When Google announced its search-based keyword tool we were there to let you know. Of course, we liked it then and like it now. But it’s just gotten better.

It isn’t better, per say, as much as it is more available. Or available in more place. Such as:

• Australia
• Canada
• China
• Japan
• New Zealand

In addition to being available in more places, Google has added two new features (which makes it a better tool, I guess). You can now get language and country specific results and filter your searches by ad share and by search share.

I highly recommend the search-based keyword tool for advanced searches, especially for pay per click usage.

Here’s a little gem from perhaps the best blog post I’ve seen from the MSN Live blogging team:

It’s an odd entrenchment since PPC and SEO are different ends of a single continuum—keyword marketing. Both serve a common purpose but they serve it in different ways.

This isn’t just hitting the nail on the head. It’s popping it into place with one whack.

The most important thing any company can learn from pay per click advertising is that it falls into a broader category that also includes search engine optimization (SEO). The category is search engine marketing (SEM). The whole point is to use keywords effectively to attract new business by driving those keywords to the proper place in the SERPs. Call it keyword marketing if you must.

Keyword marketing boils down to just one thing: Effective use of the right keywords. Two keys there - “effective use” and the “right keywords”. Effective use really means using SEO and pay per click advertising together in a targeted campaign to reach the right audience through the search engines. The right keywords are the ones that are most profitable. How do you find those? Through research and testing. And when you do it right you’ll know it.

Did you know you can use pay per click advertising to test your keywords? Not only can you, but you should. It’s a great way to determine if those keywords are profitable.

You know how to find the popular keywords. Perform a search and see how many results pop up. You have even heard something about a KEI - keyword effectiveness index. The KEI of a keyword is a way of determining which keywords are right for your website based on popularity and competitiveness. The problem is, it doesn’t measure how profitable those keywords may be for your website. While it may be a good place to start to find suitable keywords, I wouldn’t end there.

A good pay per click campaign around the best keywords for your niche can tell you which keywords might be most profitable for you. If you get a lot of click-throughs for a certain keyword, that should tell that you can attract traffic for that keyword. The conversions are up to your landing page. Once you find your most profitable keywords, plug them into your ads and landing pages and watch the dollars roll.

When it comes to managing your pay per click campaigns there is perhaps nothing as important as negative keywords. You can wing it and try to find the right negative keywords by trial and error or you can be proactive and let your tools do the work for you. But you’ll need to ensure that your negative keywords are the proper keywords for your campaign and that they make sense for your campaign.

Negative keywords can save you a lot of money, especially if you use them judiciously. Perform a keyword search for your most valuable keywords and see what related keywords are returned as suggestions by your keyword research tool. Scroll through and see what keywords are not related to your niche. For instance, if you are running a campaign for “red hat linux” and you search for that phrase you’ll likely get some related keyword suggestions for other red hats like derbies and pillboxes. Since you are selling software, not fashion trends you’ll want to include those in your negative keywords list.

Sometimes, however, you’ll find yourself getting found for keywords that make sense. For instance, by checking your analytics package you find that you’ve had a handful of searchers come to your site after searching for “red queen mad hatter”. You know that has nothing to do with Linux so go ahead and add it to your negative keywords list. That’s one more use that your analytics package has for you and it’s a huge benefit.

Two days ago we shared a tip from MSN adCenter about how you can expand your keyword list using an Excel add-on. A few days ago the Google Analytics blog posted about the same topic and shared some tools that you can use to expand your keyword list.

Today I’d like to hone in one tool and talk about how you can use that tool to be more effective in your pay per click advertising campaigns. The tool is Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool.

The information this tool provides is incredible. When you use the tool it returns the following information on the keywords that it shows you:

• The keyword phrase
• Monthly search numbers
• The level of competition
• Suggest PPC bid

That’s it. Streamlined information.

Furthermore, the tool only returns a limited number of keywords related to the one you searched for. That’s because the tool relies upon actual search data and provides information for the highest sought-after keywords. That makes it one valuable tool. And it’s free.

You can also use the search-based keyword tool to scan your landing page and return relevant keywords for your landing page. Here’s what you do to get a real good feel for your landing page’s optimization success:

• At the top, where it says “Website”, input your landing page’s exact URL. You want to analyze just one page at a time.
• Type in one word or phrase in the next box.
• Click on “More filters”
• If you have an account that is active right now then leave the Partial matches box checked
  Choose your level of competition
• Click “Find keywords”

What you should see is a list of your most valuable keyword search phrases for that landing page. It’s a powerful tool and can help you better optimize your landing pages and find the right keywords to target for your pay per click advertising campaign.

Pay per click optimization isn’t really all that hard. There are several methods you can use to help you better optimize your campaigns. I would not recommend using search assist as your primary optimization method, but I would recommend it as an adjunct to your primary and secondary optimization methods. I would use it at the ad group level rather than the campaign level, but here are a few tips to help you use any of the search engines’ search assist tool to better optimize your pay per click ads.

