Although money plays an integral part of running an AdWords campaign, you quickly realize that the keywords you choose play a more important roll as to how your campaign’s perform.
If you choose the wrong keywords, you may realize that much of it turns into high cost hot air.
Using the right keywords, will help ensure that you pay less per click and most importantly, AdWords will produce the results you want.
The problem is, where do you find those right keywords?
Here is a list of various keyword sources that I regularly use:
The AdWords keyword tool and the new AdWords keyword planner:
Both of these are found within your AdWords account and can be very helpful at getting keyword ideas started. Each of these tools works by entering one or more seed keywords and then it returns additional related terms. Even if you don’t have a clue where to start, each of these tools has a feature that can pull keyword ideas from web pages or from predefined product categories.
Your own or your competitor’s websites:
They are packed with keyword ideas. You can manually extract keywords from web pages or you can use the AdWords keyword tool. If your website has a search form, have a look at the searches people are performing daily on your website and target those terms.
Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools:
Both of these accounts can be a great sources of keyword ideas, however there are some issues with the data that needs to be taken into consideration. Much of the organic search traffic from Google nowadays is being categorized within Google Analytics as Not Provided. If most of your website visitors are logged into Google, you will see a higher percentage of Not Provided. Google Webmaster Tools has some additional keyword data, however it’s not a complete picture. Even if you did have that complete picture these tools will only tell you what you’re already receiving traffic for and not the keyword ideas that could potentially result in more traffic at a lower cost per click. That being said, you may still wish to target your current organic search traffic within AdWords where you will have more control over your messaging and where that traffic lands on your site.
Google search:
Once I find some initial keywords, I try them in Google search. I use the Google Instant / Google Suggest feature to see what else people might see as they are searching Google. Übersuggest is an interesting tool that taps into this aspect of Google. I also review the keywords in the organic and paid results in order to get additional keyword ideas.
AdWords search terms report:
You must not forget this report that’s found right within AdWords itself. If you’ve been running an AdWords campaign for a while, have keywords that are not just exact match and have never looked at the search terms report, you’re probably sitting on a goldmine. The search terms report is packed with keywords and many of them are not the ones you bid on in the first place. The report gives you insight into how Google are expanding on your keywords as well as ideas for negative keywords.
Third party keyword tools such as SEMRush:
Depending on your budget, third party tools can be useful for that third party perspective. I’m currently using SEMRush which can produce some interesting results.
Don’t just fuel your AdWords campaigns with money. Give them what they really need; the right keywords.
