Choosing the Right Keywords for Maximum ROI
Choosing the right keywords for maximum ROI
Today, for a company or ad agency to be truly successful in search engine marketing (SEM), choosing the right keywords that people are actually typing into Overture or the other search engines can mean the difference between a very rewarding online ad campaign, or one that fails miserably.
However, it is fortunate that selecting the right keywords that will drive targeted and qualified sales leads to your website is a fairly simple exercise. Using Overture, Google’s AdWords or any other similar PPC program, marketers can easily delete keywords that don’t produce the desired results, add new ones or modify the ones that currently exist, by simply accessing their accounts at any of these search engines. Companies can even experiment with certain keywords if they so desire, in an attempt at producing the maximum ROI.
Nevertheless, the initial start-up phase still needs close observation and requires a careful monitoring of the first results. The wrong set of keywords can seriously hamper the overall success of any online ad campaign, not to mention the frustration and the waste of time and resources. Additionally, launch an ad campaign with the wrong keywords and your PPC costs can quickly drive up a bill to levels you never taught possible. If an initial campaign only attracts casual browsers or “lookers” and not serious buyers, you should carefully review all of the keywords you originally selected.
In search engine marketing, keywords fall into two very distinctive and main groups:
1. Generic keywords
2. Branded keywords
How to manage generic keywords
As a rule, managing branded keywords is usually simpler than managing generic keywords, although this doesn’t mean it’s impossible, on the contrary. If your site visitors or prospective clients aren’t familiar with the brand names or trademarks of your company, then you will have to concentrate on generic (or organic) keywords for your website.
For companies or subsidiaries that wish to expand into new market segments, even they will need to concentrate in promoting keywords that will be directly connected with their business, but that may not be names of specific trademarks, service marks or traditional brand names.
The secret in managing generic keywords is to avoid keywords that are too broad. For example, if you are in the travel industry, the keyword ‘travel’ would much too broad. Is it air travel, by car, by boat, what? You would need to narrow it down further, in an effort to avoid what is called ‘junk traffic’. Junk traffic is determined by traffic that has no value to you, but that you will still need to pay for if you rely on pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-for-performance (PFP).
Generic keywords by topics
Most likely, your website is about one single topic or subject. Usually, in any corporate website, you have one major topic, along with a few subtopics, or secondary themes. Let’s take the example of a company offering travel packages to sun-filled beaches in the south. One effective way to group subtopics and make them keywords that you can advertise could be: Caribbean Travel, Pacific Travel, Florida Travel, Gulf of Mexico Travel, etc.
What’s important to remember here is, when writing up your keywords, think of what people would type in a search engine to find that nice sunny beach. A great tool to help you with this would be Wordtracker, or the free keyword suggestion tool at Overture.
How to manage branded keywords
The best way to manage branded keywords is to start with your company name, its products, services, trademarks, service marks or brand names if you have any. Since your company is the only one using a specific trademark or brand name, a good idea is to only bid the minimum price asked by the search engine you are using. There is no sense in bidding more for it, since your brand or trademark should always be unique and exclusive to your company.
In fact, since no other company is competing for the same search terms you will be using, this just explains why well-known branded keywords deliver such high returns on investment (ROI). Still, you should make certain that your branded keywords are really being searched by people, again using Wordtracker or the free keyword suggestion tool at Overture.
Trademarks and brand names
Surprisingly, a large number of companies don’t bid on their own trademarks or brand names. In fact, I still hear a lot of executives at large Fortune 500 companies say their brand is well recognized and they don’t need to bid on them. This is a very big mistake, since they are loosing out on very targeted traffic, and what’s more, that traffic costs very little, since they should be paying the minimum acceptable bid for it.
If you don’t believe me on this, try typing some well-known trademarks or brand names in Google or Yahoo and notice the large amount of them that don’t even appear on the first results pages, in the generic (or organic) listings.
Domain names
Sadly, it may not always be possible to register a Web domain name (URL) that matches your company name, trademark, service mark or brand name. To protect your own brand, you should register all domain name extensions. For example, you should register the .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc. extensions and have them all point to your website, using a 301 re-direct command.
For example, I know for a fact that many large chemical companies usually register their domain names, as soon as a new chemical product or trademark is about to be marketed. Additionally, if they have two or three sub-products they are manufacturing, and all those sub-products will carry different brand names, they will also register all of those domain names too.
Conclusion
Choosing the right keywords in search engine marketing isn’t difficult and can be done rather quickly once you understand the basics. What’s more, carefully selecting the right keywords that real people type in search engines will significantly increase your ROI.
Gain valuable market share at the expense of your competition, and boost your sales and increase your profits by implementing the right keyword strategy in your search engine marketing. If you follow the advice offered in this article, you should be well on your way of achieving these goals.
Reference: ‘Search Engine Advertising’ by Catherine Seda. 347 pages.
New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. 46240.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
