When setting up keywords for our PPC campaigns, it is generally a better strategy to set up keywords and ads with as much granularity as possible – in other words, use lots of ads for small sets of related keywords, rather than have a single ad running for lots of keywords. It is also better to use an exact match strategy, if this strategy generates enough clicks. If you cannot generate enough clicks using exact match, then you can switch to broad or phrase match (there are Google terms) ads, which will result in your ad being displayed more often. The reason you want to use exact mach whenever possible is twofold: 1. The ads will be more targeted, since your ads will only be shown to people searching for the exact phrases you specify; and 2. You will save some money on click costs because exact match ads are always shown above broad or phrase match ads.

Since we are arguing that you needs lots of ads representing lots of exact keywords, then you are going to need to generate a lot of relevant keywords. We highly recommend using a tool called NicheBot: http://nichebot.com.

Nichebot will show you a list of similar keywords for any keyword you type in, along with traffic and competition data for the keywords. For each keyword, it will show you how many people searched for the term during some period of time, the number of competing sites (sites that are specifically optimized for the phrase), and the KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index. This data will allow you to rank keywords so you can decide which are the best keywords to target for your web site.

The search engine tools section at http://seobook.com also has a nice keyword tool that uses data pulled from Yahoo’s search inventory. The data also shows the number of searches for each keyword, along with other data such as bid rates.

Here a few more sources of possible keywords:

• product names
• competitor names or competing product names
• URL’s
• names of people associated with your industry
• synonyms

Don’t just rely on keyword tools to show you lists of related keywords. Think of anything and everything that people who have a need for your product or service might search for and use it as a keyword in your campaign. The wonderful thing about Pay-Per-Click marketing is that if you select a keyword that does not generate any traffic, you haven’t lost anything. So you have nothing to lose and lots to gain by experimenting with different keywords, even if they seem wacky.

For help managing your Pay-Per-Click campaign, call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.