Keywords: They Unlock All The Right Doors

Are you missing out on some great five-cent traffic? Did you
know that by bidding on variations of popular keywords you
can grab hundreds or even thousands of visitors that your
competitors didn't even consider?

Why Keywords Are So Important

What is a keyword? The answer is simple... It's what a user
types when they are searching for something they want on
the Internet.

If you want to dress up as Darth Vader and buy the outfit
online, you could go to Google and search for the merchandise
you need. But what would you type? Maybe Darth Vader
Helmet? Or Darth Vader Mask? Or would you type Mask +
Darth Vader? How about Darth Vader costume or Darth Vader
Adult Costume? What if you misspelled Darth Vader?

As an online consumer, chances are you would keep typing
variations of what you wanted until you saw what you were
looking for. Well wouldn't it be nice if a company had exactly
what you wanted and you saw their ad the first time you
typed your query?

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

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

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

Many people are familiar with Overture's search term
suggestion tool. You can find it here:
http://inventory.overture.com. It's a great tool for estimating
demand of specific keywords. You can compare the number of
searches for one keyword with another and you can also see
popular search phrases that contain your keyword.

For example, if you type Darth Vader into Overture. Your
results may include: darth vader, darth vader costume, darth
vader picture, darthvader wall paper, darth vader helmet, and
so on. Plus you'll see numbers next to each term telling you
how many searches were run with that key word or phrase.
The numbers may or may not be accurate, but in relation to
each other, they give you a good benchmark of which phrase
is typed more often.

One of the biggest complaints people seem to have with
overture's tool is that it lumps together singulars and plurals
and often alphabetizes the words in a phrase so you don't
know if people are typing "vader helmet" or "helmet vader".
Another complaint is that you are not given any results unless
they contain your term (ex. Darth Vader). Therefore, you might
miss out on keywords containing a synonym for Darth Vader
like Anakin.

To help with what Overture lacks, a lot of people are using
Google's Keyword Tool found here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox. It's
much more specific about the order of words, singulars and
plurals AND also suggests related terms that may or may not
contain your original phrase. The downfall that most people
mention is the lack of numerical data to give an idea of how
many searches are performed for each term.

A quick use of Google's tool provides similar results to
Overture, 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 a
tool like WordTracker found here:
http://www.theadtool.com/wordtracker. This very useful tool
will give you counts from most search engines, distinguish
between singular and plural, and offer related terms with their
counts. It also provides an index number called KEI to give
you an idea on how competitive certain terms are (mostly for
organic search engine marketing).

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