This post was written by Matthew Umbro from http://theppcblog.com. Matthew has been in the PPC industry since August 2007 and has earned his Google AdWords and MSN adExcellence certifications. He can be reached via email at matt@theppcblog.com or through Twitter @Matt_Umbro
Mining PPC Campaign Keywords from Underutilized Sources
There comes a point in most pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns where you are much less frequently adding in new keywords. After running a campaign for several months, the “keyword well” can dry up. You’re doing all the right things – you have used all the keyword research tools, harvested keywords from your site (and competitors’), and created Search Query Performance reports – but it seems that there are no more keywords to purchase. You still want to add more keywords to your campaign in order to get a greater number of ad impressions, but you don’t know where to find them.
More keywords can be found, but the key is that you have to know where to look. The list below offers four sources for new PPC campaign keywords. It is important to note that many of the keywords you find from these sources will be niche terms and may not have high search volumes, but they will help to capture more ad impressions.
Industry Blogs and Articles
Sites like eweek.com and informationweek.com have a wealth of great information. Aside from industry news concerning several verticals, they also contain blogs from some very knowledgeable industry representatives. These sites speak to the ins and outs of the industry and will help you in your quest to find highly relevant keywords and will introduce you to new terms that are starting to be used within the industry.
Site Form Submissions
Most website forms contain a comments field. Similar to a Search Query Performance report, this field allows users to tell you exactly what they are looking for when they come to your site. For example, say you are bidding on terms related to “baseball cleats,” but a user refers to this item as “baseball shoes” in the comments field. This keyword might have never entered your mind. Now you not only have a new keyword, but a theme to expand upon.
Site Search
Many sites make use of an internal search engine, but it is alarming that not everyone reviews the queries that are being entered. By using this feature, users are directly telling you what they are looking for! Whereas keyword tools will give you estimated search volumes based on historical data, the site search report gives you hard data on what was actually searched on your site. Aside from grabbing keywords from this report, you can also use it to determine any additional pages you might need on the site.
Competitor Email Campaigns
Many companies have email marketing campaigns, and most likely that includes your competitors as well. One way to find out what keywords they are using in their campaigns is to sign up to receive their emails. You may find that they use different variations of your keywords or are using terms that you had not thought of previously. Either way, mining keywords from these emails is worthwhile.
These four keyword sources are not utilized to the extent that they can be. By digging a bit deeper and by utilizing these resources, you can find new keywords to add to your PPC campaign, which will help you to secure additional ad impressions. Ultimately, the more times your ads shows up for relevant searches, the better your chances are of getting more conversions.
Where else do you find new PPC campaign keywords?
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