Advanced Pay Per Click "PPC" Keyword Strategies

PPC campaigns can become expensive very quickly if you are not targeting online "Buyers". Many businesses that are utilizing PPC Advertising are making the mistake of bidding at a high cost per click while targeting more of the "Window Shoppers" of the Internet and not focusing enough on Sales Conversions.

All the big PPC Services such as Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo Search Marketing and many others suggest to their customers that a "conversion" can be a download, or a sign up, or a registration, etc. What they really mean by this is that a conversion is when someone clicks on your PPC Ad, goes to your website, fills out a form or whatever and increases the PPC services revenues.

But what you want to do is increase your revenues isn't it? Don't focus on writing PPC Ads that get lot's of people to click on it but instead focus on your target market, create PPC Ads targeted specifically to them, then create Landing Pages that will convert them into buying customers.

This process all begins with the Keywords you decide to bid on and use. The keywords you decide to use will determine how much you are going to pay per click and will also determine how you will create your PPC Ads and Landing Pages.

Here are just a few of the proven keyword strategies that we have used at WebXSuccess that have helped our clients focus their PPC Campaigns and reduced their average Cost Per Click over 75%.

Target Niche Keywords that have fewer Competitors:

You will find that on Google AdWords you will be able to Bid for certain keywords for only a $0.04 CPC which will have very few competitors or none at all. Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo Search still have a minimum bid of $0.10 per click though.

You can research Niche Keywords by using keywords that are unique to your:

• Brand - Company’s can restrict the use of their Brand Name.
• Trademark – Company’s can restrict the use of their Trademark.
• Industry – Certain keywords are used by your customers to describe your industry.
• Products - Include the names of your products.
• Services – Include the name of your services.
• Geography – Include your City and or State with your Keywords.

Niche Keywords won’t increase your websites traffic as much as the more commonly used keywords but using them will increase your Campaigns overall Click Through Rate (CTR) with highly targeted traffic and lower your average CPC.

Target “Action” Keywords:

Action Keywords are keywords that Buyers commonly use when they are making their buying decision and do a search online. For example when a person is looking for a new 42” Plasma TV they will commonly type include Action Keywords such as “buy plasma tv” or “sale on plasma tv”.

Common Action Keywords which you should add to your Keywords List include:

• Buy Widgets
• Purchase Widgets
• Order Widgets
• Order Widgets now
• Sale on Widgets
• Widgets On sale
• Discount Widgets
• Discounted Widgets
• Buy discounted Widgets
• Save Widgets

Just replace Widgets with the name of your Products and Services. By including Action Keywords to your PPC Campaign you will target more consumers who are actively looking to purchase your products and services which will greatly increase your Sales Conversions and Revenues.

Bid Exact Matches and avoid Broad and Phrase Matches:

PPC Services give people the option to define keywords by Exact Match, Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Negative Match. Here is an explanation and example of each:

• Exact Matches: By placing these [] brackets around specific keywords it will ensure that your Ads are only shown when a user types in that Exact Same Keyword. By bidding only on Exact Matches you will eliminate many of the “window shoppers” of the Internet and directly target Buyers. This will reduce your overall Click Through Rate but it will increase the amount of highly target traffic to your site, reduce your Ad Spend, while increasing your Sales Conversions and Revenues. Example: [keyword] = Exact Match.

• Broad Matches: When you just type in a plain old keyword without using [brackets] or “quotes” your Ads will be shown to anyone who types in a general phrase which has keywords that are related to yours. Most of your PPC Accounts will be set at Broad Match by Default so you will have to change it to Exact Match. Example: keyword = Broad Match.

• Phrase Matches: Your ad appears when people type in a keyword phrase which includes your keywords. Example: “keyword” = Phrase Match.

• Negative Match: You will be able to add –Negative Keywords into your Ad Groups Keywords Lists which you should do as soon as you can. If you were advertising a DVD sale, for example, you wouldn’t want your ad displayed for searches related to “rental” or “burning”, because neither term is inline with the focus of your campaign. Using these terms as negative keywords will stop your ads from being shown for searches that include them. Reducing ad impressions for irrelevant searches will improve your overall CTR and strengthen both the relevancy and performance of your keyword list. This will help you achieve a higher quality score, lower your cost per acquisition and increase your ROI. Negative Keywords include words like “free”, “free trial”, “free download”, “crack”, etc. Make a long list of all the Negative Keywords you can think of and add these into your Keyword Lists for each of your PPC Accounts Ad Groups you have set up. Example: -keyword = Negative Match.

