Generating Lists Of Keywords

There’s a big contradiction in PPC at the moment. In general, the more specific a keyword is, the more likely the visitor is to convert (as the searcher has a better idea of what they want, and is likely to be further along the decision-making and buying process), and as a result, the more you should be able to pay per click.

This is sensible, because the cost per conversion can be expressed as:

Cost per Conversion = Cost Per Click / Conversion Rate.

So, the higher the conversion rate is, the more you can pay per click, and still get an acceptable cost per conversion.

As a result, you’d expect the bids on specific terms that convert well to be higher than for more generic terms. But in fact, the opposite is true.

If, for example, you were to bid £0.25 per click for “Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T100S”, your advert would appear much higher than if you were to bid the same amount for “Digital Camera”.

There are a few possible reasons for this. The more generic a term is, the more traffic it will generate. It’s possible that companies feel that it’s worth bidding more for these terms, hoping to make the extra spend back on volume of sales. I can’t advise you strongly enough not to go down this road…

Alternatively, it could simply be that fewer companies are bidding on the more detailed terms, as many companies do not feel inclined to put in the work involved for low volumes of traffic. But as these are the most profitable terms (high conversion rate, low cost), this is short-sighted on their part.

Whatever the reasons, this is the current situation, and you need to know how to make the most of it.

Clearly, attacking this ‘long-tail’ of keywords should be a priority, whatever your situation. And it applies to almost all areas of online retail – a search for “estate agents In Manchester” is more likely to convert than a simple search for “estate agents”, and a search for “14 inch blue widgets” will convert better than “portable widgets”.

So the first step should be to list your products or services in their entirety. Then consider words that should or could mean the same.

In the example above, your product was:

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T100S

But people may also search for

Once you’ve done this for all of your products, you need to consider the next level up, if there is one.

So for the above example, you might want

Next, you repeat it for the next level up again (if there is one).

And again…

Next, look for possible mis-spellings. For example, Cyber-Shot could be spelled Cybershot or Cyber Shot quite easily. And DSC-T100S could be written DSC T100S or DSCT100S, or even just DSC-T100.

You may not want to bid on the last few terms, unless you’ve got a very large budget to spend. The conversion rate is likely to be poor, since people searching for Digital Cameras don’t know which camera they want, how much it’ll cost or even what features they are looking for. These people are looking for information first and foremost, and will probably bounce around a few different websites deciding what they are looking for. If you’re going to make a success of these terms, you probably want to have a lot of comparison information and product reviews and the suchlike. If you can persuade people to make their decisions based on the information on your website, then you can still get a respectable conversion rate. Personally, I’d steer clear of them, at least until you’ve got a stable, profitable campaign…

On top of these keywords, you may want to add keywords with certain features, e.g.

Bear in mind that if you’re planning on bidding on these terms, you need a landing page that’s appropriate.

If you start out with all of these keywords, you can always trim them back once you can see which keywords are working and which ones aren’t.

Page last updated by Steve Baker on May 11, 2008 at 7:07 pm.

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2 Responses to “Generating Lists Of Keywords”

  1. Dan P.

    i am good with tweaking adgroups… but i’m very weak on how to plan the overall strategy, and how to get it started…

    I’ve read that a good method is to create one adgroup and just throw in broad terms, then mine log files to get a feel for the market…

    this only works for a few hours though… alas. what to do.?

  2. Steve Baker

    I’d always recommend using exact and phrase match, even if you include broad match as well.

    To create a list of keywords, I always start by listing the products or services that I offer, along with any regional terms if I am looking at a company that only operates in one area.

    After that, it depends on what type of business I am looking at. I’ve given an example of how I would build a keyword list for a technology retailer.

    For somebody that sold clothing (for example) my approach would be a bit different, as I would list other words that meant roughly the same as what I sold. For example, if I sold t-shirts, I would also want to bid on tops, polo shirts, vests etc.

    Then I would combine these terms with brand names, and generate a list of keywords that way.

    If I was advertising a service like a plumber or an estate agent, the keyword list would be much shorter – there are not that many phrases that people search for if they want a local plumber! For estate agents, there are slightly more, as you can list the areas that they cover, whether they have houses to sell or rent, whether they have flats/apartments, and so on.

    So every keyword list has to be built slightly differently.

    I wouldn’t recommend putting every keyword into a single group to begin with – I always create the Adgroups first, then use them to create my keyword list.

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