Identifying the Issue with Your PPC Account

Have you ever caught yourself staring at data from AdWords, trying to find an explanation to why your conversions dropped x% month over month and y% year over year, and not even knowing where to start searching for an explanation?

So many variables come into play on a daily basis in any given PPC account, how do you know what caused this decrease?  You could stare at a spreadsheet and create more pivot tables than you know what to do with, hoping you come across something that will give you a better understanding so that you can fix the problem.

Or, you could utilize a simple Excel formula to point you in the right direction in about 2 minutes’ time.

Yeah, I choose the latter option as well.

So, what’s this secret formula I claim will make your life much easier? It’s called a Pearson correlation formula (or the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, for you statistics nerds).  It’s a formula that tells you if a correlation exists between two sets of numbers.  It won’t magically tell you what’s wrong with your PPC account, but it will tell you where to look so you can find the answer(s) you’re looking for.

Mathematically, the Pearson formula is very freaking complicated if you don’t have an advanced understanding of statistics.  For those of you who are interested, here is the actual formula:

What does that mean? If you want the technical explanation, ask a stats professor.  In layman’s terms, “r” is the indicator of whether or not two sets of data have any correlation, or dependence, with each other.  Luckily, this formula already exists in Excel and is much easier to type out than what you see above: “=PEARSON(array 1, array 2)”.

Example

Below is a sample of data for key PPC metrics using 14 weeks of PPC data:

The conversions column is highlighted in red text because that is the metric being focused on.  You see some ups and downs, but you’re not exactly sure what’s causing this conversion trend.  So, instead of sifting through a dozen different reports looking for a needle in a haystack, simply perform a Pearson correlation formula for each metric and compare it to the conversion totals:

Spend “r” =Pearson(A2:A15,F2:F15) = 0.16

Clicks “r” = Pearson(B2:B15,F2:F15) = 0.09

And so on…

After applying this formula to each column, here are the results (highlighted in blue text at the bottom):

The result of this formula will range from -1 to 1, where -1 equals a perfect inverse correlation, 1 equals a perfect correlation, and 0 equals absolutely no correlation.  As you can see, most of the metrics used for this comparison are close to 0, meaning there’s no strong correlation between the trend of that metric and the trend in conversions.  But the conversion rate has a result very close to 1, which means there’s a strong correlation.

So, using this data, I can conclude the change in conversion total is dependent primarily on the change in conversion rate only, rather than the conversion rate combined with another key metric or another key metric entirely.  And if we think about what factors in a PPC account have the most direct impact on the conversion rate only, we can conclude we should take a closer look at our landing pages and on-site activity after an ad has been clicked, rather than other factors like keywords or ad copy.

So, while using Pearson correlation formulas on data doesn’t give you the magic answer you’re looking for, the results can tell you where you should look to find it.  When you’re facing the possibility of browsing through report after report to give you direction, save yourself the time and start with this useful method instead.

Post #1: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Account Structure

Post #2: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Understanding your Campaign Settings

Post #3: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Keywords

Post #4: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Crafting Engaging Ads

Post #5: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Ad Extensions

After building your account structure, populating ad groups with keywords, and crafting enticing ads to drive clicks to your site, you may think your work is done and it’s time to give your campaigns the green light.

Not so fast.

The ability to enable tracking features for key performance indicators such as transactions completed or leads generated is essential for not only managing your ads after activation, but tracking the success of your paid search effort.

In the end, if you cannot tie ad spend to revenue coming back into your business, it is going to be difficult continuing to justify your need for paid search ads.

There are two primary ways advertisers can track the success of their advertising efforts.

1.  Google AdWords conversion tracking

Within the platform, AdWords offers a simple and easy way to implement conversion tracking code that records when a visitor hits a pre-defined page on your business’s website.

This is type of conversion tracking is your best bet to find out how many people hit that ‘thank you’ or ‘confirmation’ page after completing a goal.

To begin the setup of AdWords conversion tracking, click the Tools and Analysis tab across the top of the AdWords interface.

