Some things we’ll want to mind as we go along is that more isn’t always merrier. It can be but only if it makes sense to have that many keywords and if the keywords make sense themselves. Some advertisers go and try to cram tens of thousands of keywords into their campaigns all at once, paying no attention to whether that word qualifies to describe the service/products accurately or not. First, that many keywords have no business being in your business unless of course you are able to properly build out unique keyword ad groups and ads to fit them into. Please see one of our articles about writing relevant ads to learn more about the ad grouping process. Secondly, if you’re not taking the time to make sure every single keyword you are bidding on has relevance to your business offering, then you have committed yourself to wasting money on irrelevant search inquiries and clicks.

All you have to do is take a little time and have a method to your keyword research. Don’t copy and paste out of some list you manufactured from the Internet. Don’t settle for any words either. Use ones that are specific to what you do or offer. Then build the ad groups out around them. You’ll be a winner for it.

Okay, so there are several places to do keyword research. The 4 places we are going to talk about today are keyword research tools (especially free ones by Google), competition spy programs, Adwords reporting features, and offline methods.

Offline Methods

I am going to actually start with offline methods because I believe this to be the nursing ground for the business, and it really takes place in the human mind. Ask yourself, “What would my customer type into the search engine to find my widget?” Ask this about all your products. Be specific. Be general if you want but make sure whatever list you create, have every word accurately describe your products. Try not to be so general that your words accurately describe your products and some others that you don’t sell. Only use general terms if they describe ONLY what you sell..

This method is the basis for all your other methods of research. You know your customers and business better than anyone or anything else so you are where it all starts. Develop a list to your satisfaction. Once you have done this, it is very likely that you will be exhausted yet excited to keep going. Fortunately there’s still more work to do.

Keyword Research Tools

Now that you have created your list in your mind and put it into actual word (via paper, Notepad, or Word), it’s time to expand on it. Unfortunately, we often don’t hold the mental creative capacity to think of everything. There are your customers out there who think nothing like you. Plus, we need to finish that mundane task of listing all the relevant variations of your key terms.

Initially, the best way to expand on keyword ideas is to use the keyword tools. We’ll have more options later after the account has been running a while. For now, some simple tools we would show you is the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool . This can be found either in your Adwords Account under the Tools button or by visiting https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

This tool will give you many of the variations of keywords that you have been missing in your current selection. Google produces this list by offering up suggestions that might commonly be seen on other websites who have historically advertised the keywords that you are inquiring about. It will give you surround information about these words including Advertiser Competiveness, Local and Global Search Volume, and if you opt to show more columns, additional data surrounding those words. Just as you did with your initial rough list of keywords; use heavy scrutiny and discretion when picking the right words for you. Also use this tool just find similar variations to the keywords you have already chosen.

Note: that the search volume in this is not an accurate reflection of how many clicks you will be receiving in the sponsored links. It simply shows how many searches have been made for these words and some of these searches are counted from longer tail inquiries. They also account for a lot of the visits that will originate in the organic natural listings.

Another tool which will give you some more accurate (but not perfectly accurate) PPC traffic estimates is the Adwords Traffic Estimator Tool, also found in your Adwords account. It can also be found here: https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox . This tool will give you much more in-depth information about particular keyword expectation in the sponsored links. Don’t dwell here too long as this is still a rough figure of what to expect and has never been 100% accurate. Get a rough indication as to a performance level and then move on. Do not try and find the perfect keyword combo here. You will only frustrate Google who will block your IP address for a limited period of time after repetitive searches. This tool in my experience has been more unreliable in the local search inquiries than the national geography. Its best you take it with a grain of salt but take notice to some of the potential traffic particular keywords might have. It’s also useful in determining a “rough” Adwords budget allocation.

Competitor Spy Tools

The third way to get some ideas about keywords is through the use of competitive spy tools which spy on your Adwords competition. You will find I am not the biggest advocate of this research type because spy tools don’t tell the whole story and I simply don’t hold much confidence in what other advertisers are doing, regardless of how long they have been on Adwords or how much they spend monthly.

They do, however, hold a great level of value when it comes to painting some of the picture in terms of what you ‘could be doing’. Furthermore, spy tools are best used as a method for researching your competition when looking to ‘differentiate’ yourself from them. Always look for ways to create a competitive advantage. Instead of saying all the time, “What is it they are doing that I am not?” Say, “What can I do that they are not?”

This will create tremendous insight for you and your industry position. And you may find that there are some very basic things you may have overlooked when advertising your business on Google.

