Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 29 of April , 2008 at 6:56 am
Let’s face it, some keywords just aren’t popular enough to have a year-round PPC campaign behind them. You know you’ve seen them. They’re popular at Christmastime, but you get no use from them for the rest of the year. Or maybe you see surges in popularity in the summer, but drops in other times of year. Maybe the keyword popularity goes up or down throughout the year based on holiday schedules or other influences within your industry. How do you capitalize on that?
Good question. The first step, of course, is to know and understand what causes those spikes, dips, and surges. You should also be tuned in to when they occur. It isn’t enough to know that baseball gloves are more popular just before little league season begins. You need to know when (generally) the interest in them starts. By knowing this information, you can time your ads to hit when people will start looking for what you have to offer.
Don’t start your advertising campaign when interest spikes. That’s too late. Kick it off a couple of weeks before that. You want to be the first to have your advertising in place so that you can capitalize early on when shoppers first begin to go looking for a product. Then, when the competition enters the field, you’ll already have a leg up. That will count for more than just sales. It will also make a difference with optimization and quality score.
You also don’t want to leave out keyword research. Don’t shortcut it just because it is a short-term campaign. Run it just as you would any other campaign. Start at the beginning, do your keyword research, and bid according to the value of the keywords. You can also use match types for your short-term campaigns. Run it like you would any other advertising campaign.
But you don’t have to use the spikes and surges for short term advertising campaigns. They are also useful in your long-term campaigns. The ones you run year-round. Those keywords that are a part of your campaign can have bid adjustments based on the season. You might even run a long-term and a short-term campaign simultaneously based on the seasons and times of year.
One more way to use this information is in your choice of negative keywords. Use those spikes to determine when to make a keyword a negative keyword and when to focus in on it through your bidding strategy or match type focus. The bottom line is to increase your revenues. You can do that by increasing your sales or by lowering your bids on keywords that don’t quite make the cut - even if it’s on a seasonal basis.
Category: Keyword Match Types, PPC Keyword Research, PPC Management, PPC Opportunities
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 1 of March , 2008 at 3:08 pm
Do you do all of your keyword research with a keyword research tool or do you do any “manual picking?” Let me tell you why you should do both.
The advantage to using a keyword research tool is that the process is automated. It’s a lot quicker to use a tool or a service, but the disadvantage is the most keyword research tools are not exhaustive. While most tools can help you narrow down your list of keywords through extensive Web crawling and finding synonymous terms you haven’t thought of, most of them will overlook other terms that you could use that are likely appropriate for your business and could be very profitable.
That’s why I like to also suggest that you do some manual keyword research on your own. It’s not hard. There are several methods for doing this manual keyword research.
- Study the competition
- Perform keyword searches
- Take a poll
There are other ways, of course, but I’ll focus on these three for right now.
You likely know who your competitors are. Visit their websites. Go to each page on your competitors’ websites and view source. Look at their keyword meta tags. But don’t just stop there. Use a competition spy software like Secret Page Spy to find out what keywords they have on each page of their website. This is an invaluable tool.
Another way to do manual keyword search is to make a few keyword searches at each of the search engines for terms that you deem important to your business. Try to pick keywords that were not found by your keyword research tools. See how many websites pop up as available for your search term. Click on a few of the listings to see what comes up. Is it a competitor? If so, revert back to method No. 1 above.
You want to search for keywords that you think people would use to find your website. This method works real well for niche topics that are not necessarily very popular. If it is an obscure topic that only a few people might be interested in then you’ll have to think like the target customer you are going for. If you don’t find the right keywords for your niche it could be because you are choosing bad keywords, but it could also be because no one else is filling that niche. If that second one, you could carve out a particular niche for yourself and be an early leader in that niche area.
Thirdly, if you an e-mail list or a website that you can place a poll on, then design an online poll asking specific targeted questions of your niche audience and ask them what they’d like to see. You can get valuable information from people who fit your target audience. All you have to do is ask.
Category: PPC Keyword Research
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 2 of February , 2008 at 10:18 am
Do you have an affiliate program you’d like to promote through pay per click? There are two really powerful ways you can drive traffic to your affiliate promotions page with pay per click. Here they are in a nutshell:
Affiliate Landing Page - You have a landing page dedicated just to that one affiliate program, right? You should and you should optimize that landing page around one single product or idea. Don’t optimize it around the company name. Most people aren’t search for a company. They’re searching for a product. So optimize your landing page around keywords related to that product. Write your pay per click ad around the same keyword concept and drive traffic to that landing page.
