Keywords. Quality or Quantity?

I've been trying to learn about pay per click, and affiliate marketing and what I don't understand is how people get such great volume to their landing pages. Some things I've read, say to build a large list of keywords, but if you do this, the quality score becomes an issue and suddenly you're looking at $1 to $5 per click. If I use a few targeted keywords, they may not get the volume or take much longer to find keywords that convert. I'm not opposed to putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to be successful, but I'm just trying to figure out where to start. So, what's the best approach? Lots of keywords, or keep testing a few at a time?

 

If you use proper campaign setup, structuring and keyword clustering you can start with a million keywords with no effect.

Check the link in my sig, it has how to articles on these subjects

 

you generate all the KW you can, then break up the keywords in different set of groups. then when you setup your campaign, use each set of KW for one ad group and write ad copy for that set of KW only. once you run it for a day or 2, you will see which KWs are getting more impressions, yuo can then revise your ad copy and optimize your site for those KWs. your QS will be fine

 

Learn,Do & waite

 

Remember to separate content & search campaigns. Having a big list of kws is bad for the content network, since Google tries to match the content with ALL of them.

 

Make sure you separate your match types into different campaigns so you can see each type of kw converting

 

there are things like broad and phrase match - but as per the quality vs quantity I do quality - some of my ad group only has 7 keywords in them and they bring good traffic with good conversions

quantity is good to start off but filter through them - find which one is working better for you and your campaign

 

You want quantity and quality.

Start off with a small set of highly targeted longtails, separated into strict ad groups. Write custom ads for each group and launch the campaign with keyword tracking in place. After that, you can build the keyword count gradually by adding new ad groups.

 

You say that again. Spot on!

 

Sorry, I am a newbie to this but what does "longtails" mean?

 

longtails mean keyword consisting 2 or more words

 

It means targeting niche. Its a niche strategy.
You can find a more detailed explanation here and here
Cheers
Lucio

 

alright, thanks guys! got it.

 

Uh no you can't.

That's really bad advice. If you dump that many in at once, your account will slow to beyond a crawl. It doesn't matter if it's perfectly structured or not. They don't want people dumping in a million or half a million or even a hundred thousand keywords anymore. It just doesn't work.

You have to test in small batches for the search network. Then as you find converting keywords, you expand THOSE converters into all the variations and permutations available.

For the content network, they only look at the first 50 in every adgroup, so go with groups of 50 or less. They determine a theme for that adgroup and then place you ads on pages that match that theme. So if you have a ton of related adwords for the content network, it's not going to increase your click volume all that much either.

 

I do this all the time with no problem, and I continue to do this at least once per month with the setup of a new client... So you can't say its bad advice. When you have clients that want to spend 100k per month or more, we dont have time to test 10 keywords at once. So my advice still stands, its possible and I do it all the time.

I understand this with content, however content does not work like search and campaign structuring is completely different. You should be seperating your content campaign from your search campaigns and not running them togeather.

So if you have a ton of related adwords for the content network, it's not going to increase your click volume all that much either.

This statement is completely false, we have clients that have doubled their traffic and either maintained CPA or CPA was better. On average content increasees volume about 20% in both clicks and conversions.

I assume you manage small clients with very small budgets... Which is fine, Im not saying anything bad about it, but you have to consider the strategies of fortune 50, 100, 500 and 1000 companies who cant test small keyword groupings at wait for results. They need bigger volume and massive multiple campaign strategy and testing done simultaneously to make faster decisions and stay 1 step ahead of everyone else.

 

I spend about $700-$1000 a day personally on adwords and I recommend starting with the highest traffic yet targeted keywords first and I will do 1-10 campaigns each with one adgroup to test ads and CTR. From there I expand to thousands of keywords. Here's a look at one of my latest successful campaigns:

 

I can say it's bad advice because it is bad advice. You cannot dump a million keywords into any account at once and expect adwords to be ok with that. It doesn't work that way and I don't care how many "clients" you say you manage spending $100k per month, you're wrong. $100k is not a fortune 500 company either, so again you're off base. I don't manage any accounts except my own. If you know what you're doing you can work for yourself in this business and never take on a client.

 

your ignorance and persistence amazes me.

Lastly you are correct the 100k clients are not fortune 500 companies, those are the ones spending closer to 1 mill per month or more. I just used the term 100k cause thats more of an average.