PPC Marketing Begins with A Powerfull Keyword List

Your keyword lists are the root of a good PPC campaign. You should properly research and source quality keywords. Create a good long list. Go deep and go wide, by this I mean investigate every avenue and every avenue off every avenue etc.

Here's a quick example of how to expand your lists by investigating related avenues. In this example I'll use mortgage as the base keyword.

Mortgage is a very competitive keyword on the Net simply because the commissions are so high. So how do you break into the market without paying over the odds?

Create your first list and think of different ways your prospect could interpret mortgage e.g. buy house, bad credit mortgage, best loan, house purchase finance, no status loan, home finance, etc. This really is only slightly removed from the base keyword, you should dig deeper still.

Next try expanding into types of mortgage - flexible, interest only etc. take these and mix them up with your first list, as you do this you'll find avenues of keyword groups present themselves from single keywords e.g. interest only house loan, flexible home finance etc.

You could create an Ad group focused entirely on mortgage company names take that further still and add a .com to the name or a co.uk or your own country extension e.g. www.somemortgagecompany.com.au It doesn't matter if this domain doesn't exist, people type things like this into a search engine so it's possible you can pick up low cost traffic with these keywords.

Avoid the general keywords and dig a little deeper to expand on related terms or, here's a good one, rephrase those terms e.g. turn cheap mortgage around and use mortgage cheap too. Put yourself in your prospects shoes. What would they search for? How would they type it into Google? People don't always type a search phrase in a logical order.

For some quick avenues to explore check out these keyword goldmines - Plurals, domain names, serial numbers, product numbers, spelling errors, no spaces between the phrase words e.g. buywidget. Add .com or .net or .info etc, company names, company domain names, domain names and variations e.g. mydomain.com www.mydomain etc. Add superlatives e.g. best, cheap, cheapest, best buy. Competition site names, foreign words, US or UK spelling, product names, typo's, hyphens instead of spaces.

Be sure to separate out all these keywords in to different lists. You should be setting up different Ad groups for each. It's important to not just drop them all into one campaign together.

Instead place all the typos in one Ad group all the plurals in another and so on. This will make for easietr targeting of your ad writing depending on your Ad groups keywords. Plus tracking results will be simpler.

Another great source for keywords are your site Log files trhey'll tell you exactly what keyphrase has been used to find your site by a visitor.

Search for your main keywords on the search engines and see what related terms pop up. Check the meta tags on your competitors site. Check the copy on your competitors site.

Do you see were this is going. I trust that gives you an idea of the power of going deep and wide on your keyword list building. Remember this is the first building block on which to lay down your PPC management.

Just because it can take less than 15 minutes to set up a PPC campaign doesn't mean you should! Let's look at three common mistakes PPC advertisers make:

1. Choosing the Wrong Keywords
   The wrong keywords deliver too much traffic that doesn't convert, or too few visitors to impact your bottom line. The trick is to choose highly-targeted keywords that are targeted, yet popular enough that you'll get decent traffic without blowing your entire budget in 24 hours.
   
   If you're trying to get visitors to take action on your site, it's mission critical to track your leads or sales at the keyword level. Without knowing which keywords did and did not perform, you won't be able to maximize your advertising profits.
2. Writing Ad Copy that Attracts Non-Buyers
   Generic-sounding copy is terrible, especially for pay-per-click. Something like "we offer business solutions to help your company succeed" is so vague that it's going to attract people who have no use for your company. You'll be paying for wasted clicks.
   
   A worse offense is to over-promote your offer which also attracts non-buyers; the word "free" has to be used carefully for this reason. Make your ad descriptive and compelling so potential customers know what you're selling and get ready to buy before they land on your site.
3. Using a Landing Page that Doesn't Sell
   Do not, I repeat, do not send PPC traffic to your home page. Besides certain exceptions, it's not the most relevant page for the users' search query.
   
   The landing page you send visitors to, and the way it's designed and written, determines if people stay or abandon your site. Design and test your landing pages for optimal conversions.

Successful pay-per-click campaigns start with careful consideration of the basics. New advertisers should take time to plan out their campaign while existing advertisers should optimize these basic ingredients. Protect your profits!