Company’s Product Page - You don’t need a website for this technique, but you do need your affiliate code. Instead of sending traffic to your own website, drive traffic to the website of the company itself. If they company has a good web page that will close sells, find out what keywords it is optimized for. You can do this through services like Secret Page Spy and other research tools that will analyze web pages. Once you get the list of keywords, write your pay per click ad and in the destination URL you’ll put the company’s landing page URL there for the product you are trying to promote, PLUS you’ll add your affiliate code so that you can get credit when someone clicks on it. In the display URL, just put the company’s home page. Whenever someone clicks your pay per click ad and buys the product, you’ll get a commission.
Category: Landing Page, PPC Keyword Research, PPC Management
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 27 of January , 2008 at 2:44 pm
There is a big push, of course, to run hard core SEOs out of Dodge. We mess things up for the rest of the Web by focusing on keywords, links, and such. But if it weren’t for keywords then a lot of people wouldn’t be making any money online. AdSense entrepreneurs is one group I can think of right off the bat.
AdSense, of course, is the publisher side of online pay per click advertising. Publishers create content and slap AdSense on the pages where that content is displayed. The ads match the keywords that make up that content page and some of those people are making a ton of money.
Pay per click advertisers write their ads around certain keywords so that they can ensure a proper targeted campaign. But what if natural language wins out and keyword-rich content goes by the wayside? How will pay per click advertising be conducted then?
It is likely that such advertising would still utilize some kind of tagging system that relies upon advertisers and publishers agreeing on broad definitions of tags. While keywords may not be important any more, the ideas behind those keywords will be. They are now. They’ll be more so after keywords are gone. That is what the discussion behind natural language, or semantic search, is all about.
To be honest with you, I’m not sure how feasible that is right now. I’m positive that, at some point in the future, it will happen. But when is anybody’s guess. Until then, pay per click advertisers are stuck with doing keyword research. Since keywords are still important, you might as well make the effort to get the best keywords for you campaigns.
Category: PPC Keyword Research, PPC Management
Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 25 of January , 2008 at 9:20 am
Keyword research is one of the first things you should do before you start a PPC campaign. It’s also one of the places where you can go wrong if you aren’t careful. Many new PPC advertisers make their first mistake while conducting keyword research. Quite frankly, it’s easy enough to do and even some expert Internet marketers make keyword research mistakes too.
When it comes to researching your keywords, don’t settle for the general keywords related to your niche. That’s where most newbies go wrong. The general keywords are usually the least profitable. Your most profitable keywords will be what they call “long tail keywords.” Those are the keywords that are not as high in demand but that can drive traffic to your website and help you close the sale. Search those keywords out. It’s worth the extra time it takes to find the right keywords for your campaign.
Another mistake new PPC advertisers make related to keyword management is using the broad match. Just because you’ve found the perfect long tail keyword doesn’t mean you should focus on that word in the broadest sense. Use the match types and single out the specific keyword. If your keyword research leads you to a long tail keyword phrase that is two or three words long then put those words in brackets or quotes. Otherwise, the PPC search engine will seize upon each individual word separately. But you want to target the phrase so be sure that you use the proper match type and target your keywords specifically.
Category: Keyword Match Types, PPC Keyword Research
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 16 of January , 2008 at 3:47 pm
Whether you run your PPC campaigns on Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or MSN adCenter, you’ll need to conduct an effective keyword research study.
Without the proper keyword research, you can’t hope for success with PPC. Your ads will need to be optimized if you want them to reach your target market. The way the search engines decide when and where to place your ads depends a great deal on the keywords that you use within your ads. If you wan those ads placed where they’ll be the most effective then you’ll have to start with the end in mind. That means conducting effective keyword research.
I recommend targeting long tail keywords. Those are the keywords that could be profitable for you, but maybe not for your big business competition. The companies with big ad budgets usually go for the most generic key terms. Those will cost you some money to be competitive. But if you your keyword research right then you’ll uncover small gems that are not real popular, but are popular enough that you can turn them into a profit. The key is get a decent return on the amount of money you spend on the advertising. It all starts with making the most of your research.
