In this article, I will share some
tips on how to select keywords for AdWords.
A good place to start with search
engine marketing (SEM) is the use of keywords because that is how your
customers find you, right?
You should, remember these 3 things:
Think holistically about the different ways those
customers could reach you
Align your keywords and their
management with your overall business outcomes
Delete your low search volume
keywords.
There are a few ways to develop a
list of keywords for your AdWords campaign. Think of the words on the website,
your services and products that you offer. What terms do you think your
customers use to describe or search for you? What terms do your competitors use
to be found?
Remember the story of the 3 bears?
Goldilocks tried the porridge, one was too hot, another was too cold, and one
was just right. Well, you can think of keywords for AdWords in the same way.
Some are too broad, some are too long, and some are just right. In SEO, we LOVE
Long Tail keywords because those are very relevant. They may not be searched as
much as a broad term, but when they are, its money in the bank. Unfortunately, you can’t have a lot of long
tail keywords in AdWords because of the low search volume. Compared to shorter
keywords (those with two to four words), keywords that contain five words or
more drive less than half the volume of clicks and impressions on average. It
also hurts your quality score. I’ll explain this a little later.
Let’s say you are David Bouley, the
owner and chef of Bouley’s French Restaurant in New York City and you want to
have a campaign to sell more gift certificates to your restaurant. Using the
term Gift Card is too broad because it will trigger all kind of searches that
are irrelevant. He doesn’t want people seeing his ads when searching for Harry
& David Gift Baskets. Using Restaurant Gift Certificates is a little better
because it triggers those searching for that more specific gift certificate,
yet it can still be a problem because it can show up for Olive Garden gift
certificate, or Chili’s, which target totally different diners with a different
price and dining experience expectation in mind. A good keyword phrase could be
french fine dining gift card or French fine dining gift certificate. This
targets diners who are interested in a French Fine Dining Experience. Another
possibility could be Bouley’s Gift Certificates, however I bet the search
volume would be very low.
Keyword Tools
There are many software tools
available to assist you in finding the best keywords for your campaign or
website. One of them is the Google Keyword Planner. What I have found though,
is that these tools are not as accurate as you may think. The search volume has
been off and the bids weren’t as accurate as what I saw when my campaigns went
live.
I was told once by a very successful
online marketing professional, Matt Trainer, who has made a good living by
helping major brands with getting massive targeted traffic and customers into
their sales funnels, to take 10 – 15 minutes and step away from the computer
and actually think how I, as a potential client would search for that product
or service. I’m sure you can think of the right terms just as well as any
software can. Heck, you can even think of what terms your competitors are
using. Like many things in life, you just gotta take action and step out in
faith. Try it yourself and, you may start to realize that this practice will
work better for you too if you try it and practice it. Maybe you have already
seen the same things that I have experienced.
Grouping Keywords
Google LOVES tightly themed, related
and relevant content. You want to match keywords to a user’s search terms and
to the ads as well as the landing page you are sending them to visit. I arrange
keywords within the ad groups. It also makes it easier for you to manage and
maintain your account. If you are on a
tight budget, keywords are often grouped at the campaign level for greater budgetary
control.
Stay Clear of Low Searched Keywords
Watch out for low search volume
keywords. As Stated earlier, SEM doesn’t like long tail keywords. These terms
often haven’t driven a single impression in months or even years because people
aren’t performing searches on them (not because your bid isn’t winning any
auctions). While you want them on your page for SEO, Delete them in SEM
campaign if you have other keywords that could potentially cover that traffic.
My personal preference is to have 2 – 3 long tail keywords that are super
relevant even though they don’t perform well because when people do search for
example: Buy Bouley’s NYC Gift Certificates, His ad will show up and the person
looking for that and ready to buy a $500 gift certificate for a 5 course French
Fine Dining luxury experience will have found exactly what they want.
Let’s Get Negative
Just as important as the keywords
people use to find you; Negative keywords are an essential part of a
well-rounded keyword strategy. In order to increase the profitability and
improve control over the flow of traffic in your account, use negative keywords
to the fullest. On the most basic level, negative keywords prevent you from
showing ads to people who are less interested in what you have to offer, even
though their queries may be syntactically related to the keywords in your
account.
So, let’s go back to the example of
David Bouley’s French Restaurant. He doesn’t want to show up for searches of
gift cards from Pizza Hut, or Chili’s or Applebee’s, etc. So a sure fire way to
assure we are targeting the most relevant audience is to add these restaurants
to the negative keyword list along with gift baskets and Harry. Once the
campaign is running, you will see in the keyword details reports what terms are
triggering your ads and then you can add the appropriate ones to the negative
keyword list.
Having a strong negative keyword
list will be valuable as it improves the performance of your campaign and
improves the quality scores of your ads.
Scoring High Marks on Quality
You know how you have those warning
or indicator lights on the dash of your car? They turn on when you need to
check your engine, or if your oil or gas is running low. Well, you can think of
the Quality Score of your keywords as a warning light: something that alerts
you to potential problems, which need to be checked. Many advertisers spend a
lot of time on this. A good rule of thumb I go by is a score under 6 is a
stronger indicator that I need to check the relevance of the term and how it’s
performing and if I need to tweak my landing page or ad or both.
Attempting to use tricks, shortcuts
or short-term solutions to force the quality score up isn’t the way to go.
Rather, you’re better off to focus on your long-term performance outcomes and
look for ways to reach them by improving your user experience. Google is ALL
about the user experience and so should you.
At the end
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