I like these two questions from a presentation by Tor Crockatt:
- Think of keywords as questions being asked by a user. You’re engaging the user by drawing them in to your site. Be honest – do you have the answer to their question? Remember the quality of their experience can affect your brand positively…..and negatively!
- Think about what you are actually selling and don’t expand your keywords so much that they don’t relate to your content. For instance if you sell bath tubs, don’t be tempted to bid on keywords for shower equipment just because they do the same thing.
Using keywords to answer questions by your users is a good tactic. If you think about the questions that users would have of your product or service you can use the keywords to craft answers to those questions and make those answers your PPC ad description. Your ad description needs to have a call to action. If you write it in such a way that it answers the question your users are asking, or that it promises to answer the question on your landing page, then you’ll get more click throughs. But you have to make sure your landing page is ready to close the sale.
Another key point is to keep your keyword list manageable. Don’t expand it too much or you’ll be watering down your SEO. That will make your ads much less effective.
