Keywords are the search terms (words or phrases) which trigger your ad, and they are critical to the success of your AdWords advertising. This email explains how you can choose the most effective keywords, assess your keyword performance and how this affects the amount you pay.
Top tips for great keywords
A great keyword is:
- Ideally, 2-3 words long
- Specific (keywords that are too broad or general will not reach users as effectively as keywords that are highly targeted)
- Directly related to the text in your ad
- Directly related to the page your ad links to (specified by the destination URL)
What keywords should I choose?
First, look at your website content and write down every word, word combination or phrase that describes each category of your business. This is the starting point for creating your keyword lists.
Include all brand and product names as well as plurals, synonyms and alternate spellings for each word or phrase. Capitalization does not matter. Take out keywords that are very generic, irrelevant, or obscure.
Then, group your keywords into close-knit themes and create a new ad group for each theme. Put your keywords into these new ad groups. For example, if your campaign is for digital cameras, you can group together mini digital cameras in one ad group and SLR digital cameras in another.
Try using negative keywords. Negative keywords prevent your ad from showing when a word or phrase you specify is part of a search term. If you specify the negative keyword -repair, for instance, your ad won’t show for search terms such as digital camera repair.
Want more keyword information and examples?
How can I tell if my keywords are working well?
Check your keyword performance regularly in the ‘Keyword’ tab of your account.
An ‘Eligible’ status means your keyword is eligible to trigger ads. Click on the icon in the status column to get more detail on your individual keyword performance.
Then, one of the most important metrics to assess is the clickthrough rate (CTR), as it shows the proportion of people who clicked on your ad after they saw it. Keywords that produce a relatively low CTR (e.g. less than 1% on the search network) can often be improved. Implementing the tips above will help improve your keyword performance. A higher CTR will help to increase your ad’s position on Google.
Learn more about what keyword metrics to look out for.
How do my keywords impact how much I pay?
If your keywords are well chosen and you follow the tips above, your ads may show in a higher position or at a lower cost.
AdWords bidding works on an auction-style system, with advertisers bidding for keywords that will trigger their ads to appear. As multiple advertisers will often bid on the same keywords, Google must determine which ads will show, and in what position on the page. To do this, it looks at both CPC bids and the quality of your keywords:
- Cost-per-click bids (Maximum CPCs) are the amount you are willing to pay when someone clicks on your ad
- Quality score relates to how relevant your ads and keywords are to searches on Google, which is determined by a number of things, including your CTR.
P.S. Next week I’ll cover everything you need to know to write eye-catching ad texts!
Four simple steps to help your search marketing campaign keep up with new searches.
I know I’m not the only person that remembers the line “just set it and forget it”. Those were the good ol’ days—the days when you could just set up a search marketing campaign and leave it alone.
Not anymore. Users are more sophisticated in their searches now, and we’ve seen that up to 20% of searches in any given month can be search queries never seen before by a search engine. This means if you leave your campaign untouched, you could be missing 20% more traffic.
So what’s the best way to keep up to speed with the changing search tide while maintaining your sanity? Here are our four simple steps that will help your Search Engine Marketing campaign keep pace.
1. First, let’s set up the campaign properly.
Start by making sure you have selected the proper match type-(Google) or if Yahoo, make sure your campaign is opted into Advanced Match (this is the default setting). Broad Match types in Google can be used if you need more traffic but can’t seem to find it, and when used with negative keywords can get you maximum traffic.
Advanced Match campaigns in Yahoo will display ads for a broader range of searches relevant to your keywords, titles and descriptions,than you may have thought of yourself. Thus taking the guesswork out of keyword research. (although I would continue to do the research)
Yahoo uses very sophisticated keyword or phrase intelligence which includes concepts that are related to your keyword, but that do not necessarily contain your keyword. Think of Advanced Match as the sales guy that’s going above and beyond to bring in great leads where you least expected them.
Which keywords should you start with first? Well, if you have a big budget and want to focus on driving traffic, then you may want more high-volume search terms (e.g. car) in your campaign. If your objective is getting higher conversions, you may want to include more tail terms as they are more product specific (e.g., new 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid car). Make sure to use excluded words (or negative keywords) to avoid matching to terms that are not relevant to your product or service.
2. Monitor your campaign regularly
Because search habits constantly change, you should tune your campaigns as regularly as possible. The frequency really depends on you and what your objectives are, and if you’re meeting those goals or not.
