“Filter” is a Band and Other Keyword List Mistakes

It was either Sun Tzu or Bill Belichick who said that “The game is won or lost before you ever set foot on the field.”

That is particularly true of PPC advertising, where the way you design your campaign often determines your ultimate success. You can win or lose before you even register a single impression.

With that in mind, I’d like to write about the biggest mistakes I have seen when developing Keyword Lists for Google PPC advertising. As always, this is not necessarily keyword dogma, or generally accepted best practice. It’s just how I see it.

Big Mistake #1) Poorly Constructed Keyword Lists

It’s SO EASY to just throw your keywords into a couple of Ad Groups in Google, set them active and let it fly. BIG MISTAKE.

Build lots of Ad Groups with a very narrow set of keywords in each group. Why? Google reads your keywords, ad copy and landing pages much differently than you may. By keeping your keyword lists narrowly focused, you have a much more accurate view of how Google see your Ads, Quality Score and landing pages.

Lets’ use the term “water filter” as an example.

Google’s algorithm will see “water filter” as something different than “water filtration”. To your average consumer or non-linguist, it might be difficult to see the distinction. Trust me, Google sees one.

If I were to create Ad Groups and keyword lists for those terms, I would have a “water filter” Ad Group and a “water filtration” Ad Group. You’ll need to adjust ads to reflect differences in the Ad Groups, but they can be minor word changes that make a big difference.

It’s a lot of work, but your Quality Scores and CTRs will improve in proportion with how narrowly defined your Ad Groups and keyword lists are.

2) Ignoring the Duality of Keywords

While keyword selection does not yet have its Carl Jung, many keywords have an awkward duality for PPC purposes. Individual keywords can mean different things in combination, or really different things when poorly separated.

Let’s take the “water filter” example first.

The simplest two words to bid on are “water” and “filter”. BIG MISTAKE. PPC is most effective when someone is searching for something specific. “Water filter” can be specific.

“Water” can refer to just about anything. Water conservation. Rain water. Water stains. Bottled water. Spring water. Contaminated water.

“Filter” can refer to air filters in your car. Coffee filters. Or the volatile industrial rock band that had a good run in the late 90s/early 2000s before heading to rehab.

When Broad matched, you can literally use your entire budget on terms like “water” or ‘filter” because Google will find an enormous volume of searches that it can serve your ads to.

No one will be clicking on your ad, lowering your CTR and driving up costs. Even worse, you can get mistaken clicks, hurting your budget directly. You’ll also see significantly lower conversions on these high volume terms – which often leads to poorer overall results. I’ve seen a number of AdWords campaigns cancelled entirely for “Poor Performance” when the real culprit was poor keyword lists.

Ignore the duality of keywords at your own peril.

BIG MISTAKE 3) “I Don’t Use No Negative Keywords”

Ignoring Negative keywords is a BIG MISTAKE. But it’s easy to fix. When you’re composing keyword lists, look at each keyword and think of all the other meanings or phrases that one of your campaigns could have – but that you don’t want.

For instance, if you want to advertise for “commercial water filtration”, you might want to run a negative keyword for “Brita” the popular consumer water filtration system.

If you want to advertise under the term “filter” you might want to add negative keywords such as “the band” “group” “music” or “rock” because that searcher is likely looking for when the aforementioned band’s next album.

Insert all of those words into your keywords as Negative Matches so that your ad doesn’t appear under searches that are clearly not meant for your campaign. It will increase CTRs, quality scores and overall performance.

BIG MISTAKE 4) Abusing Popular Brand Names

I have heard from a number of advertisers with niche products that they want to advertise under their competitors’ brand names. Fair enough, everyone does it. But this can bankrupt a campaign if done poorly. Let’s look at an example.

A company that makes data profiling software wants to take advertise under the name of its biggest competitor, say “Oracle”. Now, while Oracle may have a competitive data profiling application, that’s not all Oracle is known for – or searched under.

Oracle is a giant company with thousands of product offerings. Hundreds of thousands of searches are done on it every day. But bidding on “Oracle” is a BIG MISTAKE because the percentage of folks looking for Oracle’s data profiling solution under that brand term is unbelievably low. You’ll get tons of volume, high costs, low to no conversions and lower CTR, Quality Score, etc.

The right strategy is to identify all of Oracle’s data profiling products and services by name. You can phrase match a term like “Oracle data profiling” or “Oracle data platform”. Do a little digging and you’ll find their latest version releases, application names, etc. Use those keywords phrases specific to your niche, they’ll produce better in the long run.

