PPC Keywords: How to Find, Select & Organize Them!

When it comes to PPC Management, having a properly structured and well optimized Campaign is the difference between meeting your ROI goals or exceeding them or, worst case, never meeting your goals at all. I have come across many accounts with only one Campaign and one Ad Group; this is only going to only work if you are just offering one particular service or product, and there is only one term that people are using to find that particular service or product. Usually, as it turns out, that is not the case. Having one Ad Group with 30 to 1000 keywords in it is like having a bedroom with a closet that hasn’t been cleaned out in 5 years (there’s a lot of junk in it that you don’t need, things you should get rid of because they don’t work anymore, and a few select items that you actually do want to keep).
If your account is set-up like that messy closet (One Campaign, with One Ad Group, and too many Keywords), then your ads are not going to be optimized, the landing page you choose to send people to is most certainly not going to be adequate, and overall your entire account is going to be penalized with low quality scores and higher CPCs.
Find, Select, Organize: Three key points in putting together your Keyword lists and structuring your account. You want to be able to optimize your ads for the Keywords you select and you want to be able to send them to a Landing Page where they will find specifically what they were searching for.
Find:
Keyword Research – this must be completed before you ever start structuring a Campaign.

  • Look around, see what terms people are using to find similar products and services
  • See what your competitors are doing (identify who your competitors are!)
  • Use Keyword tools to help build out your list
  • Determine who your target market is and which channels are best for reaching them.

Select:
Narrow it down!

  • Eliminate the ones you know you can’t use or shouldn’t use, and select the ones that you feel best represent your service or product
  • You want to stay away from one-word Keywords

Organize:
Categories are very important, you want to have tightly structured, well- grouped keywords.

  • Select the Keywords that represent each different product or service, then separate them into individual Campaigns
  • Break those Campaigns into Ad Groups – Each Ad Groups should be structured around tightly-themed Keywords

Use Broad, Phrase and Exact Matches to start off with and eliminate based on performance

  • The Broad match modifier is a great addition to AdWords, this feature lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match, and a lot more control than broad match
  • To use the broad match modifier place a + in front of each word in the Keyword (Example: +nike +shoes) , there should be no spaces between the plus sign and the words.

In short, knowing who your audience is and what search terms they are using to find you is important. Just as important is placing them into tightly-themed Ad Groups so your Campaign is well optimized and structured for success (those messy closets can be time-consuming,confusing, and costly).
Find, Select, Organize and your Campaigns will be on their way to reaching their maximum performance!

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