• Find Additional Search Terms - If you’re not sure you have a complete list of keywords and you want to see what potential keywords searchers may use to find your site then search assist could help you. Each of the search engines will show you a list of search terms as you type your term into the search box. Take a look at those suggested search terms to see if any of them would apply to what you are offering in your PPC ads. If so, add it to your list.
• Narrow Your Match Types - Type in a broad match or phrase match type for your PPC ad group and see what suggestions search assist offers. Are any of the terms relevant and more specific? Add it as a keyword phrase one match type level lower than the search term you used to find it in search assist.
• Find Negative Keywords - You can also find negative keywords for your ad groups. When you type your search phrase into the search box check to see what other search terms are being suggested. Any that don’t apply should be added to your negative keyword list. Chances are other searchers will use those search terms and you don’t want your ads showing up for irrelevant search queries.

What other ways do you use search assist for optimizing your pay per click ad groups?

If you’ve been running your pay per click advertising campaigns solely on Google’s external keyword research tool then it’s time to stop. That’s a good tool for conducting initial research and for narrowing down your list (or expanding it to pick the best targeted keywords). But when you are ready to hone your PPC campaigns to a level of maximum tightness and increase your CTR (as well as your overall quality) then you need Google’s Advanced Keyword Research Tool.

Google’s advanced keyword research tool is perfect for pay per click campaign optimization. When you’ve narrowed down your list of most profitable keywords to the very best, enter your best-looking keyword into the keyword box of the advanced tool. But only enter one keyword. Then click “Find Keywords”. The advanced keyword research tool will return a list of keywords based on actual searches.

What the tool will tell you is the level of competition for each suggested keyword and the minimum big you need to make to ensure your ads are approved. Keep in mind that the suggested bids are just that - suggestions. Quality factors may require a higher bid, but the suggestion is pretty good.

If you have your landing page set then you can enter the URL of the landing page and Google will analyze it to help you discover the best keywords. Bear in mind, however, that this works best if your landing page is a standalone website; otherwise, the tool will analyze your entire site and not just one page on the site. But entering a keyword into the box without the URL is a great way to uncover your most profitable keywords and the ones with the lowest level of competition.

Close Loop Marketing has announced four pay per click tools for beta testing and they look pretty cool. A quick survey of the tools:

• Keyword Wrapper - Enter your list of keywords and choose broad, phrase, or exact match and let the keyword wrapper add the quotations and brackets for you. All you need to do is copy/paste your keyword list into your pay per click campaign box at Google, Yahoo, MSN, or PPC provider and you’re all set. No longer will you have to spend an hour going through your entire list to add the quotation marks and brackets. Nice tool.
• Keyword Cleaner - Work a lot of clients? Have long lists of keywords? Enter your list with bids and other extraneous information then click Generate Results and the keyword cleaner will strip away everything you don’t need, leaving you with just your keyword list. Clean and easy.
• Keyword Geotargeting - Want to make sure you’re hitting every market you can? This is a very helpful tool if you target large areas with a lot of zip codes, neighborhoods, suburbs, etc. You enter your list of geotargeted keywords the Keyword Geotargeting and Wrapper Tool spits out your bona fide list of geotargeted keywords. Super nice.
• Keyword Permutations - The Keyword Permutations and Wrapper Tool will take your list of keywords and analyze it to see if you’ve covered all the bases. Did you get every possible misspelling? Are there any variations of keywords and phrases that you left out? This tool will catch them for you.

Nice tools. And they look like a lot of fun too.

Kontera Blog posted its most clicked keywords this morning. Evidently, Oscar de La Hoya is more clickable than Jennifer Aniston. Well, I’d click her.

Bad jokes aside, though, one thing every pay per click manager needs to be aware of is that you can capitalize on celebrity names in many non-related pay per click advertising campaigns (if you do it right). Let’s say you sell suntan lotion. Why not write a description like, “What Suntan Lotion Does Jennifer Aniston Use?” Then add “Click here” for the answer.

Is it cheap? Yes. Dirty? Maybe.

This is called getting creative. You are using a well-known name brand to draw attention to your own. But understand that this won’t work for everything. You can’t say “Jennifer Aniston wears snow boots” unless you know for a fact that she wears snow boots. Suntan lotion works because suntan lotion and Jennifer Aniston both represent beauty in the eyes of a certain market segment. Therefore, this technique can succeed.

Keep in mind that keywords are tools and weapons. How you use them determine whether or not you get the click. And if you’re going to be cheap and dirty the least you can do is make sure your Jennifer Aniston is clickable.

If you’re a pay per click toolaholic then you are probably on the prowl for new tools every day of the year. But the most essential PPC tool in any advertiser’s arsenal is free. It’s the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

This most essential pay per click advertising tool is valuable whether you use Google AdWords or not. Not only can you research keywords for your advertising campaign, but the tool will tell you which month of the year a certain key phrase received the most Google searches, provide a yearly trend so you can see high and low months for search volume, tell you the average search volume for the past month and the average search volume overall, and also tell you what your expected ad position and average CPC would be if you were to bid on that keyword. And it will also tell you the level of competition for any given keyword. All of that is invaluable information.