Then, click Conversions.

To create your first conversion, click the +Conversion button.

Name your conversion something besides ‘Conversion #1’. Phrases like ‘Lead Submitted’ or ‘Transaction Completed’ are a good bet when getting started.

Keep your Source as a Webpage, and save the changes.

After saving your changes, the next item up is to choose your Conversion category.

Conversions are grouped by Purchase/Sale, Signup, Lead, or View of a key page.

Select the category that applies best to the goal you want visitors to complete.

After the category has been selected, choose the Markup Language for your conversion coding. Most advertisers will stay with the defaulted HTML, but if your site is coded in CHTML, XHTML, or WML, there are options for that as well.

Save your changes and move on to the final step:

Determine whether you will make the site changes on your own or if someone else will make those changes.

Then your code will populate and look something like this:

This code needs to be pasted between the <body> and </body> tags of the page you want to track. It is crucial that the page you choose to track is only reachable by visitors who complete you goal.

For most businesses, this is a thank you or confirmation page hit directly after submitting contact information or completing a purchase.

Click Done to complete the setup process.

Once the coding has been added in the appropriate place on the correct page on your site, your work is done.

2.  Linking AdWords and Google Analytics

For some businesses, simple AdWords conversion tracking may be enough to get by. However, partnering your Google Analytics profile with your AdWords account can open up a vast amount of insight that takes your tracking to the next level.

By linking these two accounts, advertisers can access AdWords traffic site usage metrics like average time on site, pages/visit, and bounce rate.

More importantly, for e-commerce businesses with the appropriate analytics tracking code on site, advertisers can track revenue figures directly traced to visitors who click on their ads.

With that kind of data, advertisers can see exactly how much money goes in and how much they earn from their paid search effort.

To get started, click the Tools and Analysis tab across the green stripe in the AdWords interface, then click Google Analytics.

Next, click the Admin tab in the upper right hand corner of the interface.

Then click the account which holds your active Google Analytics profile.

Locate your active profile, and click the corresponding star to the left of the profile name. Do not click the profile name.

After the profile star is highlighted, click the Data Sources tab.

Then click Link Accounts.

The final step in the process is to make sure your ads are auto-tagged and that your active profile is selected.

Click Continue to complete the process and finalize the linking between your AdWords and Analytics accounts.

Now that your AdWords and Analytics accounts are married, you are ready to roll.

With a soundly built account and the proper conversion tracking in place, the management portion of your work begins – which is where all the fun happens.

Having trouble implementing AdWords conversion code or linking your Google Analytics account?

Feel free to ask questions or provide insights in the comments.

Now, here’s the whole, tragic story:

What happened

I’m a pretty empirical guy. I like my numbers. They’re comforting.

So, when the realization dawns that data we all depend on is a big, fat chunk of steaming camel manure, I get a little…

Perturbed.

This week, Google Webmaster Tools has me reaching for the Valium, when a little bit of math proved GWT query data is said pile of recycled camel snacks.

How it happened

I built a tool that downloads Google Webmaster Tools web queries every night: A little bit of geeky goodness that made me smile, and let us archive query data for more than 90, 60 or 30 days, or 12 hours or whatever the next policy change brings.

Then I pulled all that data together and, in what may be the single stupidest idea ever, decided to compare the Webmaster Tools query data to analytics query data.

Here’s what I did:

1. Picked 5 clients with overall organic traffic ranging from 3,000 visits/month up to 2,000,000 visits/month.
2. Imported the Google Webmaster Tools (GWT – I’m sick of typing it) data into Excel.
3. Dumped all terms with ‘<10’ clicks.
4. Did the same with the analytics search data.
5. Calculated the average ‘not provided’ impact for each client.
6. Used that impact to attempt to adjust the GWT click numbers.
7. Measured the percentage error by keyword.

The result

Oh. My. Gods. The best result was an average 40% error. The worst? A client using Omniture who had a whopping 149% average error. Here’s a histogram. It’s not pretty:

When I saw this result, I tried a few different things:

I pulled GWT query data that includes all queries, instead of just web queries. That made the result even worse. The average percent error rose, with the best result at 45%, and the worst at over 170%.

