In this blog post I am going to highlight some key points regarding PPC keyword research, with the hope of passing on some golden nuggets of information which I have learned on my journey of internet marketing and building my online business.
PPC keyword research is probably the most critical keyword research that you can do as an Internet Marketer. Why is this I hear you ask? Well that’s because, unlike optimizing a web page to rank well on the natural search engine results, with PPC keyword research (Pay-Per-Click), you will be paying for the results that those keywords generate. If you get this wrong it could cost you an awful lot of your advertising budget for very little returns, so be careful.
Remember when you are looking for keywords to use in a PPC campaign like Google Adwords you will be paying for each and every click on your ads and so it is absolutely essential that you find the “right” keywords to use and so PPC keyword research becomes extremely important in relation to your overall profitability.
The “right” keywords, in this case, are those that are going to lead into a visitor performing whatever action it is that you want them to ultimately take, whether it’s purchasing a product that you are advertising, signing up for your opt-in newsletter or some other desired action. Selecting the “right” keywords can be tricky, as anyone who has done any amount of PPC advertising will attest to. Ultimately, the process breaks down into two distinct steps.
Step 1-
You need to assemble the largest list of relevant keywords that you can
Step 2-
You need to actually test them in your PPC campaign, tracking the results that you obtain on a daily basis.
After you have generated your initial keyword list using the PPC keyword research tool of your choice, your keywords will need to be grouped into smaller lists. When advertising in Adwords or any other PPC program, the key to remember is “relevance”. Showing an ad designed for “Adwords software” to someone who has clicked on the keyword phrase “Adwords eBook reviews” is probably not the best strategy. You need to do more than your initial PPC keyword research.
Instead, arrange your keywords into groups that have at least one word in common. In the previous example, it would make sense to have all keyword phrases relating to “Adwords eBooks” in a separate Ad Group from those relating to “Adwords software”. This enables you to then create separate ads more closely targeting whatever it is your viewer is searching for. This will result in a higher CTR for your campaign and should result in a higher sales conversion rate as well.
It is important to point out that to build a massive list of keywords can be a somewhat intimidating task. There are a number of ways to do it. You can use free tools like the Adwords keyword tool available at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal or the Overture keyword tool available at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. The problem with using the free tools is that your competition is probably using them as well. In order to get better results than them you need to go one step further than that and sign up for a paid tool.
The process becomes much easier and more effective when you decide to perform your PPC keyword research with a “paid” tool and the one that I have had the most luck with is called “Keywords Analyzer”. There are other which I have used and spoken about on my blog however, Keywords Analyzer has been available for over three years now, with updates being made on a regular basis by its developers, Chris Lee and Goran Nagy and it is these updates that has made it one of my tools of choice.
In addition to generating massive keyword lists, Keywords Analyzer can be setup to display the number of ads that are shown for each keyword in both Adwords and in the Yahoo PPC network. It also displays the number of competing ads on Adwords and Yahoo, the maximum bid prices and much more. Keywords Analyzer makes your PPC keyword research much easier and more effective.
So to conclude this little post I want to reiterate that PPC marketing is an art composed of many pieces besides PPC keyword research that are all woven together. All aspects of your Pay-Per-Click efforts need to be working together and one of the most critical ones is your PPC keyword research. Learning to do PPC keyword research more effectively will be reflected in an increase in your profitability. Can you afford not to develop this aspect of your skills?
To your success

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