When it comes to trying out random new keywords in paid advertising, be careful…you could inadvertently hurt your Google quality score and cause damage to your entire campaign. Then you’ll be wearing the same expression I was when I ordered what I thought would be a large(ish) chocolate dessert at PF Changs and it was about the size of a quarter. One that had been flattened on the railroad tracks. One that I had to SHARE with my best friend, a known chocoholic. ANYWAY…

Google’s quality score is defined as follows:

“Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page. We believe high quality ads attract more clicks, encourage user trust, and result in better long-term performance. To encourage relevant and successful ads within AdWords, our system defines a Quality Score to set your keyword status, minimum CPC bid, and ad rank for the ad auction.”

Now, what to do if you have a client who is constantly telling you to “try these new phrases!” and won’t take no for an answer? Can adding tons of poor-quality keywords to a Google ads campaign actually be as bad as Johnny Marr joining Modest Mouse? Yes I KNOW they are considered to be a good band but still…it makes me shudder and swat at imaginary flies.

Here’s why your Google ads quality score is so important:
If it’s high, your minimum cost per click is lower than it would be otherwise. That might not seem like such a big deal until you consider the fact that a large PPC campaign that generally receives 500 clicks per day could save $50 per day by a minimum CPC that was just $0.10 lower due to a better quality score. That’s around $1500 a month in savings which equates to 375 raspberry mocha lattes. Keywords with low quality scores can also be listed as inactive for search, which means you have to either pay more per click to get them listed or you have to improve the quality score of that keyword by making your ad text more relevant or improving your landing page.

It gets weird here…there is ANOTHER quality score that Google uses to determine ad position. Google says this quality score “differs slightly from the keyword Quality Score used to determine your ad’s minimum CPC bid requirement.” This quality score takes into account how well your ad has performed previously. If you’ve gotten a high clickthrough rate, you have a fantastic landing page, and you’re converting like mad, this quality score will be higher and you will most likely be number 1 for a keyword when you’re paying for the top spot. If you’re paying for the top spot and your quality score is lower than the other guy paying for that privilege, you’re going to be number 2 if your ads are on at the same time.

So, the overall point of this is that when you’re running paid ads in Google or anywhere else, don’t assume that you can just slap some keywords up there and adjust your bids every few days and do NOTHING ELSE. Running a successful paid ad campaign takes a lot of hands-on time. Many people assume that it’s simply a matter of money, that if they’re willing to pay $30 per click for the keyword “really good Robbie Williams albums” they will be number 1 in Google constantly, and they’ll sell a ton of these (obviously non-existent) albums. It doesn’t work that way. Obviously no one will search for “really good Robbie Williams albums” and I cannot imagine that anyone has a landing page devoted to this horror.

Let me close by saying that the information I’ve given comes from the Adwords site mostly. I always recommend that you read authority sources to see what they say, then read everything else you can find on the topic. Many times, the opinions of people outside certain entities (such as Google) will be the ones that really help you out.

For more information on this incredibly riveting topic, here are a few links:

How Is My Keyword’s Quality Score Used?

How Do I Know What My Quality Score Is?

The Buzz On Google Quality Score Changes

Google Quality Score Myths and Truths

Yes, I know I should post a lot more often, but (without making too many excuses) I’m juggling a few too many things in the air at the moment, and days just keep slipping by… tut-tut!

OK, now down to business. I wanted to touch on a few topics related to keyword list building in general. Actually I’m about to talk more towards the PPC end of things, and hopefully one of my fellow Chicks will churp in (see what I did there) for the SEO part if relevant.

So I wanted to ask you - where do you find your precious keyword (kwd) “gold dust” these days?

With all these new kwd tools coming out of the wood work, each one claiming to be a lot better than the previous, how do you decide what to use? I’m primarily a marketer, and while I enjoy watching companies in competition trump each other’s offers, I also know for a fact that most of them are just rehashed versions of an old version…

So - I wanted to start a community vote of sorts - and prompt you to share how you find your kwds (give us all your secrets *grin*).

Here is my list of where and why’s - feel free to churp in with your ideas.

