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Keyword Selection
The first concept to wrap your brain around is that a keyword or key phrase (hereinafter
called "keyword") has different relevance depending on the PPC Engine that you're
bidding at, as well as the price you're bidding on.
Let's revisit the example of a company that specializes in wedding flower arrangements.
One of the keywords that you would be consider to be most relevant to them is "flower
arrangements". As you'll recall from the "Choosing the right search engine" page in
his tutorial, there are 2 basic types of PPC search engines: General Purpose PPCs of
varying sizes, and Niche PPCs both independent and openPPC Powered. Putting yourself in
the persona of a bride looking for someone to handle the florals for her wedding, go
to overture and search for flower arrangements
[link].
Not much help. Same goes for
FindWhat.com,
Google,
Kanoodle,
AltaVista,
and every other major, general interest search engine.
Now, head to BridalClicks, a Wedding Industry Specific PPC Search engine and
run the same search.
Bingo. Exactly what the bride is looking for.
The lesson to be learned here is that when you're bidding at a non-targeted/general
interest PPC Search engine, you have to be more specific with your keyword selection.
In this example, a bid on the keyword "flower arrangements" is a colossal waste of
money at any search engine other than Bridal Clicks. People searching for that
keyword at a major PPC are likely looking not for the wedding specific arrangements
that you provide, but more traditional flowers by mail. Any clicks that you'd get
on that word (at a pretty high bid price from the looks of the search results) would
be a complete waste, as these people are certainly not looking for what you have
to sell. Similarly, at the Niche PPC, that same keyword is extremely relevant to
what the searcher is looking for, and you have a much higher chance of converting
that visitor due to the fact that they are searching not only for the product that
you provide, but that they are searching for it from a search engine that
services their exact needs.
Bidding Intelligently
So, remaining in this example, we'd recommend that the wedding flower guy bid as follows:
On the major and general interest PPCs...
- wedding flowers
- wedding flower arrangements
- bridal flowers
- groom corsage
- ....
At bridalclicks.com, the openPPC Wedding Category or any other wedding
specific PPC Search Engine...
- flowers
- flower arrangements
- corsage
- ....
As you can see from the above recommendations, when bidding in a niche,
you don't have to qualify your keywords, because the generic form of your
term is inherently relevant due to the built-in targeting of the search
engine. On the general interest engines, drop all of your bids that
are even a little bit generic, and qualify them, as we've done in this
example. This will screen out the drive bys, and target only the people
that are really searching for what you sell. To re-iterate ...
Don't waste your time or your money on unfocused keywords at the
general interest engines. These will cost you nothing but money, and
will result in lots of un targeted traffic.
You'll notice that
the more targeted your keywords are, the higher your conversion rates will be.
Visitors coming to an online automotive supply store after searching for
"1972 GTO Clutch" are more likely to purchase that clutch from you than those
that searched for "GTO" or "clutch". It's important to be as specific as you
can, and as diverse as you can to get the right response. In this case, we'd
recommend that you bid on "1972 GTO Clutch", "Clutch for 1972 GTO", "1972
Pontiac GTO Clutch", etc. Not everyone is going to search for what you bid
on, so you'll have to anticipate a little bit. One of the best ways to
figure these types of things out on your own is to examine your current
server logs, specifically your referer log, to see how people are finding
you now, from the major spidering engines (Google, Altavista, MSN, etc)
These should be your starting points.
Other things to be aware of, which are of extreme importance are dual-purpose
keywords. These are words and phrases that mean completely different things
depending on the target audience you're trying to reach. For example,
the keyword "high pressure" can mean one thing if you're at an automotive
search engine, something else if you're at a health search engine, and still
something else if you're at a marketing website. Be sure and examine your
keyword list for any words that could take on a different meaning than
what makes sense for your business. If you think that there's the potential
for crossover, we recommend eliminating that word from your bidding arsenal
and replacing it with a qualified version of the word, or perhaps bidding
on that keyword only at a niche specific PPC, to avoid confusion. The best
way to figure this out on your own is to simply do searches at the major
search engines for each of your keywords, and see who else is in the result
set with you. If you're the only one there doing what you do or selling
what you sell ... this is not a good thing. Your competition isn't eliminated
by their absence, they've separated themselves from costly, irrelevant
traffic, and you should do likewise.
Bid Price Points
We must stress the importance, the extreme importance,
of getting your bid prices correct. Every PPC in the world will tell
you that it's imperative to have your listings in one of the top 3 positions
and if you don't, all hell will break loose, and you'll be wasting your money.
That is true only in the case where the searcher is actually searching
from the search engine in question. It's especially true of Niche PPCs.
However, in the mainstream, with the Big Guns, this is one piece of advice
you need to heed carefully. Bids in the 1st - 3rd Positions are fed out
all over the internet. If you're in the top spots, any time that anyone
searches from anywhere, your link is going to show up. This is great if
you run a completely traffic driven business. But if your business depends
on conversion rates and bottom line to be profitable, we recommend bidding
down to number 4 or below on the bigger PPCs. The absolute glut of click
throughs (remember, every click costs you money) you'll receive from
novice internet users at AOL, MSN and the like will drain your PPC accounts
quick, and the ROI on this traffic will most likely not be there to support it.
You should experiment a little bit with this theory on your own, to see
if that type of push is worth it for you to stay in, or if you need to
get out of the big feeds by bidding lower than the # 3 spot.
Price Gaps can kill you.
No matter which position in the search results you intend to target, be it #1
or #4 or 5, ensure, without doubt, that you never bid yourself more than
$0.01 (one penny) above the next bidder in line. The difference between
your bid, and the one below you is called the price gap, and it's significance
on your bottom line is staggering. As an example, assume that on a given
PPC Campaign, one of your keywords is at the #1 spot, bidded at $0.20, $0.05 above
the person at #2 who is at $0.15. Assume further, that you receive 1,000 clicks on that
keyword, and of those 1,000 visitors, you gain 10 new customers at $100.00
each. Your profit on that keyword would be $800.00 ( 1,000 clicks
at $0.20 results in a $200.00 click cost, which is subtracted from the $1,000.00
in sales). Not a bad return. But, if you were to have eliminated the
bid gap, and bid yourself at $0.16 ... you'd still be number 1, but those
same 1,000 clicks would only have cost you $160.00, meaning your profit
on that traffic should be $840.00. That is a significant difference
especially when you consider that #1 bids on most PPCs will generate 10-15,000
click throughs per month. As that number increases, the effects on your
profits become very significant. Bottom line: eliminate your bid gaps,
at all costs. (Note ... in the openPPC system, bid gaps are automatically reduced
for you when you engage our "smart bidding" system).
The goal with PPC is to increase your ROI, not to increase your traffic.
It's more valuable to you, as the PPC advertiser to receive only 10
new visitors in a month if they're all qualified and likely buyers, than
it is to pay for 1,000 visitors a month that found you by mistake.
You can achieve this goal by both bidding smarter at the general interest
PPCs and by seeking out and finding the PPCs that specifically target
your industry, and focusing your keywords at the right audience.
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