Choosing the right keywords for Google Adwords

It’s not uncommon to find yourself a bit lost trying to find the right keywords for your PPC Campaign. When starting unprepared, your search can get overwhelming, quickly. That’s why it’s so important to go in armed and ready with a solid search process to achieve your ultimate goal - an effective campaign. Most people will tell you that in the business of PPC (and specifically Google Adwords), Google’s Keyword Tool is going to be your best friend. While this might be true, it shouldn’t necessarily always be your first move.

BRAINSTORM

The first part of your search keyword process should not be much of a process at all. Instead, go a bit crazy. Think of all the things your potential customers would search for and jot them down, no matter how quirky they might sound. Not only do you want to write down how customers would describe your product or service but also how they would describe a problem that your product or service addresses.

CATEGORIZE

Great, now that you’ve got the “mac-daddy” of all keyword lists sitting in front of you, it’s time to start whittling down. First split them up by groups. Typically this should be done by the different types of product or services you are providing. From there look into those newly created groups and find the keywords for people who are in the last stage buying i.e. they have already obtained information and are aware of what to buy and are simply looking where to buy.

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GOOGLE KEYWORD TOOL

Congratulations, you made it to the Keyword Tool. Here we can start entering the keywords that we came up with and seeing how many people search for them on a monthly basis. We can also start to see how much each will cost us. In a perfect world, we would all have unlimited resources and be able to purchase every single keyword we find. Unfortunately that’s not the case, and all of us will have to work within a particular budget set out in front of us. There are two things to consider when selecting keywords based on cost: 

1. How much is a customer worth to you? 

2. What is your Landing Page (the site your ads are sending people) conversion rate?

Let's say for example, your average customer is worth $2000 (lifetime not one time purchase) and your Landing Page conversion is 1%. This means that for your camapaign to be profitable you will have to select keywords that will cost under $20 per click. If your landing page is not converting very well, you might want to spend some more time on making sure it does. If your landing page hasn’t launched yet, then you won't know your conversion rate yet. If this is the case, keep the campaign from running riot on your budget and try picking a lot of long tail keywords that will be cheaper, higher to convert and easier to monitor. 

When searching through these immense lists of keywords, make sure you filter them down by location. There is no need to be monitoring the search habits of Mongolians, if your business does not offer its products or services in Mongolia. 

GO WITH YOUR GUT

As with most things, you will never really know if your keywords are going to work until you actually try them out. This is another reason why many people get bogged down by their PPC campaigns - there is no magic number or statistic confirming which words they've picked out will actually convert so they continue their search ad nauseam. At a certain point, you have to shut your computer (save your work first) and be confident in the fact that you've done enough research to start your campaign. 

BONUS TIPS

Most people already know to utilize Google’s Keyword Tool to help them plan out their PPC keyword strategy. However, there are also a few other simple tools that you can use to help you find the right keywords for the job:  

• Play with Google "autocomplete" and Google "related searches" on the normal Google website. These will give you similar keywords to the ones you've already found. 
• Use Google Analytics - find out what people are already using to find your site! This is important. If a certain keyword is bringing you lots of traffic but not converting, then you might want to boost your presense there. 
• When in the Brainstorm stage, take a look at forums where your customers tend to congregrage. By reading their comments, you'll be able to better understand your customers' problems. Ipso facto, you'll then be able to find out what they will search in order to solve those problems. 

Did we miss anything? We'd be glad to add your tips to our list (and credit you of course). Just comment below.

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