Keyword Research is the Key to Success

One of the most important components of your Adwords Campaign is the keyword lists your use to promote your ads. Your keyword list is going to give you the power over your competition and as most people spend very little time on their keywords you can work this to your advantage.
Research, Research, Research.

The extra time you spend planning your campaign will pay dividends in the future by providing targeted visitors at a fraction of the price.

3 Steps to Great Keyword Research.

Step 1 : Brainstorming.

This step is the ONLY step most people carry out and even then they don’t spend the time it needs. Get a pen & paper and try to think of all the words people may use to search for your product and service.

For example one of our clients sells sweets online. During brainstorming some of the ideas we came up with were “sweets”, “traditional sweets”, “old fashioned sweets” and “jars of sweets”.

Don’t stop at the general terms however. By breaking it down even more you can break it down to categories e.g. “Sugar Free Sweets” and “Chocolate Sweets” or even down to product “Sherbert Lemons” etc.

Once you get going you should be able to think of a healthy looking list full of variations.

Step 2 : Keyword Tools.

Brainstorming is a great start but you need to carry out research to find out exactly how many people are using certain terms and more importantly how much competition is attached to your terms (more on this in future articles).

The Google Keywords tool can be accessed from within your AdWords account and you can find the Yahoo! Search Marketing tool here:

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/

One of the best research tools available is Wordtracker.

Wordtracker not only shows you the number of people searching but also offer data regarding growth, competion and much more. I would recommend you invest in Wordtracker if you’re serious about Internet Marketing and PPC.

Wordtracker

And of course there is also..

Overture Tool
.

and

Keyword Elite.

Get all these tools in your Internet Marketers Toolbox.

Step 3 : Beating the Competition

There are many tactics to get 1 UP over your competition. One of the most common is spelling mistakes. By bidding on spelling mistakes you can achieve clicks for far less than the correctly
spelt terms that all your Competition is bidding on. People do make typos all the time while browsing.

This little free tool is a great help..

Combine 2. - An essential free tool for adding different matching options and preparing phrases.

Keep working on your keyword research and you’ll get a refined list of words that
really works for you and your business.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Live
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • bodytext
  • Technorati

Finally, a good Facebook app !

Not sure if you’ve seen but there is a great social networking game that’s recently popped up on Facebook.
Who has the biggest brain?

The “Who has the biggest brain?” is kinda like Nintendos Brain Training with a unique twist - the games are more fun, and you can compete against all you Facebook friends..

I know you’ve probably got hundreds of crappy Facebook app invites but give this cool app a chance - you might just get hooked !

Check out the guys behind it - Playfish

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Live
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • bodytext
  • Technorati

Example Landing Pages

As i’ve mentioned before bespoke landing page can really improve conversion.

Everything that the visitor needs should be on the page so..

  • Headline that matches Keyword / Ad Text
  • Encouraging, Friendly copy, again related to the search they carried out.
  • Some quotes/testimonials from clients
  • An easy and clear form offering something in return for the info
  • Your phone number should they wish to call.
  • Why you’re the best company to buy from.
  • Ideally you should then use Google AdWords Website Optimiser to try many different variations to find the best combinations. Its certainly worth doing and a a real insight into which copy and images work best in converting your visitors.

    Some examples of landing pages we’re currently testing ..

    http://jobs.justit.co.uk - testing 36 different versions

    http://www.sign-up.to/html/landing/emailguide/index.php - Testing 20+ combinations.

    Also here are some other Landing pages we’ve created..

    Ours - www.1upsearch.co.uk/googleadwords

    MyRuby - www.myruby.co.uk/landing

    I’m currently waiting on our new landing page system that will allow to quickly create landing pages in a very cost effective way.

    Technorati Tags: ,
    These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
    • del.icio.us
    • Facebook
    • Google
    • Live
    • E-mail this story to a friend!
    • bodytext
    • Technorati