Google AdWords
Convert Casual Surfers Into Customers
By Esoos Bobnar
www.searchenginehelp.com
Originally Published: January 2005
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4. Start General, But Work Towards Greater Specificity.
Typically, you'll start out with the most general keywords and phrases. These are the easiest to think of and usually generate the most traffic. However, as the brainstorming process continues, you should be searching for increasingly targeted and niche terms.
The best keywords will be those that generate a high volume of impressions but have little or no competition because they have somehow been overlooked or are too specific (there are still a surprising number of these left), or else none of your competitors are able to stay in that space because they cannot get sufficient click-thru due to poor ad copy.
One way to find these niche keywords is to check your site's referral logs. Referrals coming from search engines will include the query that a searcher used to find your site. People will often search using some very unusual search queries - terms that you and your competitors might never think to bid on. Once again, this can give you a leg up on the competition, even in competitive fields, by enabling you to capitalize on more specific and more targeted keywords.
5. Convert Casual Surfers Into Customers
Don't just focus on keywords that shoppers might search for. What about all of those
non-shoppers
out there on the internet? Think about how many times you've been surfing the 'net and ended up buying something that caught your eye even when you originally had no intention of going online specifically to make a purchase. Perhaps you were just looking for the score to last night's basketball game and you ended up buying a pair of Nike tennis shoes because the price was right.
A contrived example, perhaps, but the point is that people type all sorts of terms into search engines without any intention of buying anything. However, if your ad catches their eye and you have a solution to their problem, then some of those people could be converting to sales at a very low cost per click because your competitors never thought to bid on those bargain keywords. The trick is to find terms that target your audience but aren't so general they also bring in reams of untargeted traffic.
Time-sensitive industry buzzwords or news headlines can also bring in the non-shoppers, at least for a while. At one time, the phrase
florida update
was a great term to bid on for companies selling search engine optimization services. Nonsensical to outsiders, but if you were running an online business during November of 2003 when Google radically adjusted its ranking algorithm, I suspect you spent quite a bit of time thinking about that phrase.
As another example, consider the headlines that were generated by the brawl that occurred in late 2004 during a basketball game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons. A time-sensitive phrase like
pistons pacers fight
might have been a great way to cheaply attract customers to a site that sells sports merchandise.
6. Use Action Words.
Again, try to think about the way customers conduct searches. Many of your customers will search by using action words such as buy, find, or purchase. Append these types of words to your primary keywords (go ahead, break out the thesaurus - just make sure you stick to search words people actually use). Now your list will grow to include such terms as:
|
buy cell phone
buy cellphone
buy cell-phone
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find cell phone
find cellphone
find cell-phone
|
...you get the picture.
Many searchers will also phrase their queries in the form of a question. For instance, the query where can I buy a cell phone actually gets a fair amount of traffic. As you grow your keyword list, consider using questions for which your site and your products or services provide a solution.
Continued:
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Continued From:
<<< Cover All Your Keyword Variations
Editor's Note:
See also:
Successful Advertising with Google AdWords
eBook
Copyright 2005 by Planet Ocean, reprinted with permission.
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