• Wordtracker - I will always start my search here. The data is still some of the most reliable there is, and my strategy is to do a quick test of the market - so this is ideal. If the phrases are here - they have enough volume…




• Google and Yahoo!’s own kwd suggestion tools - useful to get more specific variations for the search engine, but I take any of those suggestions with a ‘pinch of salt’.




• Web analytics log files - rummage through your web analytics stats to get some of the best targeted kwds you’ll ever get. The phrases you find in there are the ones people use to find you. If you get one or two specific ‘gems’ in there, you may end up not only cutting your CPC, but increasing your overall conversion rate too.




• Use an LSI tool - this is where you get to see what kwds are logically related to your core search phrase. I use Lexical, but if you know of another tool suggest it.




• Get a second opinion… and third and forth - yes, gather a random party of people - friends, colleagues, relatives, and over coffee and tea, ask them what kwds they’d use to find your site with… take notes…




• Google Suggest - although I must say I don’t use this often.




• Google Trends - for when you need to look for new ideas on the rise.




• Related site content - I sometimes perform a “keyword density” report of relevant content pages I find online. It’s not an exact science, but if you’re looking for ideas - it sometimes gives good ones.




So that’s what I have of value at the moment. I’m sure I’ve missed somethings, and I am sure some of you will have a lot of other good suggestions - so share - please.

Before I go though, I wanted to also leave you with this comprehensive list of other keyword research tools - courtesy of Andre Chaperon (you’d need to scroll down about a third of the way). These are tools that perfom a little more than just keyword research, but may be useful for some of you to know they are out there…

In case anyone out there is looking for someone to market their new line of “zebra-striped man thong” underwear, please contact me immediately since I now have experience ranking for this horrific item. However, if you need me to market the plural of the aforementioned item, that’s extra.

SEO Chicks currently ranks 1 and 2 in Google for this phrase after a short post on negative keywords (and a comment from evilgreenmonkey.) This post was just written a few days ago…pretty fast results. I am also very, very pleased to report that there were only 314 results returned in Google (with 543 for the plural since of course you wouldn’t just want the ONE zebra-striped man thong would you? That would be stupid.)

Zebra-striped man thong (how many times can I type that without gagging? OK three) is what we call a long-tailed keyword (and no that is not a Freudian pun you sicksters.) A long-tailed keyword is a 3+ keyword phrase that’s pretty specific and usually really good at getting the most out of a PPC campaign since odds are if someone’s typing it in, he or she is in the mood to convert. Spending tons of time optimizing a site for a long list of long-tailed keywords is extremely time-consuming and may not be worth it, but you can slap all those phrases into your paid ads and quickly ascertain whether or not they’re worth anything.

You can probably rank well for long-tailed keywords in the organic listings, so if you do happen to want to sell a lot of (pardon me while I find a new phrase that won’t make me sit in the corner, swatting at imaginary flies for another hour) “XXL t-shirts with cool bits of BASIC code on them, in mint green” you should definitely do some optimization with this particular phrase in mind. Ranking for “shirts” is going to be quite difficult most likely, and you have to consider the fact that people typing in “shirts” are usually not looking for “XXL t-shirts with cool bits of BASIC code on them, in mint green” (because they’re probably wanting one in a buttery yellow.)

Another great thing about long-tailed keywords is that you don’t always have to specifically optimize for them. As I mentioned, our SEO Chicks post ranked from that ugly phrase being used two times in the post and once in a comment about the post. Plus I cloaked the ever-living heck out of it. OK no I didn’t. Anyway, my goal, if you can believe it, was not actually to rank for that phrase, but I got spots 1 and 2 in Google within 3 days. It’s worthless because we don’t sell that item (we only sell those in leopard-print right now, because that’s a good bit classier.)

You’re probably getting traffic from long-tailed keywords anyway, even if you aren’t paying enough attention to notice it. If you’re concentrating on a major phrase and watching your keyword density (and speaking of keyword density, I found a fine quick piece about it, that happens to also mention long-tailed keywords, at SEOSlap so check that out) you may be very surprised when you review your logs and see the phrases from which you’ve accidentally benefitted.