Here is a list of spy tools which I have used in the past.

SpyFu- www.spyfu.com- This tool goes for about $60/mo and they have just recently added a whole gamut of additional features to its main service. SpyFu Kombat allows you to look at yourself with multiple competitors and see which keywords are exclusive to the individual companies and which overlap between each other. This goes for both organic and paid keywords. It allows you to compare budgets between the companies as well. The main tool functionality allows you to print lists of keywords and surrounding data including daily and average CPCs, budgets, ranges, ranking etc. SpyFu also recently added a new Ad History tool that allows you to type in a keyword and find out what ads your competition is running. Once again, I don’t hold a lot of confidence in what your competitors are doing but you might notice some good ideas for your ads. Pay close attention to what attributes might be considered strengths and which would constitute weaknesses. Weaknesses in competition ads are probably always harder to spot than strengths. Look to our posts on Writing Adwords Ads to learn what to keep an eye out for.

Keyword Spy- www.keywordspy.com- These guys do a great job of creating an effective tool that is easy to use. This product goes for $90/mo. and allows you to look at the most important info about specific competitors right away. This data might include charts with daily ad budgets, paid and natural keywords, more competitors, ads, clicks per day, number of keywords, etc. This tool I have found to be more accurate than SpyFu. They also offer a 7-day free trial so you can try it out on a limited basis at no charge. This might be enough time to get all the research done that you need to in order to set up a campaign.

Unless you are an SEM agency, I don’t see a real need to subscribe to one of these services ongoing. Just use the basic services or the free trials in the beginning. Now I will show you one of the best ways to do keyword research but it requires you to have a somewhat seasoned campaign and some accrued historical data.

Adwords Search Query Reports

This option is available only after you have ran your camapaign for some time. The longer you have ran your campaign, the better this will work.

In the reporting feature of Google Adwords, you can run a report called Search Query. This report is a list of all the keywords that people actually typed into Google that resulted in your ad showing as a result at least once. A common misunderstanding is that when advertisers bid on keywords, they think that those keywords are always EXACTLY what people type into Google to find them. In fact, people type into Google your exact keyword only a portion of the time (unless keyword settings are set to exact-match). Most of the time, people are typing in a different variation of your particular keywords.

Some of these keywords accurately describe what it is that you do or offer. Others are completely irrelevant to what you do. For these irrelevant inquiries it is probably important that you add some negative keywords to your campaign list so that your ads do not show any more for these tyoes of queries. Google is constantly trying to find relevancy in your campaign so they can have more ways to sell your products or services. It’s no coincidence that Google makes more money doing this too but there is a greater benefit for us advertisers. If Google didn’t do this routinely, advertisers would probably see less than only half the sales that they currently do.

By looking at this list of search queries, you will see keywords that you can be found for every time; provided that you don’t already have it included in your keyword mix. Place the new keyword into the most relevant Adgroup or build out a new one so that the ad is relevant to the keyword. What you will do is; ensure your ads show for that keyword all the time and possibly relieve traffic from other keywords that are more general and more expensive. Search Query Reports are my favorite way to do keyword research because it is real data that has come from your business. It is bound to be the most relevant and accurate of all the keyword research methods. The only downsides to this particular method is that you have to accrue that data first and if there are keywords that are very relevant but no variation has ever been included in your existing keyword mix, it is unlikely it will show up in this report. You might consider running some other keyword tools along with this one after the account has been running for a while.

In conclusion it is best to try a little of everything to paint the biggest picture of who your customers are, how they think, who your competition is, and how they think. Too many times I have seen advertisers looking for a quick way to get as many keywords in as possible. When it comes to keyword research, it is 80% quality and 20% quantity. Take your time and evaluate each keyword to decide if it is relevant and most importantly; that it is possibly irrelevant.

Whatever you end up with, you are going to have to test it regardless. So if you don’t end up wit the perfect list right away, its all good. The stats will show before long. Pull more search query reports and look at conversion cost. Add negative keywords if you need to make it better.

And remember, just because your competitor does it, doesn’t make it the right thing to do. If you become obsessed with what your competitor does just because you know them, or you believe they are bigger, or because you think they are more successful in business; that doesn’t necessarily mean they are doing the right think when it comes to their keywords. It just means they might have more money to waste. Make your own assessments and judgments about your campaign. Take in the information. Use it. Then execute the best possible keyword selection for yourself.

Directing buyers is one of the easiest things to do when writing ads because you only have so many choices of where to direct them to. When you edit ads, you have your option for destination URL. This is where you will direct your visitors once they click on the ads.

