Finding the right keywords are vital to the success of your pay-per-click campaign, since these terms are what your prospects are typing into search engines to search for solutions to their problems. If you can’t identify these keywords, then you won’t be able to find your target market, won’t generate click-through traffic to your site, won’t generate leads and won’t make any sales.
However, finding keywords is just the first step. You also need to put yourself in the mindset of your prospects. Different combinations of keywords may signal at which stage the prospect is in the buying cycle. For example, a prospect searching for the keyword “baby strollers” is likely still researching for information but a more specific keyword phrase such as “used blue McLaren stroller” indicates they are closer to actually making a purchase. Keywords can actually reveal a lot about your prospects, and understanding these cues can help you tailor your advertising to make it more effective and ensure a higher conversion rate.
The goal of your AdWords campaign should be to generate as much click-through traffic to your site as possible and to have high conversion rates. Generating traffic that does not convert will only will only lead to high costs-per-sale and an unprofitable campaign. Here are some tips for finding keywords.
1. Begin by making a list of keywords and phrases that are related to your niche, and then branch out into related synonyms and terms. You can create an initial list of keywords using online tools such as Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker. Then use Google’s Wonder Wheel or Related Searches to find related search terms.
2. Test your keywords to eliminate those that are not generating high conversion rates and replace them with others. Remember to always put yourself in the place of your prospects so that you can customize your keywords further.
3. Start with exact keyword matches and when you find which ones convert the best, turn those into broad and phrase matches. Exact keywords are those that are placed in brackets ( [ ] ) and will only show your ad to people searching for that exact term. To illustrate, if the keyword is “blue cars” only people who type in that exact phrase and not related ones such as “buy blue cars” will see your ad. Phrase matches (keywords contained in quotations ( “ “ ) will show your ad when people type in searches in which the phrase appears exactly, i.e. “used blue cars” and not “blue used cars”. Broad matches have no delimiters so your ads will show up for all searches that use these two particular keywords. Bidding on phrase and exact matches will give you a higher click-through rate over time with a lower bid price.
4. Use negative keywords. These keywords are entered with a minus ( – ) sign and when they are typed into a search box, Google will not show your ad. For example, if you want to exclude people searching for free stuff, enter “– free” into your list so that you can prevent a lot of irrelevant traffic from flooding your site, saving you money and increasing your click-value immeasurably.
Online pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has totally changed the way advertisers test products and services they are launching. In the past, before the Internet became so ubiquitous, new businessmen would introduce their products that they hoped would be appealing to potential customers. The only way for them to gauge customer acceptance of the product would be to hire a market research firm for thousands of dollars, money that most small businessmen would not be able to spare. With PPC advertising however, small business owners can simply offer visitors to their site a product and test their response to it. With PPC, you can now assess products in a matter of hours rather than months and at a cost of hundreds, rather than thousands, of dollars. Another important advantage of PPC advertising is that it allows you to test and tweak your sales funnel virtually on a daily basis, allowing you to reach extraordinary conversion rates and take your business to the next level.
Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs continue to take the approach that the Internet is just a way for them to quickly and easily take their product to market. Their approach remains an “if you build it, they will come” approach. They fail to grasp the basic principle that you need to focus as much on conversion as on click-through rates. This ultimately means that no matter how much you are paying per click, if you are focused just on driving traffic to your site, you can still end up in the red.
To illustrate, if you are selling an e-book for $30 and paying around $0.5 per click on your keyword, every 500 visitors to your site will cost you $250. But if your ads are not targeting the right people or your sales funnel is not properly set up, you could end up with a low click value. The click value is the income you generate for every click. In our example, your click value is $0.06. Hence, it is essential that you increase your click value and not just your click-through traffic. This is a common error committed by many businessmen who are new to PPC and believe that generating traffic is vital without considering how such traffic will convert. Hence, the key to making money is to drive targeted, qualified traffic to your site which can generate high conversion rates. Even if you get millions of visitors a month, you can still end up losing money if the traffic is not converting. Conversion rates can be affected by a wide variety of factors, including choosing the right keywords, writing effective ads and creating a well-optimized landing page.
Next week we’ll go into split testing ads so your conversion rates go up.