Do people find having a low number of keywords like 5 or a high number like 35 work better for them?
Thanks for any replies
IMO, unless you have an extremely specific specialized product, 5 is way to few. You have to take into account all of the possible variations people can use when searching for your product. You may be thinking, "no big deal, ill use Broad Matching" but as you may find out, Broad Matching doesnt always work the way youd like it to. Plus you have to account for mispellings and negative keywords, which add to your keyword list.
In addition to that, many people have better luck doing Exact AND/OR Phrase/Broad matching for one Keyword. So for dirty used widgets you could have a KW entry for
"Dirty used widgets"
[Dirty used widgets"
Used widgets
Dirty Widgets
"used widgets"
[dirty widgets" etc
Long story short, it couldnt hurt to add more keywords, because you only pay for clicks. If theyre not doing well after a few weeks, simply delete them. i think its a good idea to use as many as possible initially, just to find out what KW terms your clientele is searching for. Good Luck!
I have just a minute here, so I am going to just add a few quick points to your thoughts.
* IMO, a few great (usually meaning well-targeted) keywords are far better than hundreds of 'bad' (usually meaning too general and/or poorly targeted) keywords.
Long story short, it couldn't hurt to add more keywords, because you only pay for clicks. If theyre not doing well after a few weeks, simply delete them. i think its a good idea to use as many as possible initially, just to find out what KW terms your clientele is searching for. Good Luck!
* Actually, because AdWords is performance based, there is a real downside to using lots of keywords - at least if they are not well targeted.
One's entire account can be 'slowed' if the performance standard is not met, once the account as a whole has accrued 1000 impressions, inclusive of all keywords.
And the more keyword you have, the less time it takes to accrue 1000 impressions, overall. For example, if you were to use the extremely general broad match keyword 'software', you might have 1000 impressions in about 10 minutes. Just for that one keyword.
And if you have hundreds of keywords as general as that, well, your account can be slowed in a very short time indeed.
Hope that makes sense. I wrote it kinda fast. ;)
AWA
So what im learning here, is that I should pay attention to my overall CTR because that determines if my campaign will be slowed or not? So the KWs i use that have lets say 20-100 impressions and arent getting clicks are just hurting me, but are they worth keeping if i get say 1 click per 150-200 impressions?
Thanks again
Warning, I feel a long post coming on...
Think of AdWords as a book. To write a book, first you need an outline of what you want to occur. This is your strategy for plotting out your AdWords success.
Next, examine the meat of your story - your major plotline is what carries the story. Your direct keywords are this plot.
Your broad keywords are what gets you high exposure, this would be the jacket cover, agent, etc. of the book, of course, this comes after you've actually written the book and have a story.
The small plot lines which are only carried through sections of the book are your niche keywords. Often, these are carried through in sequels to other books. A sequel can't occur until you get a contract for a 2nd book - after it's been published.
You can't write a book in a day, it's crafted overtime in small steps. Together these steps bring forth a cohesive story that can be analyzed from many perspectives.
When you first make an account, find the direct keywords first. (I define these as: keywords that are directly related to your products or services. They usually include a descriptive term. They are from 2-4 words in length. These keywords make up the bulk of most campaigns, and usually have a positive ROI and high CTR. They are not searched for as often as broad keywords (examples of direct keywords: Mexico city travel, Pennsylvania real estate).
Since these keywords should net you a nice CTR and ROI, get them established first. Let them each get 1k-5k impressions so your account has a nice base CTR and you understand the search volume you're dealing with.
Check your logs, other ads, and the top serp results for these keywords. Every single time you see a result that is not directly related to your site, figure out why, and add that word to your negative keyword list.
Time for broad keywords. So next, make a new campaign. I would not put these KWs in the same campaign as my direct keywords. I would look at broader KWs. You want KWs that you can keep a 1.5%+ CTR with. There are several reasons for putting them in their own campaign, but one of them is that you want your direct keywords to always be shown. Since these broad keywords can rip your budget apart, you can set a daily budget different for the broad keywords so you can maintain more control of your spend.
Don't add tons at once. These words get a lot of impressions. Add them slowly, and make 4-6 ads for each one. After a week or so, disable your low performing CTR ads, create some new ones based off your top performing ads (and then repeat as necessary).
Repeat the negative keyword insertions as listed above.
The majority of websites will not have more than 1-10 broad keywords. Some very large sites will have more, some smaller sites may find that 0-2 work.
Now that our campaign has a healthy CTR from direct keywords, a few broadmatch KWs that will steady the CTR so that no new word can really lower or raise the campaigns CTR to a great extent, and a steady traffic stream, it's time to play around with niche keywords.
Make a new campaign. Set your daily budget at a max of 1/3rd-1/4th of your direct keywords daily budget (If any word in here is getting that much exposure that it's using a lot of this daily budget, its not a niche keyword - its a direct one). You can add tons of these, go ahead, get creative.
Play around, have fun, use lots of spelling permutations, its time to experiment. This is where you can try out new ads that are similar to other keywords, but won't hurt your campaign as it doesn't get the exposure and CTR of your normal campaign.
Because our daily budget is low for these words, we can't kill our overall campaign if we really screw up here. And vice versa, this is where to find hidden ads and keyword gems.
If an ad gets 500 impressions, and 0 clicks, there are possible problems. Either your ad sucks (sorry), or the keyword just is not targeting what you want. Check the other ads/serps for these words and see if you can make it successful.