You do not necessarily need to bid on the exact keyword phrase. A long-tail keyword phrase might actually be more targeted and cost you less to bid on. Wouldn’t you like to know that? The Google AdWords Keyword Tool will help you identify those keywords.

When you have run out of ideas for keywords to target in your next pay per click advertising campaign, try using Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool. This tool will analyze your website to find new keywords that you are not targeting. You type in the specific web page that you want to analyze then add your most important keywords and the keyword tool does the rest. It will return a list of keywords, albeit a small list, though it will inform you of keywords that you may not have thought of. On the other hand, every keyword could be one you’ve already got in your pay per click campaign.

What this tool is designed to help you do is find those missed opportunities that you can capitalize on. The best use of the search-based keyword tool that I’ve found is to type in the URL of your landing page and the five most important keywords for that page. If you find one or two more keywords on your returned list that are not a part of your campaign, add them to your keyword group and see what happens.

When it comes to pay per click advertising, you should optimize your campaign and each ad around a keyword or key phrase. But which is better?

In a sense, both a keyword and a key phrase can be beneficial depending on a few factors. I think you should be able to use both effectively if you want to succeed at PPC. But when should you use a key phrase as opposed to a keyword?

There’s no easy answer to that question. I think perhaps the best approach is to write two ads, one targeting a keyword and the other targeting a key phrase, and test them against each other. But if that isn’t feasible for your situation then try to determine which of the two has the best ROI potential. You do need to make sure of two things if you use a key phrase:

1. It isn’t too long
2. And people actually search for that exact phrase

There is no sense targeting a key phrase is no one uses that phrase as a search term. If you have a significant number of people who use a particular phrase as a search term and it isn’t too long to be used in your PPC ad description then it should be a good fit for your PPC campaign.

Before you write your ad content or even set up your pay per click campaign you need to first build your landing page. Make sure that you optimize your landing page completely and effectively. The success of any PPC campaigns you run for your landing page depends on how well optimized that landing page is. Your quality score is directly related to your optimization success and the higher your quality score the lower your bids for your keywords will be.

One strategy that I’ve found effective in choosing keywords for landing pages is to make sure the keywords I want to rank for appear at least four times. My primary keyword will appear the most and the secondary keyword right after that. But three or four other related keywords can appear on the page 4 times. I’ll take each of those keywords and put them into the keywords meta tag field with no other additions. Those are the keywords that I use to build my pay per click campaign around.

MSN adCenter has a cool tool for helping advertisers extract the right keywords for their ad campaigns. Using such a tool can be helpful, but if you do it the way I just described then you should never go wrong in your pay per click campaign optimization efforts.

When it comes to pay per click advertising you have to find the right converting keywords. You can have an excellent landing page but sometimes the keyword choice makes all the difference. The difference is in the targeted audience.

For instance, in the “make money online” niche, you’ll find that many people are targeting this niche but not making any money. The reason is because they are targeting the wrong audience. You have to target the right audience and you do that partially with your keyword choices. One marketer in this niche says that most people in the “make money online” niche are actually targeting experienced marketers when the people looking for information on that keyword are new internet marketers or people interested in the topic. More experienced marketers will use the keyword “internet marketing”.

That’s just one example of where the keyword can make a difference. It is likely that you can find similar examples in your niche. Be sure you do the right amount of keyword research before you start spending money.

Pay per click marketing has gone through so many changes and innovations since it’s early days of existence and many online marketing companies are always trying to develop a new streamline process of how to be competitive in the field of pay per click marketing. SpyFu will be able to help you gain a competitive advantage and really allow you to maximize your advertising spend by allowing you to research through a great deal of statistical information regarding your competitions every move along with who is targeting certain keywords for pay per click.

SpyFu can really be used many different ways to help you have a very strong competitive edge with your pay per click marketing campaign. If you want to find certain keywords your competitors are bidding on SpyFu can help you. You can use SpyFu to find competitors bids and keywords so you can map out your plan of attack similar to your competition. SpyFu can help you narrow down your search for niches with high clicks and relatively low competitors. This website can be used as a very important research tool to grow your business. Online marketers are always looking for new and efficient ways to conduct research and SpyFu is a source that doesn’t get much easier. SpyFu shaves away wasted time doing brutal number crunching work by doing it for you. By landing on a website and typing in a keyword you can see who is bidding on that keyword or keyword phrases along with cost and click figures like average daily clicks and quantity of advertisers targeting that keyword phrase. You can quickly find out if this is a keyword you want to target or simply move on and find one less bid on. SpyFu can also be used for keeping an eye on changing and evolving trends for certain keywords, niches and industries giving you a real competitive advantage over many others not participating in this type of information. SpyFu allows you to spy on your competitors easily and safely by downloading competitor’s keywords and adwords.

President and founder of SpyFu, Michael J. Roberts, has always been a number cruncher. He has spent many great years building and learning the fundamentals for the launch of this company and SpyFu continues to impress us all. SpyFu really takes the time to listen to their clients and that is why in June of 2008 SpyFu made the trek over to the UK and launched their services overseas. SpyFu has become the an industry leader in website analytic information. For all of those venturing into the world of online marketing SpyFu will help you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Visit the SpyFu website for more product information.