Finding Keywords for Beginners
Aug 7, 2007 PPC Basics
An important first step in establishing successful pay-per-click advertising campaigns is picking the keywords that will drive traffic to your site. Easy, right? Not necessarily. In this post I’ll touch briefly on some good starting points for beginners when finding and bidding on keywords. We’ll review match types, search estimates, and other best practices when starting new PPC campaigns that translate well to Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN adCenter.Brainstorming Keywords
Most advertisers that are savvy enough to take it upon themselves to sign up for Google Adwords, for instance, should already have a vague idea of keywords they want to target based on prior experience in their industry. Brainstorming a list of popular terms that related to your business or products is your first step. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes when thinking about keywords and write them all down.
Finding Performance Keywords
Luckily, all the PPC programs will give you some idea of what to expect in terms of search volume for keywords. If you’ve never tried bidding on keywords before, stick to the higher performing keywords with the majority of impressions and expected clicks. More complicated or confused keywords may decrease your click quality because users are less informed about your industry. If you’re starting out, it’s probably best to aim for the easier conversions.
Match Types
Keyword match is an important concept to understand early in the game because you can potentially target searches that are further along in the conversion process. I say “potentially” because although Google, Yahoo, and MSN do their best to stick to the guidelines advertisers request with respect to keyword matches, much of the actual matching is done as a result of quality score (more on this in an upcoming post).
So what are the keyword match types? There are three: broad, phrase, and exact. Broad match keywords are generally entered into campaigns without any punctuation. So a list of broad match keywords may look something like this:
- toyota tercel
- tercel toyota
- used cars
- pimp my ride
Broad match keywords are useful if you have some idea of what keywords you want to target, but you’re not really sure how users input their search queries. Broad match keywords are easy to overlap, because the first line in my example is considered the same as the second line.
If you have a good idea of what people are going to be searching for, you may consider phrase match keywords. Phrase match keywords look for specific patterns in search queries and everything within quotation marks is matched according to sequence. Using our same list of examples:
- “toyota tercel”
- “tercel toyota”
- “used cars”
- “pimp my ride”
Now that our keywords are matched by phrase, the first line is distinct from the second line. Granted, you’re not likely to see any traffic on the second phrase, but if someone were to type “tercel toyota” into a search engine, you’ll benefit from a much lower CPC. This brings up a good point on the power of phrase match: targeting unusual combinations of keywords may be lucrative if users are consistently searching for terms out of order. Another important element of phrase match keywords is that any of the keyword phrases above will be matched to search queries that include keyword wildcards before, after, or both before and after. Therefore, the phrase match keyword “toyota tercel” would be a potential match to any of the following search queries:
- “toyota tercel” fuel economy
- 1991 “toyota tercel” prices
- i hate my crappy “toyota tercel”
So, you can see that although phrase matched keywords are more strict than broad match keywords, there are still a lot of search query permutations that exist. If you’re selling an inventory of used Toyota Tercels, the third phrase would probably not yield many clicks, which is why negative keywords are often used to narrow down prospective search queries (covered below).
The last and final type of keyword match is exact match. Exact match keywords are denoted by square brackets and are used only (theoretically) to match exactly what a prospect enters into their search query. For instance, the following is the same list of keywords we used before, but now use exact match type:
- [toyota tercel]
- [tercel toyota]
- [used cars]
- [pimp my ride]
The only search queries that should trigger your ads for exact match keywords are what you specify within the square brackets, and nothing else. So, whereas phrase match keywords included other permutations to your defined phrases, exact match excludes all else.
Negative Keyword Matches
Now that you have your list of broad, phrase, and exact match keywords, you really should narrow down the matches that will inevitably trigger your ad. For instance, if you looked at search queries matched to your phrase match keyword “toyota tercel” you might see your ads running for:
- used “toyota tercel” Toronto
- my “toyota tercel” sucks
- free “toyota tercel” to a good home
Two thirds of these previous search queries don’t relate well to converting online visitors. So, think of all the keywords people might use when searching in connection with “toyota tercel” and weed those out using the “-” minus sign. For instance, to narrow down your matches to likely customers in the market for a Tercel, you might include negative keywords such as:
- -sucks
- -free
- -rusted
- -horrible
- -brood of satan
This will effectively exclude the riff-raff and enable you to target your phrase and broad match keywords much more effectively. Exact match keywords don’t theoretically fall prey to these kinds of problems.
Targeting Long-tail Keywords
There is a lot of talk about long-tail keywords, especially in discussions related to search engine optimization, however they can also reap benefits when used in the context of pay-per-click. Whereas phrase match keywords with only two terms may fetch a hefty price tag, an exact match keyword with three or more common combinations can save you money. Consider the following phrase match keywords:
- “toyota tercel”
- “used cars”
Without having to check my keyword estimates, I have a sneaking suspicion that these keywords are going to be pretty popular. Granted, I doubt “toyota tercel” will be that popular in comparison to “used cars” but it will emphasize a point. These are very popular keywords because although they are phrase match, they are still pretty broad. Now consider the following exact match keywords:
- [used toyota tercel toronto]
- [used cars in toronto]
These are much more highly targeted, and are likely to be very successful in converting users that are looking for exactly what you are selling. Pair it with ad text that more or less coincides with the search terms, plus a call to action, and you’re sailing. You didn’t pay a high price for the click because the keyword is “long-tail” and since it is so scarce. Keep in mind that the example is a bit extreme for illustration purposes.
Relevance
I just touched upon this concept in the previous section, however, it is important enough to warrant repeating. Writing ad text that coincides with keywords just makes sense. For one, all search engines will BOLD those keywords in your ad that match a search query, and users click through on ads that they find relevant.
To summarize, keyword selection shouldn’t be hard if you understand match type and have a good understanding of your prospective customers. Brainstorming a list of keywords, however warped, can give you insight into your customer. Targeting common phrases and exact phrases is useful in lowering your CPC, and using negative keywords can eliminate poor click conversions. Writing ad text can be complicated, but having good keyword placement within ads often make them write themselves.
Until next time, test, measure, and test again.
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