|
|
This site is for sale,
Learn More
Google AdWords
Cover All Your Keyword Variations
By Esoos Bobnar
www.searchenginehelp.com
Originally Published: January 2005
Continued From:
<<< Choosing Your Keywords
2. Check Out the Competition.
Once you've acquired a small list (shoot for about 25 keywords and phrases), run some searches on those potential keywords to learn what terms your competitors are actually bidding on. This can give you an idea of what keywords are getting traffic and conversions. You could also view the source of your competitors' homepages to determine what keywords they're optimizing for in their keywords meta tag. If they're optimizing their pages for those keywords, you can probably assume that they're bidding on them as well. However, don't slavishly follow the example of your competitors. Many of them actually have very little idea of how to run an effective AdWords campaign. For all you know, they could even be losing money on the ads they're running.
One way to tell which of your competitors is waging a successful campaign is to monitor whose ads are showing up for your chosen keywords over a period of a month. Those ads that are relatively stable and show up consistently are probably making a profit. They're the ones you should emulate. But, again, don't get too caught up in what your competition is doing. Ideally, you're looking to find high traffic keywords that your competitors are not bidding on.
Another way to utilize your competition, though controversial, is to bid on your competitor's product names, company names, or even key executive names if they're high profile enough. Bear in mind, however, that while this practice is currently allowed by Google, it could generate some unflattering publicity for your company and may even elicit some threatening letters from your competitor's lawyers. Be sure to weigh the pros and cons before moving forward. Not surprisingly, this practice is fairly widespread and, in most cases, doesn't appear to be problematic. For instance, McAffee and TrendMicro are both currently bidding on the term
Norton. As to legalities? ...we can't legally advise you. To be safe you should always check with your attorney.
3. Cover All Your Keyword Variations.
Next, look for variations on keywords you think might be successful. This includes synonyms, plurals, misspellings, or keywords separated-by-hyphens. Most customers usually search for a product or service using a single phrase. This means that your first priority should be to cover every possible variation of that phrase. For example, if your site sells cell phones, your initial list should consist of phrases like:
|
cell phone
cellphone
cell-phone
cell phones
cellphones
|
cell-phones
mobile phone
cell
phone
cellular
|
cellular phone
cellular phones
wireless
wireless phone
wireless phones
|
...and so forth.
Again, the keyword tools mentioned previously can greatly assist with this process. Once you have covered all the variations on what you expect to be your most important terms, begin adding descriptive terms, or terms that describe a problem, to augment your existing terms. For instance,
cheap,
low cost,
affordable, or
inexpensive
can go with most consumer products. However, avoid superlatives, such as
best
or
cheapest, since they aren't usually allowed by Google's ad review team. To the list of cell phone terms above, you could also add such terms as:
|
cheap cellphone
cheap cell phone
cheap cell-phone
|
affordable cellphone
affordable cell phone
affordable cell-phone
|
...and so on.
(note: if you use these, your cell phones should actually be affordable to avoid being rejected by Google's ad review team)
(
Editor's Note:
Use our Free Word Combination Tool to combine words in different combinations.
)
Sometimes, using reverse descriptive words, or words that describe the opposite of what your product does, can work to your advantage. For example, if you're selling fast Internet connections,
slow internet connection
is at least as good a term to bid on as
fast internet connection, since a person typing the query "slow internet connection" has a problem that they're actively searching to find a solution to.
(You might wonder why we added an extremely broad term like cell to our keyword list above, even though it's likely to bring on tons of untargeted traffic, such as searches for
cell biology
or
solar cell. The reason is that you can still bid effectively on this keyword as long as you have an extensive list of negative keywords to filter out unrelated queries. We'll cover negative keywords in greater detail later.)
Continued:
Convert Casual Surfers Into Customers >>>
Continued From:
<<< Choosing Your Keywords
Editor's Note:
See also:
Successful Advertising with Google AdWords
eBook
Copyright 2005 by Planet Ocean, reprinted with permission.
Site Promotion Articles Indexes:
|
Writing Optimized
Google AdWords
|
