Keywords
By Erik Wickstrom, Sat Dec 10th

Keywords: They Unlock All The Right Doors

Are you missing out on some great five-cent traffic? Did youknow that by bidding on variations of popular keywords you cangrab hundreds or even thousands of visitors that yourcompetitors didn't even consider?

Why Keywords Are So Important

What is a keyword? The answer is simple... It's what a usertypes when they are searching for something they want on theInternet.

If you want to dress up as Darth Vader and buy the outfitonline, you could go to Google and search for the merchandiseyou need. But what would you type? Maybe Darth Vader Helmet? OrDarth Vader Mask? Or would you type Mask + Darth Vader? Howabout Darth Vader costume or Darth Vader Adult Costume? What ifyou misspelled Darth Vader?

As an online consumer, chances are you would keep typingvariations of what you wanted until you saw what you werelooking for. Well wouldn't it be nice if a company had exactlywhat you wanted and you saw their ad the first time you typedyour query?

As a vendor using Google Adwords, you can't afford to missopportunities like this. If you were selling Darth Vader Masks,you sure don't want your prospect to type Dark Vader Masks andNOT see your ad. Do You?

So, it's important to load up your Ad Groups with keywords thatreal people are typing when searching for things online.

How can you anticipate what people will type? Well, there are afew websites that can help you out. Maybe you've heard of them:Overture and Google.

Many people are familiar with Overture's search term suggestiontool. You can find it here: http://inventory.overture.com. It'sa great tool for estimating demand of specific keywords. You cancompare the number of searches for one keyword with another andyou can also see popular search phrases that contain yourkeyword.

For example, if you type Darth Vader into Overture. Your resultsmay include: darth vader, darth vader costume, darth vaderpicture, darthvader wall paper, darth vader helmet, and so on.Plus you'll see numbers next to each term telling you how manysearches were run with that key word or phrase.

The numbers mayor may not be accurate, but in relation to each other, they giveyou a good benchmark of which phrase is typed more often.

One of the biggest complaints people seem to have withoverture's tool is that it lumps together singulars and pluralsand often alphabetizes the words in a phrase so you don't knowif people are typing "vader helmet" or "helmet vader". Anothercomplaint is that you are not given any results unless theycontain your term (ex. Darth Vader). Therefore, you might missout on keywords containing a synonym for Darth Vader like Anakin.

To help with what Overture lacks, a lot of people are usingGoogle's Keyword Tool found here:https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. It's much morespecific about the order of words, singulars and plurals ANDalso suggests related terms that may or may not contain youroriginal phrase. The downfall that most people mention is thelack of numerical data to give an idea of how many searches areperformed for each term.

A quick use of Google's tool provides similar results toOverture, but also includes terms like lightsaber, anakin,comic, count dooku, and sidious.

If you want the best of both worlds in one spot, you can use atool like WordTracker found here:http://www.theadtool.com/wordtracker. This very useful tool willgive you counts from most search engines, distinguish betweensingular and plural, and offer related terms with their counts.It also provides an index number called KEI to give you an ideaon how competitive certain terms are (mostly for organic searchengine marketing).

Regardless of which tools you use, it's critical that you grabhundreds of keyword variations and put them into your ad groups.If you don't, you're probably missing out on some very lowpriced terms and might even be missing out on what everyone istyping when searching. If you know the story of the insurancecompanies promoting auto insurance instead of car insurance,then you can certainly see the importance of including relatedterms.

About the author:Instantly cut your Google Adwords bid prices by 30% -gauranteed! Visit our site to download your free copy of ourFree Adwords eCourse. keywordresearch