May 31
2008There are times when a place is linked to a business. Let’s say that you owned a casino, You may find that you can get more less expensive traffic bidding on “Niagara Falls” than just bidding on “Casino.”
For local businesses, take whatever keywords apply to your business and then add your state and as many close-by cities as possible. For example, a Cincinnati IT firm might use this list, which includes suburb names and deliberate misspellings of “Cincinnati”:
Ohio computer consultant
Cincinnati computer consultant
Cincinati computer consultant
Cincinatti computer consultant
Tri-state computer consultant
Tri state computer consultant
Eaton computer consultant
Jamestown computer consultant
Miamisburg computer consultant
Sidney computer consultant
Troy computer consultant
Milford computer consultant
Loveland computer consultant
Use a mapping site to compile a list of nearby cities and paste that into an Excel spread-sheet. Using term like ‘computer consultant’, ‘IT company’, ‘IT consultant’ you can mix and match it with the cities and towns for a great addition to your keyword list.
Having lots of keywords is the key to untapped markets, low bid prices, higher click through rates, and successful PPC management. Your effort in this will pay dividends.
There’s a way you can multiply your keyword list threefold and at the same time bid on terms that your competitors are overlooking.
To really maximize your base keyword list use brackets and quotes. In his tool AdWords Acceleration (www.AdWordAcceleration.com), Stephen Juth helps identify variations that are less pricey and for which there is less competition.
While struggling through the daunting and frequently tiresome task of selecting a comprehensive keyword list, you may miss one or two singulars and plurals and leave out synonyms of your niche phrases.
Google has already foreseen this problem and provides an extra feature, Expanded Phrase Matching, which adds singulars and plurals, similar phrases, and relevant synonyms to your keyword list for you.
Be cautious though, the service won’t work on phrase matched or exactly matched keywords, only on the broad matched keywords on your list.
Broad-Matched Keywords
When you insert keywords at the time you’re setting up your campaigns, these are the keywords that don’t have any delimiters around them. For example:
used cars
Japanese used cars
used cars for sale
Caution is also warranted at this point. If you do not use negative keyword phrases on “used cars” you will end up with your ad showing for these search phrases also:
used cars
german used cars
used cars cleveland
used police cars
Your ad may well show up when someone searches using this wacky phrase:
cars used in filming dukes of hazzard
Phrase Matches
Keywords with quote marks on them fall under this category. Such as:
“used cars”
“Japanese used cars”
“used cars for sale”
These will make your ad show in searches that include these terms in this order, without extra words inserted, such as the following:
used cars
old Japanese used cars
used cars for sale chicago
But for this search your ad won’t be shown:
used police cars
Exact Matches
Place square brackets around your words to make exact matches. Such as:
[used cars]
[Japanese used cars]
[used cars for sale]
Using exact match means that only the searchers who type in this precise phrase will get to see your ad. The following searches will not see your ad:
used cars chicago
german used cars
old japanese used cars
used cars for sale chicago
used police cars
With negative words included in your keyword, your page impression number will be fewer because your ads will show in a lesser number of searches. That will result in an automatic raising of your click-through-rate. This is the greatest part though: by lowering your page impressions by 20 percent, your click-through-rate actually is raised by 25 percent, not the expected 20 percent. Now check this out:
If you cut unwanted impressions by 30 percent, your CTR will increase by 42 percent.
If you cut unwanted impressions by 40 percent, your CTR will improve by 67 percent.
If you cut unwanted impressions by 50 percent, your CTR will double.
The use of negative keywords can really give your broad/phrase matching keywords a boost, but they won’t change anything for your exact match keywords. By managing your pay-per-click well, the use of negatives can make a big difference.