Category: PPC Keyword Research
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 8 of January , 2008 at 3:23 pm
In a section of a blog post about BusinessWeek columnist Gene Marks’ absurd assertions that small businesses don’t need Internet marketing, Caroline Melberg had this to say:
I’m not an expert on AdWords, but I do know people who have used Google AdWords and other pay per click models to turn a profit. You don’t need thousands of dollars. You can make money on a $200 per month budget. Many have. You just have to learn how it’s done. You didn’t know how to run a business either until you tried. Right, Gene?
She’s right. Gene Marks is wrong:
John’s a pretty smart guy. He runs a company that sells specialty pet foods. He manages his own investments. He keeps an eye on his taxes. But I’ve found a way to turn John into a blithering idiot. I’ve asked him to figure out how to use Google’s (GOOG) AdSense profitably.
It’s really not hard. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out any of the pay per click models successfully. And, Gene, it’s Google AdWords, not AdSense. AdWords is the pay per click advertising vehicle for businesses who want to advertise and bid on clicks per keyword. AdSense is for publishers who want to place ads on their website. Two different things.
That aside, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make you an idiot. Like anything else, you have to take the time to learn it. If you can’t, or don’t want to, there are people who will manage your pay per click campaigns for a modest fee. Believe me, it’s worth it. Thousands of small business owners have managed it successfully.
The key is in ROI. You don’t need a big budget to run a pay per click campaign. You just need to do your research - your keyword research, and don’t bid yourself above your means to pay. You can control your budget. AdWords, and their competition, makes that easy.
Is pay per click advertising for everyone? No. But you don’t have to be intimidated by it if you run a small business. There are ways to make it work for you.
Category: Google Adwords, PPC Bidding Strategies, PPC Keyword Research
Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 28 of December , 2007 at 6:40 pm
Some pay per click advertisers go crazy on keywords. By that I mean they select a list of keywords loosely related to their ad and make sure all of those keywords are used in their optimization efforts. It’s like a “wish list” of words you hope searchers will find your ad by. But that isn’t the best approach.
You’ll do better, especially if you are new to pay per click, to pick just a handful of keywords that are directly related to the content in your ads and use only those keywords. Make all other keywords inactive. For instance, if you are selling blue widgets and your pay per click ad states that you have blue widgets made in China then you likely want to keep your keyword list small and related only to blue widgets. Useful keywords might include:
- widgets
- blue widgets
- widgets made China
- widgets in China
That’s your starting list. Next, take your list and make the keywords more specific by narrowing the match types, like this:
- [blue widgets]
- [widgets made China]
- [widgets in China]
You might also throw in a few, only a few, variations, such as:
- Chinese widgets
- Chinese blue widgets
- [Chinese widgets]
- [Chinese blue widgets]
Don’t get carried away with this. The idea is to keep your keyword list small and to use only keywords that are related directly to the words in your pay per click ad. You can expand on this list later.
Category: Keyword Match Types, PPC Keyword Research, PPC Launch
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 22 of December , 2007 at 4:13 pm
Finally, overture is dead. No one should be surprised.
Overture used to be one of the best tools for keyword research. In direct competition with WordTracker, you could get valuable information from Overture for free. Of course, WordTracker charged a fee. For that fee you could get a little bit more valuable information than you could from Overture, but not much. Until WordTracker started improving its service and left Overture behind.
In 2003, Yahoo! purchased Overture. Shortly after that, they began offering Yahoo! Search Marketing. For a while after that Overture was still fairly useful.
The real death knell for Overture came when the information on keywords it provided started being up to six months old. That’s when it really started to decline because search marketers need the most up to date information. If you are trying to write blog posts or monetize a website around specific keyword phrases that are popular then you need that information to be current. Six-month-old information is just too old. When Overture’s information started falling that far behind, savvy entrepreneurs began developing other search and research tools to compete with WordTracker. Some of them got to be quite popular.
In September, SERoundtable posted that Overture seemed dead. For the better part of this year, Overture has been off line. If you tried to click on its web address from any search or go to the URL (inventory.overture.com) where you’d typically find the keyword suggestion tool, you’d get an error page, or a message saying the website is temporarily unavailable. In fact, type in that URL now and that’s exactly what you’ll see.
