Crush Adwords: How to Build a Better Keyword List (Part 2 of 5)

This is the one thing that few people I’ve talked to really know how to do effectively. When they choose keywords, most people pick the keywords they can think of, and let Google suggest similar keywords. Then they throw them all out there and pray for the best. Some create a survey and send it out to an impromptu focus group, asking people what keywords they would search for if they were looking for the information/product/service you’re offering. This seems like a pretty smart idea, but a brief discussion with any behavioral psychologist will tell you that people are notoriously bad at predicting what they would do in a hypothetical situation. Especially one they care nothing about (they’re more likely to tell you what the think you want to hear).

That’s the bad news. The good news is, by spending a half-hour to hour on the front end, you can not only know HOW people are searching for your offering, you’ll know HOW OFTEN they are searching specific phrases. And you can even use this technique to determine the PROBLEMS they are trying to solve, which will help you in writing your ads and landing pages, later.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:
The first thing you’re going to do is visit SEObook.com’s Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. [http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/] (bookmark this link, right now!). Let’s take a hypothetical. Let’s say you’re selling a weight loss product. Type “weight loss” into the box and click “submit,” and you see that “weightloss” gets 7,500+ searches per day, total, with over 5,000 of those coming from Google.

IS IT WORTH IT?
Now, if you click that number of Google searches, it will take you to the actual search results page, where you’ll see 102 MILLION search results. Seems like the potential for a lot of traffic, right? But on the right of the page, you’ll see the current google ads for that keyword phrase. Click “More Sponsored Links,” and you’ll find that there are 81 pages of possible ads for this keyword phrase, for a total nearing 975 ads competing for this phrase.

Chances are, this keyword would be an expensive bid. Let’s try again.

DIG A LITTLE DEEPER
If you select “Weight Loss Tips,” you’ll see that it gets 900+ daily searches in Google. There are 2 million search results, still promising for traffic. And there are only 19 pages of ads, for a grand total of 216 competing ads. That’s a huge improvement…but I think we can do better. Let’s keep trying.

Quick Weight Loss Tips: 269 Google Searches; 750,000 searhc results; only 144 competing ads. Even better.

Free Weight Loss Meal Plans: 125 Google Searches; 300,000 search results; just 31 competing ads.

VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE
Now, go back to the keyword tool search box and enter “lose weight.” A subtle variation. You can do the same thing, but if you look at the suggestions, and check out “best way to lose weight.”

386 Google searches. 900,000 search results. Just 8—that’s right EIGHT—competing ads.

HOW ‘BOUT THEM APPLES?
You see how powerful this tool can be? You can go into AdWords already knowing which keywords you want, how often those keywords are searched, AND how much competition you’ll have. Now all that’s left is to price the keywords. With a little time on the front end, you could completely ignore “weight loss” as a keyword, which I’m sure would cost you several dollars per click to rank in the top 10, versus the top 3, (which should be your goal). Instead, you could get 15 or 25 keywords that pull 150-500 daily searches each, and place for MUCH less…and have a good idea of how many impressions you’ll get.

TOMORROW I’m going to give you a bit of a tutorial on creating your landing page (we have to know where we’re sending them, right?).

Stay tuned…
[PHOTO CREDIT: Source – sxc.hu