How to Find the Top Sponsored Keywords for a Niche (and Why That Matters for Your PPC Strategy)

For a full walkthrough of this strategy, you can watch the following video: 

If you're entering a niche for the first time and haven’t run ads yet, it can be hard to know which keywords are worth bidding on. Guessing isn’t the most reliable approach, especially when other sellers have already been advertising in that space for months—or even years.

By checking where your competitors are placing their ads—especially on page one of search results—you give yourself a stronger starting point. Rather than relying solely on automatic campaigns and waiting weeks to gather data, you can learn from sellers who are already investing in ads in your niche.

Here’s how to figure out which keywords your competitors are focusing on.

Start by running a multi-ASIN search. Choose several competitor products—maybe four, five, or more—depending on how many top listings you want to include. Once the data loads, look at the “sponsored rank count.” This tells you how many of those ASINs are advertising on the same keyword. You might start by setting a filter to only show keywords where at least two products are showing sponsored results. If you want a more focused list, increase the number—maybe look for three out of five.

Next, check the “sponsored rank average.” This shows the average ad position for that keyword across the selected ASINs. You can set a range here—something like 1 to 20—to focus on ads that appear on the first or second page of results.

You might also want to apply a search volume filter. For example, you could set a minimum of 300 to make sure you're only seeing keywords that have a decent number of monthly searches. There's no one-size-fits-all number. You can adjust this based on how broad or narrow you want your results to be.

After applying these filters, you start to see a list of keywords that multiple competitors are targeting in their sponsored ads. In the coffin shelf niche, for example, it might show keywords like “coffin shelf,” “coffin shelves,” and “mini coffin.” You can see how many sellers are bidding on each of those terms, and what their average sponsored ranks are.

Let’s say one keyword has sellers showing up at positions 1, 9, 8, and 10. Another might have one seller way down at position 65, which brings down the average, but the rest are still showing up on page one. This gives you a quick snapshot of what your competitors are prioritizing—and how aggressively they’re bidding.

This type of view makes it easier to build a solid PPC strategy from the beginning. Instead of spending time and money testing everything, you’re basing your campaign on real activity that’s already working for others.

With just a few filters and less than a minute of your time, you get a list of keywords that your competitors are spending on—and you can use that as a strong starting point for your own ads.