I’ve been reading on forums and products like Perry Marshall’s Adwords book and CustardMites tips from this forum, regarding choosing your keywords and putting them in to similar tightly focused groups, which is logical. Now I read on some forums that some folks load up their Google account with thousands of keywords and I was just wondering is there a reason or not, so I have a few questions I’d like to understand. 1. Is it logical to choose thousands of keywords because when I do a search on a particular topic I’d like to look at in WordTracker for instance, I seemed to be hard pushed to find 500 relevant words to my search topic, even including the long tailed and misspelled ones? 2. If I search on a key phrase in Google, some of the ads that appear on the right hand side seem to bear no relevance to the phrase I entered and especially on going to the ads web site, again, totally irrelevant, so why is that because surely the visitor isn’t going to stick around that site, hence costing the advertiser money? 3. Now I thought Google gave a good quality score to your keywords if they matched your ad and website which in turn affected your bid price lowering because of the CTR. Then if that is the case surely the advertiser is again spending a fortune on his/her account for misleading the visitor, so why do it, or is it the fact some of these advertisers have deep pockets and don’t care, but which inflates the advertising costs for the folks who’s ads are more relevant to the search term? 4. Am I missing the plot somewhere and should I be looking for keywords/phrases that seem a long way off from my original train of thought? Bearing in mind that I’m still learning but have just started my very first campaign with only about 120 words split in to 5 categories plus the quotes “ †and brackets [ ]. 5. And if your item is only a low value product say $20, £10, you don’t have a great deal to play with whilst balancing between getting a good quality score and running out of budget, you could end up spending far more than you receive even if you set your daily budget at a reasonable level? I know there is the fact of gathering the visitor’s email via some opt-in on the chance of marketing a back-end product, but that could be months away. I’d just appreciate your views as to how you yourselves approach selecting your keywords and whether more is better or not. I know there is a lot to learn and it can be a minefield out there for the uninitiated. But as the old saying goes, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Thank you to you all and regards Ian (ex TV cameraman for over 30 years now looking to learn and do something totally different). PS. Sorry for the long post.
Don't worry about the number of keywords you're bidding on - just worry about getting the right ones. People tend to get way too hung up on how many keywords they should have. The anser is every situation is unique so there's no "right" number of keywords. It's called poor account management Sometimes is just bad advertising, other times it's really good advertising as the advertisers understands the ltv of their customer and can afford to take an initial loss. I do think you've over simplified the QS...check this out for a more complete picture of what thw QS is and how it's used. Never hurts to test. It's easy to lose money. Make sure to set your budget at something you're ok with losing as that can and most likley will be the case in the early days. More is not better I'll take 1 keyword that converts over a hundred that don't any day of the week. Take your time, learn everything you can from available sources and never stop testing. Good luck!
Thank you for that good post “GuyFromChicago†to my questions, really appreciate it. I did have a mind to dip my toes before diving in headfirst; it’s just my nature to be precarious. I think that at first when reading articles, ebooks and forum posts sometimes there seems so much that appears to contradict itself plus the little grey cells gets information overload and it is easy to get lost. I myself was in the view of just tracking a minimal amount of keywords, I think basically I just needed to be told that that was a good move, so thanks again. Once again thank you Ian PS. I wasn’t trying to over simplify the QS bit, I understand a little of how it works, it’s just that I didn’t feel it necessary to dwell on it and make my questions any long and boring.
don't be too put off if only a handful of keywords are at all relevant. Sometimes that is what you get in niche areas. Just like the myth, the inuit have hundreds of words for snow, whereaas in english we have alot less.
Sorry - no they don't, it's just an urban myth... http://www.mendosa.com/snow.html Regarding keyword lists, it's very easy to generate a long list of keywords if you are selling a wide range of products - 100 products * 10 words for each one, plus mis-spellings, brand names etc can easily get you 1000 - 2000 keywords, even for a relatively small business. However, I've got campaigns where my original keyword list ran to less than 100 words - you want every relevant, potentially profitable keyword that you can. I'd strongly advise against bidding on irrelevant terms or even slightly relevant terms - they can damage your whole campaign if they get a poor clickthrough rate, and the quality of traffic will be very poor, even if you phrase your advert very carefully.