Keys to Keywords with PPC Advertising

Posted in: Small Business Online, Tips and Tricks  |  June 25, 2008 at 11:17 am
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In August, we here at Tornado Marketing are planning to do some co-marketing training sessions with Steve Wiideman of ElaborateSEM. So this week I sat in on one of his pay-per-click training sessions to see how we could build on each other’s expertise.  With Steve’s permission, we thought we’d share one of the most important take-aways of the day – focus on the keywords.  Identifying the right keywords is the first and most important step for any pay-per-click (PPC) or search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. Anyone who has ever looked at a Google Adwords campaign knows that great keywords are essential. What you may not know is how to find your best keywords.  Here are a few suggestions on where to begin: Find keywords from your website or other guesses of how people search:    Find terms your competitors use: Determine what keywords to use:
  • Long Tail search terms have less searches but better conversions. Long Tail search terms are terms that contain more than 1 word and are an action term.  EXAMPLE: “buy new sunglasses”
  • Competitive terms are usually single words and are more expensive and require larger budgets, but if you can afford them, are going to get searched for more often.  EXAMPLE: “sunglasses” 
  • Branded search terms – Always use at least one branded campaign.  EXAMPLE: “Oakley sunglasses” It will help if people have heard your name before. 
Organize your campaign:
  • Once you have narrowed down all the keywords that you can possibly use (make sure to use broad, exact and phrase match), put them all in a spreadsheet.
  • In the column next to each term, give it a category. Make sure that the categories are very specifically defined by the keywords. For example, some categories for sunglasses might be ‘womens’, ‘polarized’, and ‘tortoise shell’. In each of the categories, the keywords should all be basically the same (under polarized, every keyword should have the word polarized in it).
  • Each category that you have will become a separate ad group.
  • Ad groups should have very few, very tightly organized keywords.
Focus on quality keywords!
  • You should only keep words that convert.  Make sure that you have conversion tracking so that you can measure what is converting!
This is just the very tiny tip of the iceberg of everything that Steve covered. If you want more information about pay-per-click, you can check out his website, ElaborateSEM.com Do you have any PPC or keyword tips to share?

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  2. Search Engine Optimization for Channel Partners
  3. On Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  4. Blog. You Might Just Save a Life!
  5. Google Keyword Tool

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