Don't be afraid to just give these keywords the axe - sometimes they aren't worth the invested time.
Every month, check these words - any that got 0 impressions - just write off, delete, and forget about.
This is also the place to learn search trends. If you have an add that was holding a steady 100 impressions for a couple months, and suddenly jumped to 500-1000 - you may have uncovered a new search trend. Immediately analyze this word, why its getting this traffic, and see if it needs to be moved somewhere where it won't be constrained by the niche kw daily budget. If a word gained that much in a month, it could continue to grow and start getting 5k impressions. You could hold a secret keyword that your competitors don't know about - use secrets wisely.
Niche words can pay off big over time, but until the word has found it's time - keep it under control.
Hope this helps a bit,
got a bit windy,
but I needed a break from work and a that cup of coffee :)
The big thing coming soon is local search, in some respects that's where the tightening up of campaigns will score.
Too many advertisers take a blunderbuss approach, chuck a pile of keywords and hope that some stick.
Intensive care at the outset of any ad campaign/group will mean no lingering smell, if you get an account where it has been slowed, the effect of that will be felt long after the cause has been removed.
Too tired for a long post eWhipser said it all!
Question. With respect to the overall account CTR, what would be a good CTR level to prevent or minimize slowing down of the account by GG?
What is exactly slowing of the account mean? (I assume your impressions go down) When does this happen? (ie CTR at a certain percentage?)
Thanks for all the help!
So lets say ive been running a campaign for over a month now, but for all intents and purposes im back at square one because i made a lot of alterations to my keywords and a couple of my ads.
I have an alright overall CTR currently, but recently added a whole bunch of new KWs. Should I place all of the new (and less impression recieving) KWs in an entirely new campaign with a low budget? Then i can wait and see what words are most prosperous (and since theyll initially be at the "phantom CTR" it will be easier to judge their worth) and move those good words to my origina campaign.
Should I put the Broad, Phrase and Exact matches that arent in my original campaign yet in here too? Blue Widget "Blue Widgets" [Blue Widgets] when currently im using "Blue Widget" in my orig. campaign.
This is such a helpful forum, you guys are great.
Question. With respect to the overall account CTR, what would be a good CTR level to prevent or minimize slowing down of the account by GG?
I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle. The question should be, how much do I want to pay a month, and how many visitors do I want to my website from AdWords?
By knowing the total number of searches done for your KWs, you can then decide how much traffic and price you are willing to pay for.
The CTR numbers that are shown have nothing todo with account slowdown. [webmasterworld.com...] explains a lot of this information. (Post 21 is from AWA w/ great details as usual)
Should I place all of the new (and less impression recieving) KWs in an entirely new campaign with a low budget? Then i can wait and see what words are most prosperous (and since theyll initially be at the "phantom CTR" it will be easier to judge their worth) and move those good words to my origina campaign.
IF you think that a kw is going to get a lot of impressions, or you have kws that you think will be 2nd tier direct kws, I would either put them in the origional direct keyword campaign, or make a new campaign for those possible preformers and not lock them down in the niche kw area.
Right now, G does not have a feature for moving ads/kws from one campaign to another. So moving KWs does cause them to lose their CTR as you have to delete and readd a KW.
If G ever ads this feature, it will help tremendously in keeping KWs in the proper campaigns for daily budget purposes.
I would not split up versions of the same KW, i.e. broad, exact and phrase match versions of the exact same KW. I think it's just easier to organize that way, and if one is doing well, odds are all 3 can work off each other at least with the same ads.
Remember, the ads CTR rate is also very imporntant.
This is a question for AWA that I've been wondering is a work around for this:
Since G knows you've had a KW if it's not deleted everywhere in your campaign (that goes back to the discussion of readding stopped KWs)
If I wanted to move a KW around, can I delete the keyword, but still keep it in my deleted files, and then readd the KW elsewhere, thus since the KW has never been totally removed from an account, readd it elsewhere and keep at least the 'behind the scenes' keyword status? I know this will blow the history of that word as it's not transfered, but could keep the status still alive?
hoping to get an AWA response that will help us move KWs around.
Since G knows you've had a KW if it's not deleted everywhere in your campaign (that goes back to the discussion of readding stopped KWs)If I wanted to move a KW around, can I delete the keyword, but still keep it in my deleted files, and then readd the KW elsewhere, thus since the KW has never been totally removed from an account, readd it elsewhere and keep at least the 'behind the scenes' keyword status? I know this will blow the history of that word as it's not transfered, but could keep the status still alive?
Sorry, but that won't do the trick you are hoping for, eWhisper.
If you delete a keyword, then reuse it, you will not retain the Status. This is because the Status is not something that 'belongs' to the word itself. Rather, Status is reflection of how that word did in a particular Ad Group, with a particular ad (or ads), etc.
When you reuse the word, the circumstances will be different by definition, and the status will be determined by those circumstances.
I have an inkling that I may not have answered the question you actually asked. If I missed it, let me know.
(BTW, I'm trying to catch up on all my 'owed responses' today. I'll be out of town for a wedding (not my own!) Wednesday 2/11 through Monday 2/16. Returning 2/17. I'll try to hit the road all caught up.)
AWA
Thats exactly what I was asking, trying to retain KW status while moving a KW. Or any workaround to moving KWs without resetting all it's data.
Thanks for the response.
