This is the first in an occasional series on search engine optimization strategy.
Planning to start a pay-per-click campaign for lead generation or brand awareness? Chances are you don’t have a limitless budget and need to watch the bottom line pretty closely. Ensuring that you get a good breadth of reach without wasting click budget is important. In addition to conversions, having a campaign that hums along can teach you a lot about the words and phrases that resonate with your clients.
All the normal guidelines apply. You should make sure you are bidding for words that aren’t too broad and speak to user intent as well as the specific niche you want to attract. In the case of a campaign focusing on imaging, for example, you wouldn’t want to set broad matched keyword on the term “software.” Why is that? Because there are 33,100 searches for “software” a month – these include searches for “free software downloads,” “software programs,” and “open source software.” People searching for these terms are probably not interested in the imaging software you sell.
But even if you narrow down your keyword terms from the broad to the more specific, you also need to make sure they appear in the right “neighborhoods.” What’s a neighborhood? It’s the group of search results that Google places your keyword in. It associates certain keywords with certain results. For instance, if I type in “accounts payable and receivable” Google associates that with people looking for jobs and job advice as well as what that term means:
Accounts payable and receivable Google search
Do you really want to pay for your ad to appear here? Is your ideal client really looking for information on the difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable? Probably not. So why would you bid for that keyword? Searchers here aren’t ready to purchase an accounts payable document management solution. The above example would be considered a “bad neighborhood.”
Sometimes, though, neighborhoods seem all nice and shiny new when, in fact, they are just painted facades ready to tumble down – costing you money. Look at the below example:
Accounts payable search at first glance
At first glance you can see that there are ads appearing for the same types of products you may be advertising. But look closer – these are ads with keywords bid on by other competitors. Don’t look at these to make your assessment. Instead, look to see what Google is associating these keywords with. You can see that it associates those keywords with educational intent such as “what is accounts payable.” It’s not likely you’ll get a software purchase from a student.
Once you have your draft list of keywords created, it’s time to check your neighborhoods. What indicates a bad neighborhood really depends on your marketing personas. Don’t have marketing personas? No problem. Think of it this way. Who are you trying to attract and what stage of the journey are they on?
Do you want to advertise on search results that list a lot of .edu and Wikipedia listings? Would someone ready to purchase your solution really be looking for definitions? No? Then rule that one out and try a different keyword.
Neighborhoods are one further way you can refine your AdWords campaign and ensure you are spending your dollars in the most strategic way.