Keyword research is a very important part of the process of running a successful pay-per-click campaign. If you only run ads for broad, heavily searched phrases related to your business, you will likely be competing against lots of other businesses, and bids may be quite high. But if you expand your view and seek more “long-tail” terms, you will face less competition, and clicks to your site will cost less.
“Long-tail” terms are less-trafficked search phrases that are more specific than broad, general phrases. In addition to being less competitive, and thus less expensive to bid on, they have another bid advantage. Often, they indicate a searcher who is farther along in the buying process. For example, the keyword “tennis shoes” indicates that the user is searching for information on tennis shoes, but may not have any particular brand in mind. However, the keyword “Nike Air Max 360” is an indication of a user who searching for a specific brand of shoes. The searcher using the more specific keyword is likely further along in the buying process.
Our favorite tool for finding keywords is Nichebot.com. You provide the tool with a keyword and it returns a list of related keywords, along with traffic and competition information for each one. Clicking on a keyword in the list of returned results will generate a new list of keywords similar to the one you clicked. You can use it to drill down through keywords and come up with lots of keywords you may not have thought of. But to use the tool to its maximum effectiveness, you need to come up with unique keywords to start with.
Think of all the different ways someone might search for information related to your products or services. For example, if you sell wedding dresses, you might want to research keywords related to tuxedos, limousine services, wedding and engagement rings, locations for weddings, how to conduct a wedding, etc. And of course keywords related to specific brands and products in your inventory. Running all of those kinds of keywords through a keyword tool like Nichebot will reveal many more keywords you can use in your PPC campaign.
If you would like some help conducting keyword research for your pay-per-click campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.