Types of Matches in AdWords
There are 4 types of matches that you can use in Google AdWords: Broad Match, Exact Match, Phrase Match, and Negative Keyword. I can tell you that from my own experience, I have (many times) simply set up ads without bothering to change my options (Broad Match is the default.) However, let me share a bit with you about how this kind of backfired on me.

Another of My Tedious Examples
I had a client who sold large equipment. They had a good PPC campaign, with lots of conversions on top keywords and their brand name. I had a meeting with them to talk about how we could improve the paid campaign–immediately, the client starts to type in things like “worst x equipment dealers ever” and “x equipment that will kill and maim your family and neighbors” and asking why their site showed up. I was somewhat at a loss, since those weren’t phrases I would normally have thought to exclude using the Negative Keyword option.

As I mentioned, the entire campaign was set to Broad Match so the client was showing up for any phrase that was even remotely related to their keywords. While I was able to determine that, many times, they received conversions from keyword phrases that I would have never thought to add to the campaign (and that’s how I justified using the Broad Match), I did reconsider the Negative Keyword option. Obviously there is no way I could have excluded every possible permutation of their keywords that would be negative, but you get the point. There’s a place for this option, especially if you take notes on what searches your crazy client performed so that they wouldn’t be able to repeat this in the future and humiliate you further.

Zebra-Striped Man Thong
If you aren’t selling a particular item and can exclude it on paid ads, do so. It’s worth taking the time to set this up because otherwise you’re going to waste your money when a user clicks and then doesn’t find what he or she is looking for. The flipside argument to this is that, in doing this, you may lose a potential buyer who might not find the zebra-striped man thong but will then find the leopard-print man thong. I must pause a minute to shudder before continuing…ok. I’m not saying that you should spend all your time figuring out which keywords to mark as negative. However, it makes a lot of sense in many cases.

Tiny Satin Shorts for Really Obese People
Do some research and see what keywords people are using to find your site. If you can track the path from a user typing in a certain phrase, clicking through a paid ad, and not buying ANYTHING, consider this as a Negative Keyword match, particularly if it happens more than once. If you get lots of people coming through your paid ads by using the phrase “tiny satin shorts for really obese people” and you don’t sell that item (and thanks for that AND I am happy to report that when I typed that into Google, I saw zero paid ads for it) but you do sell shorts, please consider putting “tiny satin shorts for really obese people” on your list of Negative Keywords. Please. I beg you.

I was reading an article in this Saturdays The Times with the headline “Google Power ‘less than thought’ as eBay start boycott’.

The article starts of with “There was encouraging news for the growing army of Google haters yesterday when a leading internet advertising researcher suggested that the search engine stranglehold on online promotions was looser than he had expected”

It goes on to explain how eBay sales did not have any significant drop in traffic after drastically removal of sponsored listings ads by eBay, and that 25% of eBay users comes through after searching for eBay and clicking through from Organic listing. Then they go onto concluding that “The data suggest that Google may be less powerful than people thought…” Eh? Are they on crack? I mean they don’t even seem to understand the basics of the search engines, before publishing such a GRAND conclusion. What a load of bullocks!

It doesn’t suggest Google isn’t powerful, it just means that Google have done a very clever move by getting rid of a stupid amount of ridiculous eBay PPC ads, that if anything lowers the searchers user experience by bidding for any old word from the dictionary. Like “Buy Lisa Ditlefsen on eBay”, errm what are they pimps now? Ok maybe not that bad, but I’m sure you know where I’m coming from.

eBay cutting down on Google PPC advertising certainly doesn’t make Google any less powerful, it might have lost them some money, but it certainly doesn’t mean they have lost their place as the biggest and most used search engine.

Later the article gets lost in numbers comparing Google and eBay in terms of revenue, helelooo!! I just don’t get the point? eBay is not a search engine, comparing them just seems a bit irrelevant.

What the article does do is make me realise how little the offline media knows about search, I would even go as far as to say how little they understand of the online world. The whole article is so anti Google and so pro eBay in could pass as eBay propaganda.

Rant over. Now if you have any insight into this so called “boycott” of Google by eBay, please leave a comment. We would love to hear your view on the matter.