Where you direct them is for the most part, a no-brainer. Most advertisers choose to point them to the landing that has the most relevant information for their buyer. However you might run into a traffic snag here or there if you don’t mind a few things. Just as you review Bounce Rates in the Analytics settings; it is good to contemplate your landing pages if you are seeing higher percentages.

Higher bounce rate percentages doesn’t necessarily mean you have unqualified buyers or have chosen an ineffective landing page. I often find high bounce rates in adgroups where the keywords are very product specific (brands and model types) usually because they point to a very product specific landing pages. This is because all the information they are looking for surrounding that keyword and inquiry is clearly on that product landing page. They get the information they want and they leave without any need to navigate the site any further.

This is inherently dangerous. If they leave your website and they haven’t purchased anything, it might be because they received their information and realized they didn’t want that product after all. So when you see high bounce rates and low sales, you might consider changing the destination URL to something with more options. This could be a product group or category page. This way they see more options and are more likely to buy because of it. You should not always assume because you have an extensive navigation feature that visitors will always use it. Believe it or not, sometimes they don’t even recognize it as an option. You should try putting options in front of them so they are forced to pick one.

This isn’t always the right answer so testing landing pages is always a good idea. In Analytics, go to Traffic Sources> Ad Versions, you will be able to look your ads bounce rates. Remember high bounce rates can be caused by many things; some of which have nothing to do with the ad itself. So look for patterns such as the one I mentioned to decide your best course of action. If it is indeed an outside issue, it will become more apparent when you test your ads’ landing pages this way.

Testing Ad Variations (Part 4/4)

Not only should we test for landing pages, we should test the ads themselves. Writing the most effective ads will always require testing. Some things that you might test for are CTR, bounce rates, conversion rates, conversion cost, and quality score. Advertisers are often very surprised at how much a difference a minor variation in the ad structure can make. When testing ads, you can make larger, more impactful changes or you can make small changes that capitalize on previous ad performance strengths. It really all depends on the feedback you get from historical ad data. If you are getting very poor performance out of an ad, you might consider changing more of the ad’s structure. If you are already getting decent to good performance, you would probably make a minor change to improve it further.

Advertisers always ask me about how to test ads. They want to know how many ads they should run at a time and how long to test before trying new ad variations. My answer will depend on a few variables including overall traffic volume and how much data I have for those ads. The more volume an ad sees, the more impactful a new variation can be on the overall business returns. The less volume an ad sees, the longer it will take to get sufficient data used for making decisions about an ads performance.

If I have a high traffic Adgroup, I will test only 2 variations at a time and continue the test for however long it takes to get reliable information back. I want to get back a large enough population of visits and impressions to justify a change. On a high traffic ad I might wait until I have at least 100 visits.

In lower traffic Adgroups, I might try 3 ad variations so we can get more data about all the ads faster. The reason for only 2 ads is because you can’t get a true assessment of ad performance when you have more than 2.

For instance, if 45% of people prefer or purchase on AD1, 35% on AD2, and 20% on AD3, AD2 could potentially be a better performer than AD1. You would not know that the people who preferred AD3, would have chosen AD2 if AD3 weren’t an option. Less is better. But when it’s going to take a long time to gather performance data, might as well test 3 to get the answers quickly. Plus, there is only a limited effect on the total business performance when the changes are made to an Adgroup that sees little volume. On a slower traffic ad, I might make a decision after 20 accrued clicks because I don’t have weeks to wait for the other 80 clicks.

For Adgroups that see much higher volume, I will test 2 variations but clone out the existing ad 3 or 4 times so to insure the competing ad doesn’t corrupt the account performance by any noticeable standard. So in the Adgroup you will see AD1, AD1, AD1, AD1, and AD2. As you accrue ad performance data, all the AD1s should be relatively even and you can compare the AD2 with all the others. It’s important that you do it this way if there is significant volume. Say you don’t clone the ads and you write an underperforming ad which could be served 50% of the time depending on how you have your serving options set. This underperformer might sabotage the Adgroup especially if it doesn’t qualify the buys well.

I have seen terrible results happen in accounts where the advertiser was doing fine but then added a poor ad in the most important Adgroup. Sales will tank. The phone will stop ringing. And most of the time, the advertiser made several campaign changes so they don’t know what is happening. Protect yourself. Take the insurance and clone existing ads.

