Are you one of the 150,000 Webmasters and advertisers using Google's AdWords Select keyword targeted text advertising to drive traffic to your Website? If so, you may be able to save a bundle by cheating Google! Okay, so it's not exactly cheating per se, but if you're not using all the tools and tricks that AdWords provides, then you're definitely leaving money on the table. And, when your competitors see your results, they'll think you've somehow cheated the AdWords system.
This series of articles will systematically show you how to:
Generate the absolute best keyword list for your target market
Use simple techniques to vastly expand your productive keyword list
Create highly clickable copy for your ad
Precisely limit the distribution of your ad to only those prospects who are most interested
Beat the competition with creative bidding strategies
Dramatically reduce costs of your campaigns while increasing clickthroughs
The series has five parts:
Part 1 - Keywords (starts below)
Part 2 - Create your Google AdWords Ad
Part 3 - Ad Distribution and Bid Strategies
Part 4 - Results Tracking and ROI Reports
Let's get started!
Generating Your Keyword List in 5 Easy Steps
In order to get the most out of the AdWords Select program, you simply must have a great keyword list. If your keyword list is not deep enough, you will be doomed to pay top dollar on only a few highly-trafficked phrases that garner top dollar bids. So, what are the steps to developing a great keyword list?
First things first: you need your core list of targeted keywords and search phrases. These are the terms that your customers will type in to find your goods and services. Let's say you have an online store that sells handheld organizers like the Palm Pilot. Take a minute and think about how you would go about searching for a personal digital assistant (PDA) online. Would you search on the term 'digital device'? How about 'PDA'? Maybe 'Palm Pilot' or 'Palm V'? Would you try 'personal electronics'? My point is that there are many, many different and distinct search terms that will get you where you want to go.
So, how can you determine which search terms to use when advertising your goods and services? Follow these instructions:
Write down the top search terms that you can think of that describe your business or service. I suggest keeping this list on a spreadsheet if at all possible -- this will make it easier to organize and submit later.
Use the Overture 'Search Suggestion Tool' to get an idea of the popularity of each search term and enter this number under a 'monthly impressions' column in your spreadsheet. The tool is located here.
When I searched on our example keywords, I found that those search terms were recently searched as follows:
Pda - 420,800
palm pilot - 75,982
palm V - 3,899
digital device - 376
personal electronics - 250
Use the Search Suggestion Tool to lengthen your list of search terms. Not only does the Search Suggestion Tool reveal the number of searches for any given search phrase, it also displays any closely related search terms.
Another excellent resource is found at www.wordtracker.com. At $199 for an annual membership, this service will reveal which terms are the most searched on the Web, and also give suggestions for alternative search phrases. Typing 'palm pilot' into Word Tracker also shows a list of search terms (suggestions), and the number of times the associated terms were searched at Overture in the previous month:
palm pilot software – 6,960
palm pilot game – 5,486
palm pilot free game – 5,478
palm pilot free ware – 2,315
palm pilot free software – 2,203
palm pilot downloads – 1,995
free palm pilot downloads – 1,931
palm pilot accessory – 1,291
palm pilot share ware – 985
Add all the new relevant terms and monthly impressions to your spreadsheet list. Be creative! Type in any series of words that you think might lead someone to your product or service. Use a thesaurus and a dictionary to assist you.
Go back to your list -– it should be pretty lengthy by now –- and add modifying words that are relevant to your product or service, such as: cheap, discount, low cost, free, premium, authentic, etc. Check the Search Suggestion Tool to assess the number of searches conducted for those terms in the previous month. Enter the terms and data into your spreadsheet under 'monthly impressions'.
In our example, if you use the keyword 'Palm Pilot', why not consider using 'discount Palm Pilot', 'cheap Palm Pilot', or 'low cost Palm Pilot' if they apply to your business? The purpose of these activities is to generate the longest possible list of relevant search terms possible. Why? Remember, you only pay when someone actually clicks on your message. You pay nothing extra to simply list more keywords. Additionally, the more keywords you have, and the more specific the search phrases are, the more likely that your visitor will be truly interested in your product or service. For example: 'pda' is a very general search term. Anyone interested in handheld organizers might search using this term. However, 'Palm V' is a more targeted search term. These customers are narrowed to a particular brand and model. The search phrase 'discount Palm V' is even more targeted, and will attract price conscious Palm V shoppers.
A longer list of relevant search phrases also increases the likelihood that you will attract visitors to your site at a lower cost. That is because it is often possible to bid less for a click if the search term is less popular. More search terms, bid at a lower cost, mean more traffic to your site for fewer advertising dollars.
At this point in the process, you should have a fairly comprehensive list of targeted search terms and phrases. I suggest you sort the terms on your spreadsheet by 'monthly impressions' to get a sense of which terms are most popular. These are the terms that can end up costing you the most advertising dollars if you choose to bid for a high ranking.
Congratulations! You have now generated a comprehensive keyword list that will get you ahead of your competitors.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
7 Ways to Build Your Business With Google Adwords
In the world of PPC, Google AdWords still holds the reign over the other pay per click marketing options. The only one that comes close is Yahoo's sponsored search marketing (previously known as Overture), and even that has made changes to imitate Google's AdWords.
Using AdWords can increase traffic and has a huge ability to increase your knowledge within your market, as well as knowledge about your potential clients. However - not knowing how to use it properly can sometimes cause startling expenditures, and this can often scare people away from using it at all. Here are seven tips to help you get started on AdWords with a better grasp on this powerful tool.
7 Google AdWords Tips and Tricks
Turn off Content at first - You'll want to turn off the "content network" option inside your campaign settings when you start. This is something that can often lose a lot of money, with a very small CTR. If you do want to use it, I recommend starting with the search network, learning what your converting keywords/ad groups are, and then starting a separate campaign with only content network ads running. And also consider choosing which sites your ads run on explicitly. This will enable you to check and see just where your ads will show, and if it's a good site to match with your market. As usual, test and track, and keep the ones with the best conversions.