Next, I checked data accuracy by date for a single domain. It turns out that GWT query data isn’t even consistently wrong. Over time, data accuracy for a single domain fluctuates wildly:

That’s one domain, measured every few days.

Random points

1. There were an equal number of instances where GWT was too high and too low. So this isn’t about GWT or the analytics tools over- or under-counting. It’s random.
2. I used clients in industries ranging from publishing to e-commerce.
3. I was utterly sober while doing this math.

My questions

OK, Google, or Avinash, or someone, answer me this:

1. Am I just doing it wrong? Please tell me I’m just doing it wrong. Please?
2. If I’m right, why even show this data to us? It has zero value as a relative measure. As an absolute measure it’s worth a bit less than an NSA privacy agreement.
3. Again, if I’m right, where does this data come from? Inebriated gnomes? A bunch of Atari 2600s managed by chimps? Or are you rolling a pile of dice?
4. If I measure a single keyword over time, am I going to see the same kind of randomness? I’m not sure I could take it, so I’ll refrain. Just curious.

With that, I’ll return to my room, sit down on the floor, grab my knees and rock gently to and fro while humming tunelessly in a minor key.

The only problem is that Google releases roughly five billion changes to AdWords every day or two (a rough guesstimate on my part). With only so many hours in the day to watch Twitter for new product announcements, it’s really easy for something to go unnoticed or slip through the cracks every now and again.

For instance, I was rather surprised one day when, while doing research for a client, I did a search on Google and found this.

Did you catch that? No?

How about now?

So am I the only one who missed this one?* You can target sites like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter in your Sitelinks Extensions!

*I’m totally not by the way, I asked all of my coworkers and they hadn’t heard either.

Third party sitelinks still need to follow the same rules as normal sitelinks (unique pages, accurate descriptions, no linking to downloads, etc.) but can lead to any of the social media properties listed.

You’re not always going to want to direct users away from your main site, but third party sitelinks can be an extra tool in your PPC arsenal. Using them to gain likes or followers is a start, but what about other possibilities? Running a contest on Facebook? Let people searching for your brand know about it. Hosting a branded hangout? Send users to your Google+ page. Customer support search? How about sending them to your Twitter profile?

Enhanced campaigns also add an extra level of versatility and accountability to the equation. Enhanced sitelinks bring with them better reporting and ad group level targeting. You’ll know exactly how well your third party sitelinks are performing and whether the investment is worth it.

How about you? Did you already know about third party sitelinks? How have you been using them?

The undead are white hot these days. From the “Walking Dead” to “World War Z,” zombies have hit the mainstream—they’re everywhere. Some talk about a Zombie Apocalypse as if it’s a forgone conclusion. A friend recently told me he’s shopping for a new vehicle, and it needs to be a four-wheel drive SUV so he can outrun the zombies.

The recent growth of the non-living community includes what I call “Content Zombies”—online content that’s had the life and meaning sucked out of it, but continues to shamble along on corporate Websites and blogs. Content zombies will relentlessly pursue you, groaning their dead messages in your ear. Then they will try to eat your brains.

Technology companies seem to have a penchant for creating content zombies. Here are just a couple of examples from some tech sites. (Note: I’ve inserted the word “Foo” instead of the actual company or product name).

“Tomorrow starts here. Explore what happens when we wake up the world … Each day, more and more people, process, data and things join what we call the Internet of Foo things. And as we wake up the world, amazing things will happen.”

You don’t have to tell me twice: you’re gonna wake up the world! With Internet things!

“Foo Corporation is focused on enabling health systems and payers to drive continuous improvements in care. Foo software helps healthcare professionals across care settings to use data to gain critical insights, collaborate with each other and with patients, and to develop and implement innovative care solutions.”

No idea what that really means, but I’m glad the insights are critical and the improvements continuous.

