Nobody needs to invent a landscaping keyword list from a blank page. Your competitors have already spent years telling Google, through their websites, which services they sell and which towns they work in. Keyword Planner will read those sites and hand you thousands of searches in an afternoon.
The catch is what comes back with them. When we fed Keyword Planner the websites of twelve landscaping companies, it returned 12,645 unique ideas. Some were exactly what a landscaper wants. Hundreds were competitors' names and customer logins. Hundreds more were daydreams, job hunts and bargain hunts. And 61 were searches for a licensed profession that only one of those twelve companies could legally answer. This chapter walks through the research in the order we do it: find who's bidding, seed Keyword Planner from their sites, cut what you can't serve, and sort what's left into ad groups ready to launch.
You Can See Who Bids in Your Town Without Clicking a Single Rival's Ad.
First, figure out which landscapers are actually paying to show up where you work. Most owners do this from the truck, phone in hand, tapping whatever ads appear. Don't. Every click costs a competitor money and muddies their numbers, and it tells you less than Google's own preview does.
Google gives you a better tool. Its Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, tucked inside Google Ads, shows the results page for any search as if you were standing in a chosen town, say the suburb where you do most of your patios. Google says it shows how ads appear in live results without affecting impression data. Try your money searches, "landscaper near me," "paver patio installation," "lawn care service," from three or four towns on your route, and jot down every landscaping name in the ads and the map pack.
In our example market, around New York, the ads came mostly from searches run in the suburbs: Long Island, Westchester and northern New Jersey. That's a reminder to preview from where your customers live, not from your office.
A Rival's Website Hands Keyword Planner Its Customers' Searches. Twelve Sites Gave Us 12,645.
Keyword Planner doesn't need you to know the right words first. Hand it a website and it works backward. Give it each competitor's address, point the location at the towns you serve, and it lists searches tied to what that company's pages talk about. Do it for each competitor on your list.
For this guide we ran the twelve landscaping companies we profiled in our example market, from design-build firms to national lawn brands, with the location set to the New York area. Together they produced 12,645 unique keyword ideas. That's far more searches than any one company would think to write down, and many of them are good: specific services, specific towns, specific problems homeowners describe in their own words.
Your own address deserves the same treatment. It shows you how Google reads your site, which services it thinks you offer and which ones it barely notices. A hardscaper whose own site brings back almost no patio searches has a website that's whispering about its best work. Chapter 4 covers what that whisper costs in the auction.
"Landscape Architect" Is a Licensed Title. Only One of the 12 Companies We Checked Offers One.
Here's the junk that surprises people. Tucked in the list were 61 landscape architect searches. The biggest, "landscaping architect," pulls in roughly 2,400 searches a month around New York, our example market. Across the US, "landscape architect" draws about 40,500 a month, and Keyword Planner's top-of-page estimates for it run from $2.70 to $11.53. It looks like a perfect keyword for a design-build landscaper.
It usually isn't. Landscape architecture is a licensed profession. The Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards puts it plainly: "CLARB's 56 member boards regulate the practice of landscape architecture to protect public health, safety and well-being." Of the twelve companies whose sites seeded our list, one offers licensed landscape architects, through a sister firm. The other eleven design and build landscapes, often very well, but they don't employ one.
Bidding on "landscape architect" without one on staff creates two problems. The first is the searcher: someone looking for a licensed architect, maybe for a commercial site or a permit drawing, who clicks your ad and finds a design-build crew. The second is your ad copy. Calling yourself a landscape architect without the license can run into state licensing rules. If you design but aren't licensed, there's an honest search for you: "landscape designer near me" draws about 14,800 a month in the US.
507 Ideas Named a Competitor or a Brand. They Belong on the Negative List.
The second big pile was other companies. Five hundred seven ideas named a competitor or a brand: national lawn treatment companies, lawn-mowing apps, and the local landscapers whose sites we seeded. A good share of them weren't even shoppers. "Tru green login" and its spellings alone come to about 1,300 a month in the example market: existing customers hunting for the sign-in page.
Competitor names go on the negative list. They come back in your seed research, and they'll come back in much larger numbers once broad match starts in Exploration. Running ads on another landscaper's name is its own decision, with its own campaign, and one we rarely recommend.