Run 2 Ads At A Time - Always, always run two ads at a time. This will make sure you can keep increasing your CTR by checking to see which ad performs better, then making that the control and rewriting the other ad. It's good to get at the very least 30 clicks before deciding on a winner.
Set a Daily Budget - A lot of people aren't aware this is an option, and some keywords can cost thousands of dollars within a few hours. Make sure you set a budget you can live with so you don't find yourself spending a huge amount of money before you can make adjustments. This setting is inside the campaign settings.
Use Different Match Types - There are 3 match types: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. Knowing how each works is crucial to having a good campaign. If nothing else, know that by just putting words in your ad groups, they default to broad match. Broad match will match all searches with those words in any order, as well as any searches containing words with similar meaning (using latent semantic indexing). This means you may have a lot of searches that your ad shows up for that are not words you chose. And because of this you should...
Use Negative Keywords - In your keywords research, if you think of keywords that may cause your ads to show but are not related to your campaign, be sure to put them in as negative keywords. You can do this in each ad group by simply putting a negative sign in front of your keywords (and in front of the first quote in negative keyword phrases), but often it's best to just put it into your campaign negative keywords. You can find where to put negative campaign keywords inside your campaign page, where you'll see "campaign negative keyword(s): Edit".
Keep Related Keywords in Separate Ad Groups - This is important for several reasons. If you toss all your keywords into one ad group, there's a likely chance that no ad you can possibly write will entice people typing every one of these keywords. Keep your ad groups separate, so you can write unique ads that match with the keywords in that ad group. This will up your CTR. Also, ideally you should have unique landing pages for each ad group, if there is a page that is best for the keywords in that ad group.
Track All Results - Tossing keywords into AdWords, crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best is not a good way to do pay-per-click marketing. Track everything so you can remove badly performing keywords, expand on exceptionally performing keywords, and adjust your ads. If you have a page on your site that anyone visiting would indicate a conversion, use AdWords's conversion code option. This allows you to put code on that page so you can know exactly which keywords brought you conversions through your PPC. If this is possible on your page, do it! Knowing precisely which keywords convert will make your PPC campaign a monster, and jump your ROI through the roof.
Having a good idea how AdWords works before spending money on it will help you make sure your campaigns bring quality traffic. Follow these Google AdWords tips and tricks to keep your AdWords campaigns performing well, and you'll see great results with this very powerful internet marketing tool.
Using AdWords can increase traffic and has a huge ability to increase your knowledge within your market, as well as knowledge about your potential clients. However - not knowing how to use it properly can sometimes cause startling expenditures, and this can often scare people away from using it at all. Here are seven tips to help you get started on AdWords with a better grasp on this powerful tool.
7 Google AdWords Tips and Tricks
Turn off Content at first - You'll want to turn off the "content network" option inside your campaign settings when you start. This is something that can often lose a lot of money, with a very small CTR. If you do want to use it, I recommend starting with the search network, learning what your converting keywords/ad groups are, and then starting a separate campaign with only content network ads running. And also consider choosing which sites your ads run on explicitly. This will enable you to check and see just where your ads will show, and if it's a good site to match with your market. As usual, test and track, and keep the ones with the best conversions.
Run 2 Ads At A Time - Always, always run two ads at a time. This will make sure you can keep increasing your CTR by checking to see which ad performs better, then making that the control and rewriting the other ad. It's good to get at the very least 30 clicks before deciding on a winner.
Set a Daily Budget - A lot of people aren't aware this is an option, and some keywords can cost thousands of dollars within a few hours. Make sure you set a budget you can live with so you don't find yourself spending a huge amount of money before you can make adjustments. This setting is inside the campaign settings.
Use Different Match Types - There are 3 match types: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. Knowing how each works is crucial to having a good campaign. If nothing else, know that by just putting words in your ad groups, they default to broad match. Broad match will match all searches with those words in any order, as well as any searches containing words with similar meaning (using latent semantic indexing). This means you may have a lot of searches that your ad shows up for that are not words you chose. And because of this you should...
Use Negative Keywords - In your keywords research, if you think of keywords that may cause your ads to show but are not related to your campaign, be sure to put them in as negative keywords. You can do this in each ad group by simply putting a negative sign in front of your keywords (and in front of the first quote in negative keyword phrases), but often it's best to just put it into your campaign negative keywords. You can find where to put negative campaign keywords inside your campaign page, where you'll see "campaign negative keyword(s): Edit".
Keep Related Keywords in Separate Ad Groups - This is important for several reasons. If you toss all your keywords into one ad group, there's a likely chance that no ad you can possibly write will entice people typing every one of these keywords. Keep your ad groups separate, so you can write unique ads that match with the keywords in that ad group. This will up your CTR. Also, ideally you should have unique landing pages for each ad group, if there is a page that is best for the keywords in that ad group.
Track All Results - Tossing keywords into AdWords, crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best is not a good way to do pay-per-click marketing. Track everything so you can remove badly performing keywords, expand on exceptionally performing keywords, and adjust your ads. If you have a page on your site that anyone visiting would indicate a conversion, use AdWords's conversion code option. This allows you to put code on that page so you can know exactly which keywords brought you conversions through your PPC. If this is possible on your page, do it! Knowing precisely which keywords convert will make your PPC campaign a monster, and jump your ROI through the roof.
Having a good idea how AdWords works before spending money on it will help you make sure your campaigns bring quality traffic. Follow these Google AdWords tips and tricks to keep your AdWords campaigns performing well, and you'll see great results with this very powerful internet marketing tool.
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