Are you using the right keywords in your PPC campaign?

Many times when PPC campaigns are built, a common question that is asked is what keywords should be used? Should you start with a short list or a long list of keywords? It actually depends on your budget and how much traffic you want to drive to your site.

If you start off with a short list of highly relevant keywords, you don’t waste very much money on your campaign. For example, as an Internet marketing firm, if we used the keyword phrase Internet marketing firm, we would attract high converting traffic because the keyword is so highly relevant. The disadvantage of using a short list of only highly relevant keywords is that, in many cases, you will not be able to drive a high volume of traffic. And it takes longer to learn about other keywords that could be delivering traffic to your site and converting.

The advantage of using a longer list of keywords is that you can drive more traffic to your site and learn what keywords are converting for you. The obvious disadvantage is that it costs more and you do waste some money in the short-term as you learn which keywords are not converting for you.

Use Head, Mid, and Long Tail Keywords
We often notice that when people are developing a list of keywords for a PPC campaign, they outline a list of keywords that come to mind, which is perfectly natural. And these keywords primarily consist of head and mid tail keywords. Head and mid tail keywords consist of one and two to three keywords respectively. One important thing to keep in mind is that long tail keywords that are searched a small number of times add up to a greater number of searches than the most popular head and mid tail keywords. So, if you are looking to drive a high volume of traffic in a short period of time, you want to target a lot of words, not just the most popular ones.

The reason why this is important to understand is because depending on your offer and the type of traffic you want to generate, you want to use different types of keywords. If you are looking for prospects that are performing initial research, you want to use one to two keywords, as they will be performing a general search. For example, if a prospect wants to understand SEO, they would likely use a broad search term such as SEO to learn more and perform research about what SEO is. If you are looking for prospects who are considering making a purchase, you are going to want to use keywords that are between two to three keywords because their searches are going to be more specific. If you are looking for prospects that are ready to make a purchase decision, you are going to want to go after keyword phrases that contain three or more keywords. For example, SEO services toronto.

Develop a List of Negative Keywords
You also want to develop a list of negative keywords if you are using broad match or phrase match keywords to ensure that you are not bidding on keywords that are not relevant to what you do.

Stay tuned for our PPC eBook, which will be available shortly. If you have any questions about the use of keyword phrases for your PPC campaign, please ask. We’d be happy to help.