This post is very worthwhile reading, especially if you live in a country with a small population like Ireland, and want to figure out how to effectively set-up a Google AdWords campaign from scratch, using a deep keyword list.
One of the challenging things about setting up an AdWords campaign which is geo-targeting the Republic of Ireland only is that a lot of the third-party keyword tools out there have little or no keyword volume for searches performed in Ireland so therefore aren’t nearly as useful as they would be for analyzing say UK or USA audiences. You could use data collected from these high-volume countries to build out your keyword lists but, from my experience, often this does not reflect the search trends for Ireland.
So for this reason amongst others I have often set about building out a good deep keyword list for a campaign as the wider related keyphrases and synonyms are getting so little search volume in Ireland that they were virtually inconsequential.
So, in steps, here is what I find myself doing: Load up Google’s Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal, or by selecting “Tools -> Keyword Tool” from within AdWords) and from there typing in either the domain name of the client that I am building the campaign for, or, even better still, the domain name of a more comprehensive competitor’s website. Do check the box “Include other pages on my site linked from this URL” and click “Get Keyword Ideas”. From there we will get a good list of keywords. Save/”Add” all of the appropriate keyword groups (some groups may be totally unrelated to your campaign, ignore these) that are displayed to your list which you can later download as a text file when you are finished adding. Then underneath the saved keyword list on the right-hand side of the page, select “Download these keywords: text” link to get your complete list of keywords as a text file. Save and open using a text editor.
Now what we want to do is use this large list of keywords as an input into the Google Traffic Estimator tool and see which keywords get some search volume in Ireland. From within your AdWords account go to “Tools -> Traffic Estimator” or go to https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox and from here you can copy and paste all of the keywords in your text file that you downloaded, into the “Enter Keywords” field. Choose Euros as the currency and leave the Max CPC field blank, and leave the Daily Budget field blank also, and then select and add Ireland to the Selected Countries box and click “Continue”. Now the Traffic Estimator will display a table detailing the search volume estimates for Ireland for the keywords selected. Sort this descending by search volume by clicking the “Search Volume” column heading link. Here now we can see what keyphrases (from the ones that we have gathered) are going to be worthwhile building out ad groups for.
From this I build out an ad group for each of the top trafficked keyphrases, using the keyphrase in the ad heading, and again in the ad text and/or display URL for the ad. This is called the “peel and stick” method. In each ad group I will write 4 different ad variations, making sure that I edit the campaign settings and change the ad serving option from its default setting of “Optimised” to “Rotate”, so that each ad is displayed with the same frequency. This technique is commonly called “split-testing”. Set the Ad-Group-Level Max CPC to be that of the estimated Average CPC (from the Traffic Estimator) for the particular Ad Group for that particular keyphrase. That way we know what our max CPC is going to be for that ad group. To begin with, set all of the keyword match types in the campaign to be “Phrase”. This way we will avoid the poorly performing “Broad” match types (generally speaking, always to be avoided), and also enabling our ads to be triggered for the exact keyphrases in our ad groups that are searched for and also all searches for keyphrases containing that exact phrase but also with prefix word(s) and/or postfix word(s), for example, the keyphrase “fancy dress” with “Phrase” match type will trigger when the user searches for “fancy dress costume” and also when the user searches for “halloween fancy dress”.
Now, and this is the smart part: When I am starting out an an AdWords campaign like this, using Phrase match type on a broad search term, like “fancy dress”, I always tweak my Google Analytics profile for the target website to expose the exact keyword phrases that the users are finding my ads using. So for example, in Analytics by default, when someone finds and clicks on your ad after searching using the keyphrase “fancy dress costume” and the keyphrase in the AdWords campaign that triggered the match is “fancy dress” with Phrase match type, Google Analytics will only record this as an entry for the keyword “fancy dress”. Not very useful. To see how to configure Analytics to record the exact keyphrases that are finding your ads refer to Semvironment’s excellent article at http://www.semvironment.com/ppc-management-adwords-keyword-data-exposed-with-google-analytics/
Now, as the exact keywords are recorded over the first few weeks of the campaign, we know exactly which keyphrases people are searching for and finding our ads using. To improve the effectiveness of our campaign, and to keep it well ahead of the competition, we then create new ad groups in our AdWords campaign that are based upon the exact keyphrases that are recorded by Analytics Traffic Sources->Keywords report.
So, to be exact, we view this Keywords report in Analytics and take the top trafficked phrases that we don’t have any ads directly targeting and create a new ad group specifically targeting that phrase. So from the screenshot below of a live campaign that I am running, we can see that in #5 is the exact search term “halloween fancy dress”, which is finding the my ad which is targeting the phrase “fancy dress”. I don’t have an ad group targeting “halloween fancy dress” specifically so I will create one specifically for that and also I will add the exact match negative keyword ( -[halloween fancy dress] ) to my Fancy Dress ad group so that I am sure the correct ad group will be triggered when people search for “halloween fancy dress” in future.
Of course, other AdWords basic rules apply, such as always targeting specific landing pages on the target website which is most relevant to the keyword and therefore ad that the user clicks on, as well as using SplitTester.com to monitor competing ads within each ad group to see which one to drop and replace.
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Tags: Adwords, Google AdWords, Ireland Campaign, Keyword Data, Keyword Groups, Keyword Ideas, Keyword List, Keyword Tool, Keywords, Ppc Management, Republic Of Ireland, Research Tools, Search Terms, Search Trends, Search Volume, Synonyms, Third Party