Your own name is different. Put it in its own brand campaign, where it's cheap and protects searches from people already looking for you. And if your customers log in to a portal to pay invoices or check their treatment schedule, add your own login and portal searches to that brand campaign as negatives. Otherwise you'll pay to show an ad to a customer who just wants to pay a bill.
Hundreds More Were Daydreams, Job Hunts or Bargain Hunts. Sort Them Out Before Launch.
Past the competitors, the cuts are smaller but they add up. In our twelve-site list:
- 786 ideas were DIY, ideas and how-to searches: "front yard landscaping ideas," "landscape ideas," "garden ideas." These are the browsers from Chapter 2. They're cheap and plentiful, and they don't hire.
- 156 asked for cheap or free: "lawn mowing cheap," "landscaping design programs free."
- 101 were supplies and products: trees for sale, materials and even "landscape company for sale."
- 30 were job searches: "landscaping jobs near me" alone drew about 720 a month in the example market.
Most of these come out. Job searches especially, since a landscaping company that hires seasonal crews will otherwise pay to show sales ads to job seekers. They should be negatives, and your careers page shouldn't be where your ads land.
Some calls are judgment, not rules. "Affordable lawn mowing" isn't the same as "free." If your mowing price is competitive and your ads say so, an affordable searcher may be a fine customer. Decide by your own prices, not by reflex.
What's Left Sorts Into Tight Groups by Service. Exact Match Goes Live First.
After the cuts, what remains is the useful part of the list: searches for services you sell, in places you serve. Split the keepers by service, five or six to a group, the same way Chapter 4 built its patio and mowing groups. Patio installation in one group, retaining walls in another, weekly mowing in a third, lawn treatment in a fourth. A search that doesn't fit a group cleanly is often a sign it belongs in a different one, or out.
The bids help you sort. In the example market's list, "lawn mowing" on its own draws about 14,800 searches a month, but its top-of-page estimate tops out around $2.13. That low ceiling suggests many of those searchers want a mower or a tip, not a crew. "Lawn mowing service" draws fewer, about 1,600, with estimates up to $8.08. The service version is the keeper. Snow works the same way: "snow removal companies near me" (about 4,400 a month, estimates up to $21.17) and "snow plow service near me" (about 3,600) belong together in one snow group, while the bare word "snow plowing" can wait.
One gap stood out. Out of 12,645 ideas, only 23 mentioned sprinklers or irrigation, and most of those paired it with lawn care or landscaping, even though seven of the twelve sites mention irrigation work. A seeded list reflects what the seed sites emphasize, so it can miss whole services. That's the kind of hole the next chapter is about, and it's why your own list should start from the services you sell, not only from what competitors happen to say.
They go live as exact match inside Isolation, BrandRocket's name for the opening campaign, not a Google setting: it pays for your chosen searches and ignores the rest. Exact match keeps the account on the searches you know are worth paying for while the conversion data builds.
Use Keyword Planner's bid estimates as a guide, not a quote. They're drawn from past auctions, and in our experience the real click price can land about 30% either side of them. They're good enough to compare services and set a starting bid, and Chapter 7 covers how to adjust from there.
Negatives Matter Most Once Exploration Opens. Google Won't Add the Plurals for You.
The negative list you build now is a start, not a finished job. It matters most a month or two in, when the Exploration campaign (also our name) opens up broad match to find the searches you didn't think of. Broad match brings far more competitor names, job searches and off-topic queries than any seed list did.
Negatives also work differently from regular keywords. Unlike regular keywords, negatives get no help from close variants, Google says. Every plural, synonym and misspelling has to be typed in by hand. Block "job" and "jobs" still gets through; block "trugreen" and "tru green" slips by. So list the variants deliberately, and open the search terms report each morning during Exploration's first month to catch whatever new junk arrived overnight.
Skip that morning check and broad match spends its first month learning your competitors' names on your dime. Our Google Ads management builds the negative list before launch and reviews search terms daily once Exploration starts.
Next: Your Sprinkler Ad Group Starts With "Sprinkler Repair Near Me." Nearly 600 Smaller Sprinkler Searches Wait for Broad Match.
A clean, tight list is the known part of the market. Chapter 6 shows how much of it you can't see yet, using sprinkler and irrigation searches, and how Exploration finds the long tail once your exact-match campaign is converting.
Every chapter is on the guide's home page.