Finally, low CTR doesn’t mean you have a bad ad. It could just mean that you have really done a good job of qualifying your visitors. If you turn away a lot of irrelevant traffic because you have a good qualifying ad, then you are saving lots of money but you are also getting lower CTRs. The best way to look at CTR is to simply look at it, be aware of it, and take in all the other performance metrics until you get the entire story. This will lead you to making better informed decisions about your ads. At no time should you make ad decisions solely based on CTR data. It doesn’t always tell the obvious truth.

Speaking about serving options: Optimized Ad Serving vs. Rotating Ad Serving? Rotating will get you a better measurement of performance quicker and Optimized will often give you the same indications by serving certain ads more. So which should we use?

How much time you spend looking at the ads should decide which you use. If you are in the account looking every day, you can rotate them without creating a significant danger to the account. Just don’t wait too long to pull out an underperforming ad. If you are likely to just let ads run without any routine management, then I advise you to put it on the Optimized setting. And if you clone ads, use the Rotating setting to get accurate feedback without creating a risk to the account. The purpose of creating clones is so you don’t have to use Optimized settings.

I hope you enjoyed the series on writing ads. Stay tuned for more valuable lessons in SEM.

The second purpose in writing effective ads is to qualify buyers. There are two reasons why you want to qualify your buyers, 1) to make sure they are actually buyers and 2) to make sure they want something you have. Some of the actions you will take in this part may already be done by virtue of taking action to attract your buyers. Nevertheless, it is important that you make a mental note that you have qualified your visitors as your buyers before letting the ads run.

Make sure they are buyers and not just information hungry visitors. (Writing catchy ads can be very similar in task.) As an advertiser, it seems common knowledge that the sponsored links area of a search results page will hold only ads whose sponsor is looking to sell something. In other words, people searching, who are not advertisers, may not know the sponsored links are there for more than information usually. How can we make sure that people clicking on our ads are really out to buy something?

We have already done this if we inserted some “call-to-action” language or description that implies a purchase. In the example ad, there were 4 things that do this; all of which were in the description.

20% Off All Whole Bean Purchases.
Free Fast Shipping, Order Online!

20% Off means off of a price which implies a purchase. The actual word ‘Purchases’ is more littoral than implied. In case you were wondering, it states, “You will be making a purchase.” Shipping information implies purchasing or buying. And the best way to imply a necessity to buy (especially when you have more product description in the ad) is to put in a call-to-action; Order Online, Order Now, Buy Now, etc. Don’t use “click here.” Google does not allow this call-to-action and it doesn’t imply the necessity to buy.

Make sure they are looking for something you can offer.

I hope by this stage in the game, you have been particular enough to only use specific keywords that describe what you do or what you sell. If not, then look up our article on Keyword Research. Assuming all your chosen keywords are relevant to your business offerings, then there are only 2 things left for you to do. Look at Bounce Rate and Search Query.

Go to Analytics Reporting features and have a look at some keyword Bounce Rates. A bounce rate is a percentage of visitors who come to the site and exit from the exact same page they landed on. Usually if we have a high bounce rate, we would assume we are not meeting the buyer’s needs for some reason or another.

I have a client who sells electric scooters for the physically disabled and elderly. Some of the scooters have 3 wheels and some have 4 wheels. One of the client’s adgroups contains keywords “3 wheel scooter” and “electric scooter.” He had a terrible bounce rate in the beginning. Why? He was attracting buyers for children’s scooters and those scooters that actually have 2 wheels, that go very fast and jump off street curbs. You wouldn’t see a disabled person performing that stunt.

His ads were titled 3 Wheel Scooters and Electric Scooters. By simply adding some qualifying language to make them show as 3 Wheel Senior Scooters and Senior Electric Scooters, we were able to lower the bounce rate and increase his conversion rate on those key terms.

Just because you have a high bounce rate doesn’t mean you have unqualified buyers. However, it is worth investigating. Always ask yourself if you are doing a good job attracting the most relevant shoppers. You might also look at your other things like landing page effectiveness, ease in navigation and checkout process, pricing, or other things that could cause increased bounces.

Search Query Reports in the Reports feature of your Adwords account will tell you a lot about what people actually type into Google to find you. If you find a lot of irrelevant variations of your keywords in there; add and test some language in your ad that would qualify irrelevant queries better. You can also add in negative keywords or test match settings on your keywords to see if that helps. We’ll cover Match Settings and Negative Keywords in a different post.

The better you qualify online visitors, the more likely you are to have a low CTR (click-thru rate). This is okay. It is always be better to have a lower CTR than to have a high CTR and pay for unwanted traffic.

Come back tomorrow to see Qualifying Buyers (Part 3/4) and Testing Ads (Part 4/4)