You can consider doubling or tripling the keywords by creating Exact, Broad, and Phrase Matches for every keyword. Then, after reviewing their performance, gradually eliminate Broad and Phrase Matches that result in lower conversion rates.

When to use each Match Type:

At the risk of oversimplifying things, the following rules of thumb can be applied with great success.

• Broad Match: Used to increase the supply of ad impressions or increase the number of times your ad is shown. The fewer words used, and therefore the broader the match, the greater the supply of ad impressions that you’ll attract (we’ll get into other strategies for broad match use later in this document)

• Phrase Match & Exact Match: These are most effectively used as measurement tools, and ways to test whether specific terms crafted in specific ways – actually result in an increased CTR….these are very effective tools for campaign refinement once the basics have been established.

• Negative Match: Is used to cull or eliminated poorly targeted customers who may be searching for unrelated topics.

Despite these strategies for increasing impressions, the overriding factor to be analysed in order to achieve success is the conversion rate of different keywords. A broad matched keyword which converts poorly may chew up all of your ad budget and deliver few resulting conversions. For this reason, a balance must always be struck between gaining enough displays of your ad, but focusing on the ads and keywords which are delivering results (conversions) at the lowest cost.

Tip: When you make your Keywords List save a copy as a text file using Microsoft Notepad this way you can simply “Cut and Paste” you Keywords into your different PPC Accounts. This will save you a lot of time and ensure that you have included all of the best keywords in each account!

Evaluating Search Terms:

Use a balance of four criteria to evaluate all potential search terms for your PPC Keyword Lists:

• Relevance: Relevance is not just making sure that a search term applies directly to your product or service but, more specifically, that it is unlikely to apply to any other product or service.

• Popularity: Popularity is simply the relative usage of one search term over another. People searching for a product may often be more likely to use certain words than others in their search request, e.g. ‘buy’ and ‘purchase’ may mean the same thing but people are generally much more likely to use the word ‘buy’ than ‘purchase’ when searching.

• Performance: Performance is something you will have to determine for yourself by tracking your customers from initial Click through to the sale. You will often find that while some search terms will generate more visitors, others will actually generate more sales. This is because many people will simply be researching a potential purchase while those who are ready to buy will use slightly different search terms.

• Cost: In a competitive market, you may often find that the top bid for a search term is far higher than your own margins allow. In general, you can attain far better value by choosing more specific search terms.

Group Best Performing Keywords:

If you are working with very large keyword lists for each Ad group ten you must break them up into smaller, more targeted groups. To help you organize your keywords, AdWords Editor offers a tool called the Keyword Grouper. The Keyword Grouper will organize your keywords based on common themes found in your list.

Low Cost Online Keyword Search Service:

The best overall Online Keyword Research Tool is WordTracker. My staff and I have been using WordTracker for over 7 years now because WordTracker is very inexpensive and will save you time because their service makes it very easy to quickly research highly Relevant and Popular keywords on different Search Engines and Online Directories all in one place.

Sign up for their Free Trial at http://www.WordTracker.com because with this service you will be able to:

• Based on over 300 million keywords and phrases that people used in the previous 90 days.
• Searches Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK, and other major PPC Search Engines.
• Use their competitive analysis tool enables you to find those "best keywords".
• Optimize your PPC Ads by using the most popular keywords.
• Improve your Pay Per Click search campaigns.
• Find niche opportunities and exploit them before your competitors.
• Generate thousands of keyword suggestions.

Try their Free Keyword Suggestion Tool at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com.
WordTracker.com Prices: 1 Week $30.00 / 1 Month $59.00 / 1 Year $299.00

Download WordTrackers “Free Keyword Research Guide” that explains how to select keywords and use WordTrackers features at http://www.WordTracker.com.

You can learn many more PPC Strategies such as this in the Pay Per Click Advertising Management- Advanced "PPC" Strategies book by clicking here and going to www.webxsuccess.com