Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 82. Generate Google AdWords

You've written the copy and
you've planned the budget. Now, what keywords are
you going to use for your ad?

You've read about it and you've
thought about it and you're ready to buy one of
Google's
AdWords.
You've even got your copy together and you feel
pretty confident about it. You've only got one
problem now: figuring out your keywords, the search words that will
trigger your AdWord to appear.

You're probably buying into the AdWords program on a
budget, and you definitely want to make every penny count. Choosing
the right keywords means that your ad will have a higher
click-through rate. Thankfully, the Google AdWords program allows you
to do a lot of tweaking, so if your first choices
don't work, experiment, test, and test some more!

7.5.1. Choosing AdWords

So where do you get the search keywords for your ad? There are four
places that might help you find them:

Log files
Examine your site's log files. How are people
finding your site now? What words are they using? What search engines
are they using? Are the words they're using too
general to be used for AdWords? If you look at your log files, you
can get an idea of how people who are interested in your content are
finding your site. (If they weren't interested in
your content, why would they visit?)
Examine your own site
If you have an internal search engine, check its logs. What are
people searching for once they get to your site? Are there any common
misspellings that you could use as an AdWord? Are there any common
phrases that you could use?

Brainstorm
What do people think of when they look at your site? What keywords do
you want them to think of? Brainstorm about the product
that's most closely associated with your site. What
words come up?

Imagine someone goes to a store and asks about your products. How are
they going to ask? What words would they use? Consider all the
different ways someone could look for or ask about your product or
service, and then consider if there's a set of words
or a phrase that pops up over and over again.

Glossaries
If you've brainstormed until wax dribbles out your
ears but you're no closer to coming up with words
relevant to your site or product, visit some online glossaries to jog
your brain. The Glossarist (http://www.glossarist.com) links to hundreds
of glossaries on hundreds of different subjects. Check and see if
they have a glossary relevant to your product or service, and see if
you can pull some words from there.

7.5.2. Exploring Your Competitors' AdWords

Once you've got a reasonable list of potential
keywords for your ad, take them and run them in the Google search
engine. Google rotates advertisements based on the spending cap for
each campaign, so even after running a search three or four times,
you may see different advertisements each time. Use the AdWords
scraper to save these ads to a file and review them later.

If you find a potential keyword that apparently contains no
advertisements, make a note. When you're ready to
buy an AdWord, you'll have to check its frequency;
it might not be searched often enough to be a lucrative keyword for
you. But if it is, you've found a potential
advertising spot with no other ads competing for
searchers' attentions.