Keyword Phrases or not?

[barkster]

if I am doing a campaign focused on a single city and I'm trying to promote a bail bond service. Would I really only need one keyword, bail bond using broad match. I really don't care what else they type as long as it has they are searching for some type of bail bond. Right now I have stuff like houston bail bond, houston bail bonds, but wouldn't just bail bond as broad match cover those including "bail bond" and "bail bonds" or should I break out every phrase that I would expect them to type.

[after_hours]

It's better to pull out those words individually because you'll be able to control your bids against each keyword. Also, once you see the performance against those keywords, you'll also have the opportunity to move them into separate ad groups to write detailed ad copy to either maximize/improve performance.

[barkster]

thanks, is there any book, tutorial or video I can watch to help me with my adword campaigns. I'm obviously not doing it right.

[netmeg]

There's a lot in this forum you can dig up.

If it were me, I'd set up two campaigns.

One would be geo targeted to the Houston area (either by city, or the radius around a particular zip code that you're willing to market to)

In that campaign, I would use keywords without the geo - that is to say, use 'bail bonds' instead of 'Houston bail bonds' Use broad match if you want, but recognize that both of those words have many many meanings, so you're going to get a lot of misfires. You'd probably be better off using the new modified broad match (put a plus sign in front of each required term - like this: +bail +bonds) so you don't come up for searches for financial bonds, for example. But I'd also use broad match and exact match, and I would bid them differently; the most expensive being exact and the least being the broad match.

If you want to expand your keywords a little, go into a regular Google search page (organics) and start typing bail bonds and see what Google suggests in the drop down - those are common queries, and the ones that are appropriate to you are probably good choices to add to your campaigns. You can go fishing for more keywords later.

Then I'd set up another campaign, similar to the first, only this one would be national, and this one would INCLUDE the word Houston (Houston bail bonds) Why? Because there are circumstances where you might want your ads to show in different parts of the country. If some kid gets tossed in jail and calls his parents in California, maybe those parents are going to go looking for a Houston bail bondsman for him.

Then you want to make sure you write really spot on ads that describe exactly what your offer is.

And sit back and see what happens.

That's how I'd do it.

Oh, I would also set both campaigns to SEARCH ONLY - your business is more urgency driven, so Search would probably be a better choice.

After your ads have run for a week or two, run a Search Query report in AdWords. That will tell you the search terms that the users typed in that brought up your ads. Sometimes broad match is REALLY broad, and like I said, you have some common words to deal with. And I haven't tested modified broad match enough yet to be sure how well it works in these situation. So you run this report to find keywords that are WAY off, so you can add them to your negative keywords, and tell Google never to run your ads on them.

[barkster]

netmeg, awesome post, helped a lot. Thanks!

[RhinoFish]

ditto on netmeg, but i'd also do tiered match type bidding, as well as neg development.

so in the local one, i might do:
[bail bonds] at 0.80
"bail bonds" at 0.70
+bail +bonds at 0.50
bail bonds at 0.30

as time passes, i'd review the searches that are firing off and grab words there that are obviously things i should add as negs... like if i saw these searches:
~~~~~
train to become a bail bonds provider
jobs at houston bail bonds firm
bail bonds reality tv shows
~~~~~
i'd be adding negs like:
~~~~~
train
training
trains
trainer
trained
job
jobs
hire
hires
tv
television
show
shows
~~~~~

anyhow, just saying you have to be careful on the broad end of the match spectrum... the traffic value degrades as you slide that way, so bid it lower and take precautions so it's not way too broad (aka misguided).

[netmeg]

ditto on netmeg, but i'd also do tiered match type bidding, as well as neg development.

I *said* that!

(ork ork)

[barkster]

Thanks, Rhinofish that's what i was looking for someone to walk me through it a bit. Helps a lot.