Confession: in my past, I’ve unleashed a few content zombies. Not by choice. It pains me to think of how the carefully crafted prose I (or another writer) created was often tortured into empty phrases without real story or utility, all so it could “snap to messaging.” Many times, content zombies are born out of ambiguous, bureaucratic approval processes. We’ll talk about how to battle that horror another day. Today, I want to share three tips to help you fight content zombification:

1.  Start with your audience

And not only start with them, stay with and end with them, too. Arm yourself with data about your audience so you craft content based on what they want and need.

Website tools such as Google Analytics, Webtrends, or Site Catalyst can provide metrics about your site’s audience, including geographies, referring traffic sources (direct, organic search, paid search, etc.), the time spent on specific pages of your site, and in some cases, social activities.

If you have a product or marketing team, awesome! See if they have customer profiles, audience segmentation data, or personas they can share with you. Your content’s substance, tone, and structure should all reflect your audience at the center.

2.  Stop selling

Stay focused on what will be most helpful to your readers, not what your organization feels it absolutely must say to sell its products and services, the company, its executives and culture, or its point of view.

Too often, online content gets worked over by marketers or executives, resulting in marketing or corporate speak that isn’t clear, and thus sounds as fake and foreign as it really is. You want your content to be so clear, useful, and entertaining that your audience will not only stay on your site or blog to read it, they’ll bookmark it, comment on it, and share it with their social networks—in other words, they’ll engage.

You’re not going to see someone sharing content that sounds like corporate decay: “Dude, check out the synergistic innovation on this ‘About Us’ page!”

3.  Make your content compellingly readable

You have just a few seconds to capture your reader’s attention online. This means you need to be catchy yet precise—tell people upfront what they’ll get in exchange for their time. There are a few ways to help you make sure your content is scanable and readable. Our content team advocates these best practices:

• Start with the unexpected. Need a unique title or content idea? Check out our Content Idea Generator.
• Avoid the “Wall of Words”—an off-putting, dense Web page of words without imagery, sidebars or other visual breaks for the reader. If your content is several paragraphs long, break up the text using full-width images, but also sub-headlines, bulleted or nested lists, pull quotes, and sidebars.
• Keep sentences to 13-14 words in length and paragraphs to six or seven lines. Use the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests or similar tools to help you measure how readable your content is by complexity and grade level.

I hope you find these tips useful—let me know what you think. Please share your own content zombie stories. I also hope you have your “bug-out bag” ready to go for the coming global zombie plague. Be careful out there, content creators.

Post #1: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Account Structure

Post #2: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Understanding your Campaign Settings

Post #3: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Keywords

Post #4: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Crafting Engaging AdsThere are several different types of ad extensions you can utilize in AdWords. Each one offers a unique way for you to provide potential customers with additional information such as phone numbers, directions, or services about your business, right from your ad.

Adding ad extensions is one of the quickest and easiest ways to give your click through rate a boost. They are simple to set up and do not cost you anything extra. Extensions are a great win-win that can help you build a successful PPC campaign.

Some of the different ad extensions include call extensions, location extensions, sitelink extensions, social extensions, product extensions, and more.

In this post, we will go over a few key ad extensions, the features they offer, and how to get them up and running in your campaigns today.

Sitelink Extensions

Sitelink extensions allow you to provide a list of additional links to pages on your website right from your ad.These extra links allow your ad to take up more real estate in the SERP, as well provide a customer with options so they can get straight to what they were looking for with less clicks.

To add sitelinks simply select a campaign, click the Ad Extensions tabs, and select Sitelink Extensions from the View drop-down menu.From here you can create new sitelinks by clicking the +New Sitelink button. You will need to craft link text (the title that will be displayed in your ad) and set a destination URL for each link you wish to create.

You can create two to six sitelinks for each campaign (you can create ad group level sitelinks as well with enhanced campaigns).  Try to stick with an even number of sitelinks to help ensure they format nicely and the way you intend.

