Google AdWords: Keywords, Ad Writing and Landing Pages
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In the last article we covered the basics of Google AdWords. In this one we'll touch on keyword research, writing ads, ad elements and landing pages. This is the second part of a four-part series.
Targeting the Right Prospects with Keyword Research
The best prospects to target on AdWords and other pay-per-click platforms are people who are one step away from the purchase. These people have already made up their minds and are ready to give out their credit card numbers. Those searchers use long, targeted, and very specific keyword phrases, in many cases with low search volume. The trick is finding those keywords and positioning your ad on the top spot for the click.
Keyword Research
In this section we'll discuss the creation of focused keyword lists to target on AdWords. I personally like two tools for my keyword research:
Tool from Google is effective at finding core and subtopic terms, but pretty weak when it comes to terms with low search volume. WordTracker, on the other hand, is ideal for spotting targeted search terms with low search volume (long tail, in other words). Also, check out Google's search-based keyword tool.
Finding Core Terms - Our example, "digital camera," is a core term. It's very broad and has 30 million searches per month. We need to drill down and find less expensive terms, with a higher conversion rate.
Enter the core term (in our case "digital camera") into Google Tool and select ALL phrases that reflect your offers. Sometimes you'll spot over 50 keywords. Copy them all to a spread sheet. To keep things simple (in this article), we'll use five keywords (five is not enough for a real PPC campaign, however). The keywords I chose are:
buy digital camera
mini digital camera
digital slr camera
nikon digital camera
canon digital camera
Those keywords show a subtopic of our target market. Instead of targeting "digital cameras," we now target people who want to: buy digital cameras; buy mini cameras; get slr cameras; and get Nikon and Canon cameras. Depending on inventory (real or digital), you will usually have at least 10 subtopics similar to the ones above (usually more).
Take the keywords we just found and plug them into Google Tool one by one to segment further. At this point you can start using WordTracker.
buy digital camera
mini digital camera
digital slr camera
nikon digital camera
canon digital camera
buy cheap digital camera
innovage mini digital camera
buy digital slr camera
buy nikon digital camera
buy canon digital camera
buy panasonic digital camera
precision mini digital camera
best digital slr camera
cheap nikon digital camera
cheap canon digital camera
buy digital video camera
smart mini digital camera
digital slr camera canon
nikon d70 digital camera
refurbished canon digital camera
buy digital cameras online
dual mode mini digital camera
nikon digital slr camera
new nikon digital camera
canon digital slr camera
During PPC campaigns you will end up with long keyword lists, several hundred/thousand in size, but we're keeping it simple in this article.
Once you have a secondary keyword list, go ahead and do more searches with Google Tool and WordTracker. You won't get many more, but you will spot several highly-targeted, low search volume keywords. Put them into your spreadsheet.
Keep in mind that WordTracker gets data from Dogpile and Metacrawler that hold around one percent of the search engine market share. Whenever WordTracker's tracker gives 1 as the search count, multiply it by 60 to get the Google estimate.
Google Optimization 
