How Do I Choose My Keywords For AdWords?
Choosing keywords for AdWords, now known as Google Ads, is essential to the success of your website. When you choose the correct keywords – both short and long tail – you can boost your search engine placement and draw more traffic to your website.
Here’s how to do just that:
Start With Your Website
Evaluate the content you have on your website. Your product and service descriptions should utilize keywords available in Google Ads. Simply search the Google Ad platform to do a comparison of search terms and keywords and add these to your content. It’s important to think like you are a customer. What would the average person search on Google or another search engine to find your products and services?
Use a mixture of keywords that would target specific customers and general keywords that will reach more consumers. You can also group keywords into add groups based on the most relevant categories. For instance, it’s not going to hurt your website’s performance if you have the same keyword in different match types.
GOOGLE ADWORDS CONSULTANT PRO TIP: When constructing your website content with relevant, specific and general keywords, make sure that the content still flows naturally so it is readable and easy to comprehend.
Add Adjectives and Intention Keywords
Variations of keywords can boost your website traffic significantly. Add adjectives and intention keywords to the baseline of some of your keywords. For instance, some customers, when searching for shoes may search “best shoes” or “cheapest shoes.” Adding in these variations will help capture more people who are using these adjectives or intention keywords.
One of the biggest misconceptions regarding keywords with GoogleAds is that you need to limit the number of keywords you use. In my opinion, you shouldn’t be too worried about adding “too many” keywords as long as you have a solid structure that you can manage effectively.
Don’t Overlook Close Variants
Are you using close variants? Simply put, close variants are keywords that are similar to your primary keywords. In fact, all keyword match types can be eligible to match to your close variants.
Close variants for all match type keywords may include:
- Singular or Plural Forms of Keywords
- Abbreviations
- Accents
- Misspellings of Keywords
- Stem Forms of Words (fish, fishing, fished)
When you have exact match keywords, your close variants may include:
- Words with the same meaning that are reordered (womens clothing and clothing womens)
- Removing or adding certain function words such as like, in, to, or, the (clothing for women)
- Words that are implied
- Synonyms and paraphrases such as blouses vs. shirts
Leverage GoogleAds’ Tools
When using GoogleAds, you have a plethora of tools available to use. Take advantage of features such as the Google Keyword Planner or even a competitor analysis, such as SpyFu.
With Google Keyword Planner, you just have to submit a webpage, phrase or word that is similar to what you want to market and then the keyword planner generates a list of relevant keywords. You can also use the Google Keyword Planner to then gain ideas for variations of the generated keywords. These tools give you the opportunity to find keywords you may have overlooked or missed when creating campaigns and developing your website content.
As with any type of advertising and marketing, create a plan, measure your results and be open to making changes when you’re not seeing the results or traffic you desire.