Call Extensions

Call extensions allow your phone number to display directly in the ad. AdWords does not allow you to put phone numbers in your ad text, so if your business relies on customers to call in, this is a great resource. Call extensions can also be scheduled to show only at certain times of the day (so you can set them up to show only when someone will be there to answer the phone).

To set up call extensions, select Call Extensions from the View drop-down menu under the Ad Extensions tab. They are very simple to set up, only requiring your phone number.

When setting up new call extensions, you have a few features to pick from – the main one being whether to utilize Google forwarding phone numbers. Google forwarding numbers allow you to have access to call reporting which, depending on your business, may be a good way to track AdWords conversions. Google forwarding numbers are Google’s way of charging you per call a user makes. When enabled, AdWords generates a forwarding number that will be displayed in your ads instead of your actual phone number, thus allowing Google to track calls.I suggest enabling Google forwarding phone numbers. The call data is very useful for tracking number of calls and call durations, and is worth the price of a click in most cases.

Location Extensions

Location extensions allow you to list your business’s address in your ads. There are a couple of different ways you can get your address to show. If you have a Google Places account for your business, you can link that up so your ads will pull in information directly from there. If you don’t have a Google Places account, you can manually add new addresses.

To set up, select Locations from the View drop-down menu under the Ad Extensions tab. If you have Google Places, link your account to a campaign by clicking Addresses from Google Places and selecting the correct account (if you are not already logged in you will be prompted to do so).

If you do not have Places, select Manually Entered Addresses and +New extension. You can then enter in your business information and apply it to all of your campaigns.Once entered, your address could appear in a similar format to this ad:There a few other types of ad extensions. Learn more about the various ad extensions by visiting Google’s AdWords Help Center.

After you get all of your ad extensions set up, your account should be ready to start showing ads.

Watch out next Friday for our final post on tracking the success of your AdWords account.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments.

If you’re like me, 10, 11, 40 times a day you mentally slam your head in a drawer and say “That was STUPID.”

That’s the wrong word. 99.99999% of the time, you can replace ‘stupid’ with ‘experimenting.’ You didn’t do whatever it was that blew up in your face, failed, imploded, left wreckage in its wake or otherwise went all to pieces because you’re dumb. You did it because you’re trying stuff.

Somewhere around age 5 we start a lifelong course of training in fear of experiments. An experiment usually requires a bunch of failures before you get a success. We’re taught to hate that. When it fails, you kick yourself. When it succeeds, you move on. That’s all wrong.

If you’re an internet marketer — or if you do just about anything else for a living, nowadays — there’s no instruction manual. All you have to work with is experiments.

You may think you can find some crusty veteran of the marketing wars like me to give you advice. But our industry is so new even the pioneers have very little historical data to go on. So whatever you do, you’re going to be experimenting.

I know lots of entrepreneurs sound the ‘you must fail to succeed’ horn. That’s not my message. My message is that it’s all relative, and you’re not stupid. Nor did you do something stupid. So stop using the word on yourself.

The word ‘stupid’ belongs to this kind of idiocy:

The car in the photo drove by me at 15 miles per hour. I was trying to get the license plate so I could call the police, but I failed. My most charitable explanation: The child has horrifying mental powers, and has erased the facial features of the last 100 adults that tried to get her to NOT hang out the window of a moving car while on a freeway.

Seems unlikely. So the adult risking their child’s life to avoid a tantrum qualifies as ‘stupid.’ She has set the bar for all of us, and the bar is high. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re no dummy.

It wasn’t pretty, and there wasn’t much to it, but it did help me keep a better eye on my PLA campaigns and improve them short-term.

The dashboard looked like this:

Since then, Google Analytics has introduced a ton of new features to their dashboard framework. And there’s a lot more we can glean about our PLA campaigns because of it.

In light of that, I built a new and improved PLA dashboard:

What are the biggest changes?

Mainly the strip in the middle, but we’ll go through all the widgets step-by-step.

PLA ROI

The bottom line should never be at the bottom of your dashboard. It should be the first thing you see. So the ROI block is top left.

Make sure your return doesn’t go topsy-turvy and stay focused on your sales goals.

