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Google AdWords
Target Local Markets
By Esoos Bobnar
www.searchenginehelp.com
Originally Published: January 2005
Continued From:
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7. Target Local Markets.
If you're selling to a local market, it helps to be familiar with local idioms and unofficial place names. For example,
Philly
vs.
Philadelphia,
Big Apple
vs.
New York, or
Big Island
vs.
Hawaii
(and did you know that people living on Michigan's Upper Peninsula refer to themselves as
Yoopers?).
But don't leave out official place names. If you sell mobile homes in San Diego, make sure you bid on
california mobile home
and
san diego mobile home, in addition to
socal mobile home. You'll also probably want to pull in traffic from surrounding cities and counties, so you could add
mission beach mobile homes, la jolla mobile homes, etc... Break out a map and add those relevant place names to your keyword list.
8. Go Negative.
As you come up with new keywords, be sure to plug them into the keyword tools we mentioned so that you can see what common searches are related to that keyword. Not only will this give you plenty of other ideas for keywords, but it will also show you what words commonly accompany your keywords in searches but have nothing to do with your business. Such terms, by the way, are called
negative
keywords -
and you should use them to filter out unrelated terms or terms which could dilute your targeting.
Depending on your type of business, good negative keywords could include
free, used, or refurbished. You might also want to filter out words commonly associated with illegal online activity, such as
cracks, warez, or
mp3, as well as words used in searches for adult sites (adult, hardcore, xxx). It's entirely possible that you and a competitor could be bidding on the exact same keyword with
your
ad being profitable and your CTR above 0.5%, while
their
ad is losing money and being disabled by Google for low CTR. The difference being attributed to your using a larger negative keyword list which is filtering out the untargeted traffic.
For example, if you're bidding on the term
mobile home, your ad could show up for the search
t mobile home phone. In this case you'd want to add the terms
t
and
phone
to your negative keyword list.
Whenever you're brainstorming new keywords, you should also be on the lookout for negative keywords that might dilute those new keywords. When you're monitoring your logs to see what searches people are using to find your site, also look for terms in those searches that are totally unrelated to your page and add them to your negative keyword list. Or when you're checking out what competitors come up for your chosen keywords, see what other sites show up that have nothing to do with your site. Those sites can also be a good source of negative keywords, since you wouldn't want to pay for clicks form people who are actually searching for something you don't offer.
As you work on growing and refining your keyword list based on what keywords are generating profits, you'll find that many of your keywords will simply not perform, and will be disabled by Google for insufficient CTR. Sometimes, this low performance is not due to a bad keyword as much as it's due to poor ad copy or irrelevant impressions brought on by a negative keyword you didn't think to filter.
If you think that these keywords still have potential, you can re-enable them by first deleting them from their current ad group and then adding them to a different ad group. Make sure that you've done your best to identify and fix what made that keyword fail initially, though, so the keyword doesn't get disabled again.
Continued:
Choosing Your Match Type >>>
Continued From:
<<< Convert Casual Surfers Into Customers
Editor's Note:
See also:
Successful Advertising with Google AdWords
eBook
Copyright 2005 by Planet Ocean, reprinted with permission.
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