The best way to determine your campaign’s performance is through the myriad of reports available through the search engines reporting tools. It’s kind of like when you check traffic in the evening to determine the best route to take home. You may choose to take the shortest route but sit in a little bit of traffic (or a lot if you’re on highway 101). Or you may choose a route that is longer but less traveled, and gets you home 15 minutes earlier. The same logic applies to your campaign. Know your objective, and look at the reports to help you get there.
Once you have some insight about which campaigns and keywords are performing, here are some things you can try:
* Work with your consultant or search engine account manager to identify additional keywords and bid opportunities.
* Take advantage of our keyword suggestion tools & discovery tools to supplement your existing keywords. I recommend Keyword Research Pro. Its inexpensive and easy to use.
* Use organic search results to optimize campaigns and expand your keywords or add excluded words to avoid future matches. Google Analytics provides the keywords used when people find your website.
3. Tune your campaign
By now you have a pretty good idea which keywords are doing well in your campaigns, and which ones are lagging. It’s time to take action. Separate lower performing keywords from higher performing keywords so your high performers aren’t dragged down by your low performers. Create a “low budget” campaign that includes all of your low performing keywords, and use lower bids so that you continue to participate in the marketplace.
Another tuning technique is to separate keywords that get a lot of clicks from low-volume keywords. This allows you to tweak your ad copy for the greatest impact on the high-volume terms. Mixing the two may dilute your campaigns overall performance, and make it difficult for you to determine which keyword is negatively affecting your campaign’s Quality Index.
4. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor…but don’t get too comfortable
Now that you’ve tuned your campaigns, give it some time to see how each campaign performs, but don’t let it simmer for too long. The duration really depends on how much traffic you’re getting. You may notice changes taking effect immediately, or you may have to wait a few days or weeks to see the full impact.
At the end of the day, where does this cycle of keyword addition, monitoring, separating, tuning, re-running your campaign take you? It allows you to improve your ad quality and your campaign performance. The better a campaign’s performance, the less it’ll cost you to participate. And who wouldn’t want a few extra dollars back in their pockets?
Besides, if you’re not managing your campaign regularly, you can bet your competitors are—and possibly taking traffic away from you. To protect your traffic and your business, we encourage you to actively manage your campaign. Don’t just set and forget it!
Yahoo and Microsoft announced they have clearance to implement their proposed search deal where Microsoft will power Yahoo Search and search ads. Today they received “unrestricted” clearance from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission to proceed. And proceed they will.
Yahoo said the implementation will begin in the next “days.” Here is the announcement:
Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies’ unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.
Several Yahoo blogs have discussion around this. They include the Yahoo Search Blog, Yahoo Search Marketing Blog and Yahoo Developer Blog.
My Take Away: Notice is says “better monetization opportunities for web publishers”? Well there are several advantages to this merger and I will be sharing those with you soon! Stay tuned…
I came across this WordPress plugin accidentally the other day and after getting it and playing around with it, I am not only impressed with it, I am blown away by what it can do for your WordPress blog! Ok here is the quick rundown on it:
- Allows you to turn your WP blog into multiple sales pages
- Create different squeeze pages
- Create different page designs
- Create different campaigns
- etc.
Basically you never need to buy squeeze or landing page templates. You can create all of them under one domain name and control all of them from one location. Cool stuff.
You can buy the plugin or the theme that they offer or save some money and buy both of them. I suggest getting both of them because they work together seamlessly and allow you do do more.
To get just the plugin go here:
To get the bundled theme and plugin go here:
Enjoy it!
Gary
I got an email from an internet marketer that read like this: “Who Else Wants To Discover The *Alien Like* Tool That Turned A Poor Homeless Boy Into A Millionaire In Only 3 Years Time – For FREE!”
It still amazes me that this would get ANYONES attention. Especially considering that we are all not complete idots right? Wrong! Yes there are a few of those out there who just can’t help themselves and have to see what the “Aliens” gave to this guy to turn him from homeless to millionaire. Its just plain human nature….we have to see what’s behind door number 2. We crave excitement and intrigue and that will never change. Oh and we also want to be millionaires.
So my point is there are many ways to get someones attention using headlines. I just wish we could move on from the stupid ones. Not all of us were raised on Jerry Springer episodes.