Search marketers keep hoping Overture will come back, bigger and better than before. But I’m not holding my breath. I really think Overture is dead. Who’s going to trust them now?
Category: PPC Keyword Research, Search Marketing, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 5 of December , 2007 at 8:36 pm
Good keyword research is still the centerpiece for a successful pay per click campaign. It isn’t enough, however, to simply find the best keywords for your campaign, though that is a good start. What many advertisers fail to do properly is to make adjustments for seasonal highs and lows.
Seasonal highs and lows can obscure your keyword value judgments. It’s not hard to do. For instance, in retail you likely do much more business between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas than you do the rest of the year. If a particular keyword is popular during that time, but is not popular during the rest of the year then you are doing yourself a disservice by focusing on that keyword in June. Maybe you do want to focus on it at Christmastime, but that’s just one month out of the year.
By contrast, maybe your business is slower at Christmas and busier during the summer months. If certain keywords hold more value during the summer months than they do during the winter months then it behoove you to focus on those keywords during the summer but drop the ads for those keywords when demand is not as high. A successful campaign depends on detailed keyword research.
Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.
Category: PPC Keyword Research, PPC Management
Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 18 of October , 2007 at 1:31 pm
Keyword research is as essential for PPC advertising as it is for building web pages. How you go about it can make or break your pay per click campaigns. That’s why I like to use Google AdWords.
This screenshot shows a list of keywords related to “Recover Lost Documents.” It also shows the useful information you can see when you use Google AdWords as your keyword research tool. As you can see, Google AdWords will show you the search volume for the previous month for any particular keyword, the average search volume, and advertiser competition. There’s no use debating which of these is the most valuable piece of information. You should use last month’s search volume and the advertiser competition data to determine what are your most valuable keywords.
Keyword Competition Vs. Search Volume
A high degree of competition and a low search volume means the keyword is oversaturated by competition. Not many searchers are looking for information on that topic while too many advertisers are competing for it. An example of this is, “data recovery software download.” I wouldn’t discard that altogether as a keyword, but I’d move it to the bottom of the list.A high value keyword, on the other hand, is one where the search volume - and you can use last month’s data or the average, whichever you prefer (a little more about this is a moment) - is high and the advertiser competition is low, as in the case of “flash data recovery.” Notice that the advertiser competition is high, but it’s not maxed out as is the case with “data recovery software download.” The search volume for last month is high relative to other keywords on the list even though it isn’t the most searched for term on the list. It is, however, a highly sought after keyword by searchers as well as advertisers, but the advertiser competition is not as stiff as it is for the most searched keywords. The lower competition number makes it a more desirable keyword.
Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.
As said before, you can use Google AdWords’ latest search volume data or take the average. I would use the average only if there is a huge difference between the two. A big difference between the average search volume and the last month’s search volume would indicate that last month’s numbers are not indicative of the overall trend. Rather, it likely means that last month was an unusual month for they keyword among searchers. Either it was very popular compared to previous months or the search volume dropped off considerably relative to previous months. I would discount such wild fluctations and go with the average.
Keyword Relevancy
One final consideration: Which keywords are most relevant to your campaign? If “flash data recovery” has nothing at all to do with your business then you should discard it. No sense bidding on a keyword if it won’t benefit you. And if that means going for the most competitive keywords then you should go for those keywords that are relevant to your business.
Category: Google Adwords, PPC Keyword Research
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 16 of October , 2007 at 5:32 pm
When you do your keyword research for PPC, what tool do you use? You can use any keyword research tool but I recommend Google AdWords. You can even use it for your non-Google PPC campaigns.
Google AdWords is free when you set up a PPC account. I like it because Google will suggest keywords related to the ones that you input on your own. One of my favorite keyword tools is the site-related tool. You input your website URL and Google AdWords will generate a list of keywords specific to your website. It will save you a lot of time and you can optimize each PPC ad around a specific keyword related to specific pages on your website.
You choose the keywords you want to add to your list. Then you bid on those keywords based on their relevance and value. Google AdWords has a keyword tool that is more flexible and specifically capable of helping you run your PPC campaigns than any other keyword tool on the market. And it’s FREE!
Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.
Category: PPC Keyword Research
The Pay Per Click Journal Blog is Owned By Brick Marketing. For more info call 877-295-0620.
This blog was designed by Hostseeq Designer.
