Accurate Keywords are the most critical factors for the success of the advertising campaign. Wrong keywords selection can nullify your whole campaign performance & ROI. Keywords are the foundation of the Advertising Campaigns as they trigger ads. So, it is very important to choose keywords relevant to the business from the get go. It is very important to identify the right keywords which actually determine the criteria (of online customers) to evaluate the business, products, services or message. Today I am writing about some easy tricks & tips to find out the best keywords for your campaign. These are recommended by Google & personally tested on many campaigns. First try to construct a perceptual map of keyword that is important to the domain specific online traffic and then create a synergy between three parameters; online traffic, bid amount and competitors position for these keywords in a PPC campaign. I generally follow the Google Process of Keywords Creation & Selection that involves five-steps: expand, group, match, scrub, and test and refine. • Expand Your first step is to come up with as many relevant keywords as possible. In first step, create a list of all relevant keywords (as many as possible). This process requires a lot of brainstorming. Analyze your marketing objectives & try to find out some more relevant keywords like regional specific keywords if you area targeting any specific location etc. Competitors’ evaluation is again a very important part of this process. Also, go to the Keyword Tool (http://www.google.com/adwords/keywordtool) and try entering a few words to see what happens. Enter keywords relevant to your own business. You can even generate additional keyword ideas simply by entering the URL of any webpage that reflects your business. Don’t worry about capitalization – Google system is not case-sensitive. Sort the results so you can work with them. Also, keep check on the estimated traffic for all keywords to make sure the quality & traffic. Match Now it’s time to choose your keywords match type: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match. Broad match is the default setting for all keywords. This term means that all searches using that word (in any order or combination) will display your ad. For example, laser printer will show your ad for all searches with the words laser and printer. Phrase match narrows your reach by requiring the words to appear in that exact order. So “laser printer†(entered with quotation marks) shows your ad for searches with laser and printer in that order, as in HP laser printer. Your ad won’t appear, however, for searches with any words between laser and printer. Exact match further narrows your reach by showing your ad when the exact phrase is used in the search – without any other words before, between, or after. So [laser printer] (with brackets) shows your ad for searches with just the words laser printer, not other variations. Negative match eliminates searched phrases you don’t want your ad to appear on, such as cheap or free. To choose the negative match option, you enter the negative keywords with a minus sign, such as -free. This option prevents your ad from showing to people searching for free printer. • Scrub After creating, expanding, and targeting your keyword list, it’s time to refine (‘scrub’) it. Start by cutting all the keywords that aren’t relevant to your business from your list. Two- to three-word phrases are usually best. Remember to avoid generic keywords, which can result in less-relevant ads. • Group As we mentioned before, you should organize keywords into similar themes, products, or types so you can write ads targeted to each group. Remember to structure your account in a way that makes sense and is easy to track. • Test and Refine Search advertising is dynamic – advertisers are constantly revising their ad campaigns and searchers are constantly searching for different things. To keep up with this ever-changing environment, you should continue to test and refine your keywords. Build on keywords that work, and delete others that don’t. Track your results using your performance stats in your account (such as clickthrough rate and conversion tracking). We need to try different strategies to cope up with the dynamic nature of online advertising, competitors’ move & updates etc. We use to optimize the un-optimized keywords & add or delete the keywords as & when required as per performance stats.
Nicely written basics of ppc keyword selection, refining/optimizing and testing is crucial as pointed out, especially with the ad copies and landing pages.
how do i select keywords for writing meta tags. could you please explain the way you have explained for ppc? thanks.
The keyword meta tag has no bearing on ranking. Though I would put the selected keyword at least twice in the meta description