BIG MISTAKE #5 – Not Using Competitors Names

I have heard a thousand and one times from marketers that “We don’t have any competitors.” And while I appreciate that brand of self-delusion, these advertisers need to take a long sip of Reality Juice and adjust their thinking.

I’m sure some ancient Eastern philosopher once said to “Look outside yourself.” Ask the question “If my customers or prospects were searching for my product, what keywords would they type into Google?”

Then, type those phrases or keywords into Google. Most every PPC listing on that page contains a competitor.

Now, you probably already know who your competitors are. The first step when developing keyword lists of competitors is to see Big Mistake #4. Don’t use phrases or names that are too popular or too broad. Don’t use the term “AAA” if your competitor is “AAA Painting”. You’ll get lots of useless impressions from consumers afraid of a flat tire.

In most cases, that’s not a problem. If your competitors are local, look them up on local directory, or in the yellow pages. If you have a niche product, don’t be afraid to use your competitors’ product names, software versions, release numbers etc. You won’t get a lot of volume, but you will get more relevant, highly focused traffic.

Big Mistake #6 – Not Using Enough Keywords

About 6 months ago, I spoke with someone who was running only 1 keyword in their AdWords campaign: “Tub liners”. When I asked why he was only using 1 keyword, the answer was simple “That’s what we make, tub liners.”

While PPC veterans may smile at this, we can’t expect everyone to immediately become AdWords masters. The truth is that he should be using hundreds of iterations and alternative keywords to describe his product.

Some of this should be immediately evident. If you are going to advertise under “tub liners” it makes sense that the same consumer might also type in “shower liners,” “bath tub liners” or “acrylic bathtub liner”.

How do you find these alternative terms? Some quick brainstorming could help. Or, use the Google Keyword tool. It’s easy, it’s free, and it will give you the simplest list of alternative keywords. It should never be trusted blindly, but the Google Keyword Tool does a great job of getting you off the blocks and running down the track.

Big Mistake #7 – Assuming People Know How to Spell

They don’t!!! Whether it’s because they are bad typists, genuinely poor spellers or that text messaging has decimated grammatical skills, misspellings happen at an alarming rate and are continuing to increase.

What are people misspelling? It could be anything. I know from firsthand experience that people spell the world “helmet” as “helmut”. I love that because I tend to have that page all to myself for paid search purposes.

Regional terms frequently tend to be misspelled. I was a grade school spelling bee champion, but I had to look up the proper spelling of “Cincinnati.” “Miami” is often spelled “Maimi”. And someone always misses an “s” in Mississippi.

BIG MISTAKE #8 – Writing Ads That Don’t Match Your Keyword Lists

This is something the Google AdWords algorithm loves to punish – or benefit if you do it properly. Let’s go back to my “water filtration” fixation.

Say you’ve adroitly set up two Ad Groups, one for “Water Filters” and another for “Water Filtration.”

“Water Filters” has all sorts of keywords in it that are narrowly focused: Water filter, Water filters, Waterfilter, Waterfilters, Water filtr, Brita water filter, Brita water filters

“Water Filtration” has a similar list: water filtration, in home water filtration, water filtration system, water filtration systems, water filtration company, water filtration companies.

In the ads for the “Water Filters” Ad Group, you can write ads and ad titles that contain the exact term “water filters. A Google ad might read something like this:

Idaho Home Water Filters

Our water filters cleanse & purify

your tap water for healthier living

The Google algorithm loves that you used the specific term that the consumer type into the search box. In most cases, Google will bless your ad with “relevance”.

Now, let’s look at the same ad for the “Water Filtration” Ad Group.

Idaho Water Filtration

Our home water filtration systems

can cleanse & purify your tap water

This strategy requires small adjustments to the copy in all of your ads, but I spend a lot of time on this, and recommend you do as well. If you’re relying on PPC with Google, this is a worthwhile effort.

In Conclusion

With these points in mind, I hope your next AdWords campaign will be easier to design and quicker to show results. Good luck, and as always, “Be careful out there.”

Todd Bairstow is the founder and a partner at Keyword Advisors, a lead generation firm that specializes in providing branded, exclusive home improvement leads to companies around the country. He is currently building a home improvement blog called Home Improvement Advisors.

Keyword List Mistakes is a post from: Boston SEO