Oodles of keywords....really?

Grave doubts about advice

[marc]

Subject and meta say it all. I follow the advice of avoiding the "obvious" keywords, and wrack my brain to find all sorts of alternatives. Guess what? The predicted (and real!) numbers of impressions are usually 0 or very small! And forget about clicks and conversions!
So what is the point of finding all sorts of keywords that no one will ever type in? Surely there can't be that many ways to advertise the infamous widget! By the way I'd like an explanation for the rule (or etiquette) that prevents anyone from ever mentioning what they are selling - I thought the whole idea was to get known! Not to mention the obvious: folks could help each other much more intelligently on this forum if they knew what the questioner's business is.

Anyway, main question: do dozens and hundreds of keywords that nobody ever enters make any sense?
Many thanks in advance for any thoughts.
Marc

[RedWolf]

I think a lot depends on your market and what you are selling. I actually use a mix of very general and very specific keywords. The advantage to very specific keywords is that those people searching on them are very valuable usually. They know what they want and are usually far along in the buying process. The other advantage of specific keywords is that there may not be a lot of competition if it doesn't contain any general words that the lazy advertisers broadmatch bid on.

I do use some general terms and even single words in some cases. The key is that I have almost no competition because it is often hard to keep an ad going on a single word because of minimum CTR.

[Syzygy]

Being in specialist sectors I have loads of kw's and phrases in use where there is limited or even no advertising bar mine. These work for me. By the same token I have loads and loads more that have not worked - but at least they were found and I tried them...

I wish I could spend more time than I do in continuing to find them - for they are out there. The key is to think like your punters and to not generalise your sector too broadly when applying kw's. Yes, people will be using the generalised terms but you and your competitors already know that.

Even better is relevancy - it cannot be overstated. Bidding on general kw's for your sector is one thing, but making your ad relevant to the individual(s) who seek - but don't know where to find - your product or service is something else. This to me is the crux for success through adwords. IMHO, of course.

Oh, and welcome to WebmasterWorld, marc.

Syzygy