PLA Location

New to this dashboard is a revenue by location map. If you’re doing business nationwide, or even in different countries, it’s important to know where your PLA sales are coming from so that you can bid more by GEO for profitable regions.

This widget can be modified to look at different countries beyond just the US.

PLA CTR

While revenue is still king in this dashboard, impressions and click-through are vital to succeed in PLAs – so there’s a big block dedicated to that.

PLA Ad Content

Which of your PLA promotional messages are capturing the most audience buy-in? You’ll never need to wonder with the revenue by ad content pie chart.

PLA Campaigns

Sometimes it’s hard to know how much budget to give a PLA campaign – especially if you’re just testing it out, or if you have multiple campaigns for different product categories.

With this bar chart, you can visualize the revenue brought in by all your PLA campaigns segmented by ad group.

PLA Products

Much like the original PLA dashboard, knowing your most popular products are key. It’ll help demonstrate where your product title and categorization efforts have yielded sales, and help you apply that logic to other groups of products in your feed.

PLA Queries

But my personal favorite will still be the matched search queries. Getting to this report in Google Analytics takes a lot of extra segmentation that many of us don’t have time for with every single client.

Here, you can see the top 10 PLA search queries by revenue, excluding your brand.

Install & Configure the PLA Dashboard

Here’s the dashboard.

Much like the last one, there are some assumptions:

• First, that you have AdWords and Analytics joined at the hip and you’re using Auto-Tagging, or that you know what a UTM variable is and you’re manually tagging your ads.
• Second, the AdWords Campaign name you’re housing PLAs in is appended with either “PLA” or “Product Listing”.

If you’re not doing the former, fix your tagging! This isn’t the dark ages. You need to know what’s working to be successful in paid search.

If you’re not doing the latter, there’s a regular expression (RegEx) in each widget that looks like this: (PLA|Product Listing|Custom)

All you have to do is replace “Custom” in the RegEx to whatever your PLA campaign naming convention is. For example: (PLA|Product Listing|My Campaign)

Update this, click “Save” and you’ll have a fully-functioning, PLA-aware dashboard!

Post #1: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Account Structure

Post #2: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Understanding your Campaign Settings

Post #3: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Keywords

Crafting engaging ads is vital to the success of your AdWords campaign. Ads need to be informative, eye catching, and relevant to what a customer is searching for. Ads that are bland are easily overlooked, while ads with irrelevant ad copy can result in wasteful clicks from unqualified customers.

In this post, we will dissect an AdWords search network text ad, while providing some best practices that could make you a ton of money.

Ad structure

Text ads are broken up into five main sections, each with their own rules and restrictions. Every ad has a headline, two separate description lines, a display URL, and a destination URL.

Headlines are the most prominent part of your ad and are the part that a customer will actually be clicking on. This means headlines for each ad should include important keywords that are relevant to search queries. You have limited space to get the attention of a customer as Google only allows for 25 characters in the headline.

Description lines are a little longer than headlines, allowing for 35 characters per line. These two lines give you an opportunity to sell your product or service to a customer. These lines are comparable to an elevator pitch. You may only have the attention of a potential customer for a second, so you need to make that second count by using strong calls to action, convincing them to click your ad instead of the one right above or below.

Display and destination URLs

Each text ad has two separate URLs, the display and the destination URL. The display URL is what a customer will see when viewing your ad. Display URLs can be customized to further explain where exactly the ad is sending the customer. They must be 35 characters or less and contain the same domain as the destination URL. By making clear and descriptive display URLs you can reduce wasteful clicks from unqualified customers.

The destination URL is the actual URL where your customers will be sent when they click your ad. They are behind the scenes of your ad, as customers do not see them. It is important to select a destination URL that will serve as a strong landing page, enticing customers to convert. There are many factors that contribute to strong landing pages. Here are a few tips for making your landing page more successful.

Best practices

When crafting your ads, it is important to follow a few best practices that will help your ads look clean and clickable.

