't know your offer. Your real keyword research is the search terms report after launch. Launch tight on phrase and exact, mine the report weekly, and leave broad match off until conversion tracking has real history.

I usually start with keyword tools, but I always check the search intent manually. A keyword should match what the user is actually looking for.

Start with Google Keyword Planner to find commercial terms, then add exact match types and negative keywords to block bad traffic.

Starting small with a focused list, then adding intent based keywords.

I focus more on search intent now. A keyword with fewer searches can work better if the person searching is actually ready to buy.