The key to selecting the right keywords is to think like your customer. Get out a piece of paper and write down phrases that a customer would search to find your product. Write down everything that comes to mind, even if it seems unrealistic. You don’t want to leave some keywords off of your radar that could potentially drive serious (profitable) traffic to your website.
Bear in mind that this is not an exercise in positive thinking, where you’re hoping that a customer will be searching for “John’s Icon Software” or even your brand name. Imagine how ludicrous it would have been to run AdWords for the search phrase “Prosperly” when we were just launching. It’s not (or wasn’t) even a word and nobody knew about it prior to our launch — how would they know to search for it?
Time and time again we have clients where we ask them which keywords they’d like to target and they’ll mention their unique store’s name of Joan’s Gift Card Repository. Unless you’ve built a formidable brand, people won’t be searching for it.
Let’s work through an example:
Let’s assume you’ve built some amazing icon software that converts any type of image file into a Windows icon file. Your initial brainstorming might look something like this:
(Note: this mindmap was created using the free, and very useful mindmapping program called Freemind.)
I started out extremely general with the phrase icon and drilled down accordingly. You can see that I may want to target icon software, but recognize that people sometimes use software and program synonymously, so I’ll want to target icon program as well. Drilling down even further, I may want to target icon program searches specific to the Mac userbase. Again, recognize that people could be using different words to search for the same thing. Mac could also be searched under OSX, Apple or (less likely) Macintosh.
This brainstorm may not be the exact keyword phrases that I target in AdWords, but rather the ideas on which I’ll need to focus to build and refine my keyword list.
There are several keyword tools available that will suggest possible keyword phrases:
AdWords Keyword Tool (find it under Campaign Management -> Tools -> Keyword Tool) lets you enter a keyword phrase and get synonymous and more specific search phrases as a result. You can then estimate (vaguely) the cost-per-click and traffic of that keyword phrase.
Wordtracker used to be the grand-daddy of keyword tools and is still a favorite of many internet marketing experts. If you’re a serious PPC or SEO marketer, you should definitely have Wordtracker at your disposal.
KeyWordDiscovery is much more up our alley, as its feature set is significantly more built out with only a small difference in price. KeywordDiscovery, in my opinion, is WordTracker on steroids.
These are very useful, but we recommend working through the brainstorming exercise first, before going to the tools. The main reason for this is that it will help solidify in your mind your end customer, putting you in their shoes to help you fill their need.
Clicks – each time a unique person clicks on one of your ads a click is registered.
Impressions – each time your ad is shown to a unique person.
CTR – Click-Through Ratio is Clicks / Impressions. If your ad was shown 100 times and 2 people clicked, your CTR is two percent.
Conversions – an event defined by you, normally a sale, or an email signup, or some other action that you desire your visitor to take.
Position – the position of your ad as displayed on a search results page. From the image above you can see that “Free Calendar Templates” position is one.
Quality Score – straight from Google’s mouth: “Your Quality Score reflects your keyword’s CTR and the relevance of your ad text and landing page. Keywords with high Quality Scores are more relevant for users, more effective for your ad campaigns, and have lower minimum CPC bids.” In other words, a higher quality score means you pay less per click, or are positioned higher, or both.
Keyword Matching
- Broad Match – if your keyword phrase is icon converter then your ad would be eligible to show if the user searches anything containing both of those terms (windows icon converter, converter for a little email icon, icon converter that’s free, etc.)
- Phrase Match – if your keyword phrase is “icon converter” then your ad would be eligible to show if the searches for a phrase that contains icon converter (in that order) and any word(s) before or after that phrase (windows icon converter, icon converter for windows, free icon converter for windows, etc.)
- Exact Match – if your keyword phrase is [icon converter] then your ad would be eligible to show only if the user searched exactly that term in that order. Your ad would not show if they searched for free icon converter or even icon converters.
- Negative Match – if you’re selling an icon converter, then you may not want people searching for anything free. You can use -free as a negative keyword in your campaign. This keeps your ad from showing for searches such as free windows icon converter, free icon converter, or free converter for an email icon. Negative matches can be powerful allies in ensuring that you’ll only be paying for those people truly interested in what you’re offering.
While it’s normal to start with high-level items (the Campaign) first, we’re going to start from the bottom at the keyword level.
With the end goal always being quality traffic, Google AdWords is one option that seems to consistently stand above the rest (besides SEO, where you’re basically getting the traffic without bearing a direct cost). We will cover the basics of Google AdWords only very, very briefly here. Google’s AdWords Support area will give you all the answers to questions regarding how to this, or how to do that. What we’ll be working through here is strategy. In other words, how do you leverage AdWords to be a profitable traffic source?
Google AdWords are small ads placed on the search engine results pages. The ad served is determined by the search phrase entered by a visitor to Google (this is very simplistic, but trust me, we’ll dive much deeper later).
Why is AdWords such a big deal when marketing your online business? Imagine walking into your favorite grocery store. The automatic sliding doors open and an employee walks up to you with a cart full of all the items you have on your grocery list. How inclined would you to be buy? Very! Google AdWords comes very close to doing just this. You find out what the customer is looking for before they land on your website and you serve them exactly what they want.
Your AdWords account is organized as follows:
- Campaigns – Campaigns are the highest level in your AdWords account. You may run a specific campaign for your product during Christmas, the presidential elections, or the Fourth of July. You may have multiple businesses where each campaign is for a different business.
- Ad Groups – Ad Groups are what you see circled above. An Ad Group is where you determine the type of ad (text, image, etc.), what the ad will contain, and finally, which keyword searches will trigger that ad.
- Keywords – Keywords belong to a specific Ad Group. Keywords are the most granular area of your AdWords pay-per-click management. This is where you determine how you’ll find the people that are searching for what you’re selling (even if they don’t know it yet).
