Keyword selection for the uninitiated

This week I read an article by Sandy Parish about the importance of keyword selection strategy. It posed the question that new-to-search-marketing people might ask, which is: Do I use specific terms or do I use broad terms. She elaborated on the virtues of modified broad terms. I agree with her point, that if you are considering broad terms then modify them to be more relevant to your specific offering.

For instance, say you are selling a book and it happened to be a police drama. The broad term for search would be “books.” The modified broad terms would be “police drama books” or “drama books” or “literature drama”. You get the idea…there are many ways to go. You use the modified terms, arrange your ad copy accordingly, and your relevance goes up, your cost goes down and or positioning improves.

In addition to the modified broad match approach, we can offer those new to online marketing (in particular, search), even more guidance. The underlying premise being:

Start with the basics, the obvious; limit your financial exposure and move on from there.

For those of us who have been in the game for a while the term “basics” has a broader scope, and greater financial exposure is less risky, being mitigated by our experience. For the truly new, consider the following.

Keyword selection
Start with the narrow, but don’t ignore the broad (I’ll explain later). Use company name, brand, product, style, model, etc. For example, you’re a retail store selling shirts. Pick your top sellers and start a list. Think both in terms of how the products are marketed and how consumers talk about them. The apparel industry talks about “dress” shirts, but if consumers refers to them as ‘long sleeved’ or ‘business’ shirts, then use these terms as well. Your list might look something like this (abridged):

Company:    My Shirt Shop
Product:    Dress Shirt
Brands:     Boss, Faconnable, Ike Behar.
Styles:     Classic Dress, Tailored Dress,
Patterns:   Solid, Stripe, checked,
Colors:     blue, red, white, pink…

Obviously, your attributes and ultimate list will depend on the product or service you’re marketing.

Then, mix and match in a way that is logical to your industry and products. This could get quite long. The engines have keyword suggestion tools that you can use. However, when it comes to developing a comprehensive list, you know your business, don’t underestimate yourself.

Examples of mix and match:
Boss Classic Dress Shirt
Faconnable tailored dress shirt
Ike Behar blue solid tailored dress shirt
My Shirt Shop Shirt

As I mentioned, this can get long, that is why you start by limiting the scope to your best sellers (remember, this is for those new to search).

Ad Copy
Each of these keywords should be set in like groups so that ad copy can be tailored to them. For instance all keywords / phrases with “Boss” & “Blue” in one ad group, so the ad copy can include these terms and be relevant to all keywords. How far you take this is up to you. Technically, the farther you take it, the more relevant your ads will be and the better your results will be. Also, the destination URL should be to a page that is as close to the keyword / ad copy as possible. Don’t send them to a “shirt” page if you have a “Boss Shirt” page. Relevancy is the key to efficiency in search.

Now the question comes in, what about the keyword “shirt” or “dress shirt” as the modified broad. Here is my advice. Use them. But, limit your financial exposure. Create separate campaigns for these keywords, and cap the daily spend to an amount you are willing to invest in learning. With a CPC of $0.50, capping your daily spend at $10 gives you 20 clicks a day, 600 in a month with a spend of $300. During this time, you can adjust ad copy for relevance to improve results and move the CPC. Before the month is out, you should know if the conversions at $0.50 (or any other amount) are enough to justify the cost. These numbers are simply for demonstration, but the principle applies at $0.10 or $2.50 CPC.

In reality, this same principle applies to the entire program. Segment it, cap the campaigns at reasonable amounts and adjust the CPC and copy to make the program profitable on a per click basis. Then, when you have the CPC range set, lift your daily cap.

Now, expand to new keywords, monitor, adjust, expand again, monitor, adjust….you get it.

One of the quandaries posed by Sandy was that a too limited keyword set would not drive enough traffic. I would pose that the long term view should be taken. Set a foundation of good practices that can be scaled and the volume will come.