A good blog should be keyword targeted, to attract visitors looking for content relevant for your site. The most popular way to find out what people are searching for on the web is Google’s Keyword Tool. In fact, there are hundreds of “keyword discovery” software programs out there to help uncover niches and keywords…. but they all mine data straight from this one tool from Google.
With everybody focusing on the same keywords, its no wonder the competition is so fierce. But Google itself admits that most search queries are “one off” searches. In other words, people rarely type in the “exact” keyword, but usually some variation. You may have targeted the term “gold watches” but people are typing things in like “i need a gold watch”, “where can i find a gold watch”, “best gold watches in atlanta” and tons of random, unpredictable variations.
I run a website on film schools. I am on page 3 for the exact search “film schools”, but each month I get more than hundreds of visits through Google from people typing things like “what are the best film schools” or “film schools top 20 USA”. These are searches that are usually performed once, by a particular person in a particular time, that will never happen again.
Google mines so much data that their Keyword tool is only a snapshot of all the search queries relevant to your keyword. The only way to go deeper and get access to what people are really typing into that search box is by using Analytics and AdWords. With these tools, you can find trends and keyword searches in high volume that you wouldn’t find within the keyword tool.
Analytics is limited, because it will only show you data from keyword searches that have actually clicked on your site. But using AdWords, you can get a sneak peak into Google searches from all over the place that most people don’t even know exist. And you can do it for almost nothing. Here’s how.
1. If you don’t already have an AdWords account, go to adwords.google.com and sign up for one. It’s very easy, like signing up for an email account. Verify your info.
2. Enter your billing info. The great thing about AdWords is that you can usually find a promo code for $100. Either Google will email you one, search for one on the web.
3. To apply the code, simply go to “Billing” and click “Apply Promotional Code”
4. Congratulations! You now have a balance in your account. Now, you want to set up a new campaign. Click “New Campaign”, or AdWords will prompt you to do this automatically.
5. You want to make sure you serve your ads only in the countries where you are intersted in reaching people. If you’re target visitor is in the US, then don’t serve ads in Zimbabwe. You can use AdWords location targeting tool for this.
6. Click on Networks and make sure you have only enable “Search Network”, not the Display network or Search Partners.
7. For Budget, choose a moderate daily budget of between $10 to $25 and automatic bidding of around $.25-$.75. You can adjust this later if need be, just keep it low.
8. Click “Save and Continue”
9. Next, create an AdGroup. For this example, we’re going to target “Dynamic Stretching” (based on one of my sites).
10. Write your ad. Make it clean.
11. Add your keywords. This is the most imporant part for this exercise. If you want to get more queries relevant to, say, “dynamic stretching”, then enter this keyword in as a broad match modifier. How? Put pluses before each for word, so it would say “+dynamic +stretching”. Why? Because “broad match” is too broad, it may serve your ads for queries like “stretching”. But this match type requires both words be in the search.
12. Save your AdGroup.
13. Wait a little while and check on your keyword. Make sure it is “Eligible” and it doesn’t say “Below first page bid”. (That’s the minimum bid google news to show your ad on page 1). If it is below, just go back to campaign settings, and in “budget” change your Automatic bid to be a little higher.
14. Wait. Once you’ve set everything up correctly, give the ads a day or two to run. Keep an eye on your balance. After a little while you should have a lot of impressions and clicks.
15. Now it’s time to mine your keyword gold! Click on the “keywords” tab.
16. Click on “See Search Terms” and select “All”.
17. You want to sort by impressions to see the terms that were the most popular, not necessarily clicked on the most.
18. Now you are looking at what is known as a Match Search Query report. This is a list of most of the exact phrases and words people have typed into Google to see your ad. This is raw data most people usually do not get to see. You’ll see typos and weird things you’d never find on the keyword research tool. (This sample is from a very low traffic niche, but I was able to uncover themes; with more high volume niches you will find tons more keywords).
And that’s the basics of it. Often times, if you keep the bid low enough you will keep your ad low enough on the screen so that it doesn’t get that many clicks. Remember, you only pay when someone clicks your ad, but Google will give you data for every time your ad even shows up on the page. The key is to find a balance between getting your ad show and paying for clicks that is a moderate amount.
However, considering how much money many keyword discovery websites and research software can cost, this is a relatively cheap and renegade way for your to unearth new keywords for your blog or website. Now is a great time to take advantage of that and do some free, deep keyword research for your blog.
About the author: Seth Jared is a PPC Tech and blogger who writes about film schools, pop culture, SEO, and web design. For fun, he runs a site on how to design your own t-shirt.
Chamomile said:
January 13, 2012, 12:16 am
Stellar work there evreoyne. I’ll keep on reading.
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February 19, 2012, 11:00 pm
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