An Adwords Campaign Begins With Keyword Research

The first stage of a campaign setup begins with your marketing expectations and business goals. Since this media is paid per click, the product or service sold by a small business should have a high enough price tag to justify online advertising fees.

Keyword research is a SEM’ers task to compile root keywords, long tail keywords, and geo-targeted keywords that target both purchase intent and general traffic. If the campaign is solely comprised of buyer keywords it will yield very limited traffic. Although this strategy is more likely to convert, it lacks volume.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

The Google Adwords keyword tool is a sure-fire resource to research and validate keyword traffic patterns and costs. Simplify your mission by running a few generic search queries on google and see what other advertisers are pitching. Be sure to browse their adcopy as they attempt to qualify viewers. Third party pay per click spy tools are also helpful in gaining some insight to the competition’s top performing keywords and ad spend. No matter the level of high-technology and software available, the most practical PPC tool is your brain.

The Best Way to Organize Your Adwords Campaign

Adgroups should be very tightly themed and not include unrelated terms. Otherwise, misfit keywords must be added to a separate adgroup. Example: canvas tennis shoes, leather tennis shoes, and suede tennis shoes maintain a singular common theme. Nike Agassi tennis shoes does not relate to this group and should be added to a new adgroup, Nike Tennis Shoes. Google’s algorithm rewards a higher quality score to keywords in a campaign that establish greater relevance for certain search queries with favorable performance, i.e. CTR and stickiness.

In short there’s no silver bullet. The buildout of a PPC campaign requires a strategy that accounts for all search behavior including information gathering, comparison shopping, and purchase intent.

How do we qualify eyeballs to conversions? Keyword research, relevant adcopy, and targeted landing pages make-up a potent formula to build an effective pay per click campaign. If all three components are in synch, the user’s search query will be met with meaningful and relevant information.