Pay-Per-Click Keywords Focus

An April 2009 survey asked readers of the Practical Ecommerce website to rate advertising strategies for effectiveness.

The respondents overwhelmingly selected pay per click advertising as the hands down best way to advertise on the Internet, with seventy-nine percent labeling pay per click advertising as effective or very effective.

As a result, Internet retailers are placing the majority of their advertising budgets into pay per click advertising. If you, as an online retailer are doing the same, it makes sense to be sure that your pay per click advertising is working as optimally as possible. Here are some thoughts about key word use that may help you to fine tune your approach.

Housekeeping Errors

It is always possible to make small mistakes when completing all of the housekeeping tasks associated with running a pay per click campaign. Unfortunately, small mistakes can lead to large losses. Here are two common errors to watch out for.

Incorrect keyword lists

If you have a long list of keywords that you are working with, be certain that the list is absolutely correct. It is easy enough to misspell something or simply add a bad term. One way to pick up spelling errors is to sort your list alphabetically then go through it. Errors are much more easily found. Also, incorrect terms are more likely to jump out at you if they are separate from all of the other similar keyword phrases by alphabetizing.

Negative keywords

It is also easy to overlook housekeeping details such as copying negative keyword lists from campaign to campaign, and that is a big mistake because negative keywords can help to narrow your audience to those that you want to have clicking on your ads. For example, if you are selling genuine Jimmy Choo handbags, you will want to use negative keywords such as Look alike, knock off and replica. If buyers are looking for handbags similar to Jimmy Choo, they are not likely to pay the price for your authentic fashion article.

Campaign Construction

Take advantage of the tools that are available to you to help tailor your ad in front of the right Internet buyers.

Phrase match and Exact Match

Google Adwords gives you the tools to limit the exposure of your ad to a more narrowly defined segment by using special instruction tools. For example, you can limit ad appearance to situations where the exact phrase is matched by putting [square brackets] around the phrase you want to use for exact match.

For example, If you sell only hand sewn Amish quilts, you do not want to attract people looking for quilts in general because your Amish quilts will probably be unattractively priced. You may want an exact match.

Or, alternatively, since your potential customer may want an Amish quilt and may be persuaded to purchase a hand sewn quilt versus a machine made Amish quilt, you may want a phrase match for Amish quilt (Designate phrase match by using quotation marks.) with extra words allowed. In this way, you are attracting all those interested in Amish quilting without filtering out people who may think they want something machine stitched but could be convinced to spend the extra money on a quilt that is completely made by hand.

Disincentives for Clicking

If you sell high end products and you simply do not want clicks from bargain shoppers, consider adding a price range to your pay per click ad to make it clear that you only want people who find that price range acceptable to click.

As you can see, some of the strategy with respect to keywords relates to reducing traffic to only qualified prospects.