March 2010 – Feature: Build an Effective PPC Keyword Database–In Four Steps!

Properly Structured, a Keyword Database–Unlike a Mere Keyword List–Organizes More Keywords and Can Easily Identify Those Most Relevant and Valuable For Any Campaign.

By Larry Kim

Most search marketers are still building pay-per-click campaigns from keyword lists, a practice that isn’t doing their business any favors. Even if you’re a master of Excel, a spreadsheet is an inefficient and outdated way to manage keywords for PPC, leading to time and money wasted.

The keyword database is a totally different approach to PPC keyword research, and has many advantages over a keyword list:

• It’s private and proprietary, unlike lists generated by third-party tools;
• It’s easier to organize and manage than a static spreadsheet, supporting smart relationships among data sets;
• It’s easier to update, encouraging expansion over time so your campaigns can grow;
• It’s actionable, so you don’t just analyze your keywords, you take steps to get better results; and
• It’s collaborative, so multiple members of your team can work simultaneously toward a common goal.

Essentially, a keyword database is a flexible infrastructure that enables you to work with many more keywords, keep them organized and quickly determine which pockets of keywords are most relevant and valuable. It’s basically a ready-made PPC campaign structure.

Though it’s something of a paradigm shift, building a keyword database isn’t unduly difficult, and you’ll find that as your campaigns scale, it’s much faster and easier to keep things running smoothly. Here’s the basic process in four steps.

Step 1: Start Finding Your Keywords
The most important part of a keyword database is, obviously, the keywords themselves. To build a comprehensive, up-to-date database, it’s vital to look at keyword discovery as an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. Ideally, this will entail aggregating keywords from these multiple sources over time:

Public keyword tools – Web-based keyword suggestion tools are most useful when your site is relatively new or when you’re branching into new areas; they can also be helpful for competitive research. These tools, for the most part, show you the popular, high-traffic keywords related to a given topic.

Just remember that overall popularity doesn’t guarantee relevance to your audience, so you’ll need to prove out these suggestions in your campaigns.

Historical site logs - Your website’s server logs are a terrific source of keyword data, and are often underused. These logs contain a record of the real search phrases that people have used to find your site. Combining this private data with public keyword suggestions will give you a much more complete picture of the terminology your visitors and prospective customers are using.

Web analytics - This is where the “up-to-date” part comes in. The keyword reports in your analytics application provide you with a continuous stream of new keywords. Take advantage of those insights! Incorporate these new keywords into your research.

Search query reports - Likewise, stay on top of the search query reports in AdWords Editor. These tell you the actual search queries that have triggered your ads (and they may surprise you).

Pooling these sources will give you a personalized database that is highly relevant to your business–far more so than a purchased keyword list or a static spreadsheet of generic results from a keyword tool. And keeping your research up-to-date with traffic stats (the number of visitors driven to your site by each keyword) and associated goal data (sales and other conversions triggered by each keyword) will allow you to see which keywords and types of keywords really work for you–regardless of what’s most popular according to Google or Wordtracker. Those highly effective keywords are obviously the ones that are going to drive the most value in your pay-per-click campaigns.

Step 2: Group and Organize Your Keywords
Better keyword research is the first step toward more profitable PPC campaigns, but to reap the full benefits of your research, it’s crucial to group and organize those keywords based on semantic relevance. Beyond simply making your life easier, segmenting your database into small, manageable groups of closely related keywords will improve your SEM campaigns in a number of ways:

Better landing pages - It’s easier to write specific, informative web copy around tightly knit keyword groups, and your landing pages will have better chances of ranking high in the SERPS.

Better text ads - Similarly, it’s much easier to write relevant, compelling ad text around close-knit ad groups. Your keyword group structure will translate into your Google AdWords ad groups.

More clicks and conversions - More specific, relevant web pages and ads target a more qualified audience, so they’re more clickable and ultimately result in more sales.

Increased Quality Score - High click-through rates and demonstrated relevance contribute to a higher Quality Score, so you’ll pay less for better ad positions and more qualified impressions.

Especially as your campaigns scale–and as you delve into the long tail–keyword grouping becomes an indispensable tool for PPC management. So how do you actually do it? That’s an article of its own, but here are some quick tips for organizing keywords into a logical taxonomy:

Start with large, top-level groups – Top-level keyword groups for businesses are usually built around a product or service you provide–typically one word and a noun, like “coffee” or “landscaping.”

Segment your top-level groups into narrower subgroups - Second-level groups often include a modifier that specifies the offering in question (e.g., “Colombian coffee”). Continue to segment as needed so your keyword groups are small, targeted and easily manageable.

Finally, you’ll also want to make use of keyword grouping tools when you need a little help (like WordStream’s Free Keyword Grouper). This makes quick work of what would otherwise be a cumbersome manual process.

Once your database is organized into a meaningful structure, everything else you do for PPC–from incorporating new keywords to writing ads to managing bids–will be easier to manage.

Step 3: Discover Negative Keywords and Eliminate Waste
Better keyword research helps you identify opportunities–namely, pockets of related keywords that represent potential profit. But to keep your return on investment from PPC high, you also need to identify waste. Most likely, a significant percentage of your daily AdWords spend is wasted on keywords that match your ads but aren’t really relevant.

Say you’re running a paid search campaign for a computer supply store, and you have an ad set to trigger on “monitor”-related search queries. Using the broad match option is a great way to capture traffic from long-tail keywords you might not think of on your own, like “best price on flat-screen monitors.” But you definitely don’t want your ad to match for irrelevant phrases like “baby monitors” and “hall monitor”–those useless impressions will quickly drag down your click-through rate and Quality Score, driving PPC costs up.

Your budget will go a lot farther–ratcheting up ROI–if you make use of negative keywords. Here are four ways to find negative keywords:

Generic negative keyword lists - Pre-assembled lists of negative keywords are a way to get started on building a list. The downside lies in the term “generic.” Generic negative keywords may not apply to your specific niche. In addition, many potential negative keywords are likely to be missing.

Keyword research - You can find negative keywords while you’re conducting regular keyword research; just keep your eyes open for keyword suggestions that aren’t relevant to your business. For example, in WordStream’s free keyword tool, one of the top keyword suggestions for “monitor” is “heart monitor.”

Search query reports – A third way to find negative keywords is to look at your search query reports in AdWords. This report shows you the actual search queries that are triggering your PPC ads (as well as the match type, number of impressions, number of clicks, CTR and other relevant information). It’s a good idea to comb through these regularly and eliminate any irrelevant keywords from your ad groups. This method is more thorough than the above options, because it’s based on real data from your own PPC account.

Your organic log files - Your own log files are an excellent source of potential negative keywords. These files keep a record of every phrase that drives a visitor from a search engine to your site. There’s one main advantage to this method of negative keyword discovery over search query reports: You can catch negative keywords before they trigger your ads. (And as a best practice, you should eliminate irrelevant keywords from your organic keyword research as well.)

At this point you’ll have a highly organized and streamlined keyword database, which takes care of most of the work entailed in creating high-performance PPC campaigns.

Step 4: Create Strong, Targeted Text Ads
Now that you’ve segmented your database into small, clean, tightly related groups, the next step is to write text ads for each group. Because your ad groups are already highly targeted, it should be relatively easy to write strong, targeted ads.

Here are some tips for writing PPC ad copy that works:

• Include the most value-driving keywords from the group, whenever possible, in the title, text and display URL of the ad. This increases its relevance and clickability;
• Be specific – know which segment of your audience you’re targeting ahead of time. (Again, your keyword group structure should make this simple.);
• Write multiple ads for each ad group for testing purposes, between three and five ads. Google will cycle the ads and you can see which one performs best and then use that ad going forward. Pay attention to what kind of language works with your audience; and
• Be sure to include a call to action so people know what you want them to do. (You’ve heard the line “Don’t make me think,” right?)

In addition, it’s important that your ads are demonstrably relevant to their associated landing pages. Don’t write a targeted ad about a niche product and send visitors to your home page. This too affects your Quality Score.

Maintain Your Gains
Remember, one of the benefits of a keyword database is the ability to grow your campaigns without losing control of your keywords. So once your database and your campaigns are in place, keep monitoring, keep testing and keep tweaking to improve results. And keep discovering keywords! When your customers type something into a search box, they’re revealing their habits and their needs. Listen and learn from them, and put that knowledge back into your campaigns.

Larry Kim is founder and VP of marketing and products at Wordstream, a provider of keyword management solutions for PPC and SEO. He can be reached at lkim@wordstream.com.