Always use title case and proper punctuation. AdWords allows you to use question marks and exclamation points, but not in excess (one exclamation point per ad – use it wisely). In most cases, use punctuation at the end of each description line to ensure that your ads will flow the way you intended, no matter how they get formatted.

There are many different ways to go about crafting great ad content. You can make your ad edgy, playful, direct, informative, etc… To decide which approach works best for your business, you should run A/B ad tests. Create about four ads for every ad group that utilize different calls to action and highlight different aspects of your product or service. Allow them to run at the same time so you can get a feel for what is working and what isn’t.

After you have crafted strong and engaging ads, it is time to start digging a little deeper into more advanced settings by setting up ad extensions.

Watch out next Friday for our next post on setting up and utilizing ad extensions!

Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments.

Post #1: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Account Structure

Post #2: Building Successful Low Budget PPC: Understanding your Campaign Settings

If the account structure is the backbone of your AdWords account, then keywords are the blood running through its veins. Building a descriptive keyword list that closely represents your product will give life to your account, put your ads in front of a relevant audience, and reduce wasteful spending. You may ask yourself: Which keywords should I bid on? How much should I bid? What’s a match type?

In this post, we explain some techniques for building a keyword list that will keep your account alive and performing well.

Finding keywords

When building out your initial keyword list, you should try and put yourself in the shoes of your customers. I like to ask myself “What would my mom search for?” Qualified customers that you want to target are searching on Google because they have a specific problem or want. Your keywords should reflect that want in the same way that your product should be their solution.

There are many different tools out there to help you expand your keyword list from a few core keywords to a fully developed list. In AdWords, you can use the Keyword Tool:

The Keyword Tool will take a list of existing keywords or your website URL and generate new related keyword ideas that you probably didn’t think of the first time brainstorming.

There are many other tools out there to find new keywords. A couple of my favorite research tools are Google search suggest and the “searches related to” tool. These are tools right in the Google search engine itself.

With Google search suggest you can type a keyword into Google and then simply take note of the more long-tail keywords that Google suggests to you. Chances are there are a few frequently searched terms right there for the taking.

Searches related to that can be found at the bottom of the search results page.

Match types

Now that you have an initial keyword list, you need to set appropriate match types for all of your new keywords. There are three main match types to select from: broad, phrase, and exact.

Broad match is the default for all keywords. When a keyword is set on broad match, AdWords will show your ads when someone searches for that keyword as well as some slight variations of that keyword.

When in phrase match, ads will only show when that exact phrase is searched but will allow for additional words before or after the keyword (i.e. “buy steak online”).

Exact match (i.e. [buy steak online]) limits your ads to only show when the search query is exactly the same as the keyword with no additional words.

There is no right or wrong time for each match type. In general, it is best to be as specific as possible. So utilize phrase and exact match when applicable to prevent gaining excess impressions from unqualified customers.

After you upload your first list

Once you have your keywords uploaded into AdWords, there are a couple of other useful features in AdWords for finding additional keywords, missed keyword opportunities, and negative keywords.

In AdWords under the keywords tab, you can find new keyword suggestions by clicking the green Add Keywords button. After your keywords have run for a short period of time, you can click on Keyword details > All to find a list of search queries that have trigged an ad in the past. This is called the Search Query Report. This list of queries is a great resource for finding new keywords you should be bidding on, as well as negative keywords that are irrelevant and should be excluded.

Setting Bids

The final step left is setting your bids. A great tool for deciding how much to bid initially is the AdWords Traffic Estimator.

With this tool you can enter in groups of keywords and AdWords will give you an estimate for how many clicks you can expect depending on your bid. You will get a graph that looks something like this:

From this you can determine an appropriate starting bid for that keyword group.

Based off of the keywords I entered to generate this graph, I would start my bidding near $1.50-$2.00 because that is the point where increased bids stops yielding higher click totals.

After you have strong keyword lists built and uploaded into your account, it’s time to start crafting your ads.

Watch out next Friday for our next post on best practices for building your first PPC account!

Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments.