Excerpted from the AdWords Workbook 2017. Let’s revisit your keywords and explain how to input them into your Search Campaign > Ad Groups. Keywords drive search, and – therefore – keywords drive AdWords on the Search Network. Here are the steps from the perspective of a customer
Customer need > search query on Google > click on ad > landing > sale / sales inquiry
Or, translated into our scenario of a San Francisco residents who needs cat boarding for Fluffy, during his vacation to Cabo San Lucas:
I need to have my cat taken care of on vacation > keyword search on Google for “cat boarding San Francisco” > see / click on ad for Jason’s Cat Emporium > land on Jason’s website > fill out inquiry form to check out the Emporium for my cat, Fluffy > Agree to sign up Fluffy, and the deal is done.
Using this simple process model, you can see that your steps on AdWords begin with defining the best keywords to advertise on.
Step #1: Identify the search keywords that you want to advertise on.
It all starts with the keyword. The customer need “becomes” the keyword, and the keyword that the customer enters into Google needs to find a match in the keyword that you enter as a keyword trigger into AdWords.
Customers enter keywords into Google.
Advertisers enter keyword triggers into AdWords.
While Google calls both of these keywords, it’s helpful to distinguish between the keywords that are entered by the searcher, and the keyword triggers that you, as an advertiser, enter into AdWords. Keyword triggers as we shall see, need to be notated in AdWords in one or more of three distinct ways:
Plus Signs
+cat +boarding = telling Google to run your ad on any variations of the words cat and boarding, but no substitutions.
Quotation Marks
“cat boarding” = any keyword query by the searcher that includes that phrase.
Brackets
[cat boarding] = the exact phrase, only, as entered into Google.
No Plus Signs No Quotes No Brackets
The “sucker choice” is to enter in the words cat boarding into AdWords with no “+” sign, no “quotation,” and no “[” bracket.
Never Just Enter Keywords into AdWords!
The reason, of course, is that if you just enter
cat boarding
Google can substitute nearly anything for those words, and before you know it, you’re running on
dog hotels
Because to Google the word cat is like the word dog, and the word boarding is like hotel…Entering keywords with no quotes, plus signs, or brackets is a “gotcha,” so don’t do it!
Core Keywords
Refer back to Chapter 2, and your Keyword Worksheet. You should have identified core keywords that reflect the major structural patterns of your products or services. Take a look at the Progressive.com website (https://www.progressive.com/), and you’ll see an very structured organization of keywords in terms of landing pages on the website.
Auto / car insurance
Home insurance
RV insurance
Motorcycle insurance
Commercial insurance
In addition, as you look at their landing pages and read the text out loud, you’ll notice helper keywords such as quote, rates, or companies that further make a keyword transactional. In fact, here’s a screenshot of their ad running on “motorcycle insurance”
And here’s their ad for “boat insurance:”
You’ll see that Progressive runs very specific ads for “boat insurance” that go to a very specific landing page for “boat insurance” vs. very specific ads for “motorcycle insurance” that go to a very specific landing page for “motorcycle insurance” and so on and so forth.
AdWords rewards a very organized, hierarchical structure, as follows:
One core keyword > one specific Ad Group > one or more specific ads > one specific landing page
Identify Transactional Keywords
On your own Keyword Worksheet, you should have identified 5-10 core keywords plus another 10-20 helper words that ensure that your keywords are transactional in nature. You also want to keep an eye on keyword volume and value because, since AdWords is expensive, you generally want to advertise only on keywords that are likely to lead to a sale. In general, (but not always), educational keywords should be avoided.
A San Francisco orthopedic surgeon, for example, might have core keywords such as:
Knee surgery
Knee surgeon
Hip surgery
Hip surgeon
Shoulder surgeon
Shoulder surgery
Orthopedic Surgeon
And helper words like San Francisco, best, top, top-rated, arthroscopic, second opinion, etc. (He will NOT advertise on “knee pain” as that “educational keyword” will have a lot of volume, generate a lot of clicks, cost him a lot of money, but end up with many bounces as these are people who are not close to the decision to engage with a knee surgeon).
Similarly, for Jason’s Cat Emporium, we will identify transactional keywords such as:
cat boarding
cat hotels
long-term cat care
cat kennels
cat grooming
cat toys
And avoid educational / non relevant keywords such as:
cat
cat vets
dog boarding
And realize that some relevant keywords are problematic (because they may signify other animals such as dogs):
pet boarding
animal boarding
And some helper keywords are negative (poor or cheap people)
cheap
free
To review what we learned in our Keywords Chapter, your first Todo is to build out your keyword worksheet, organize your keywords into core keywords, and identify transactional keywords that are also (hopefully) high volume / high value. I would also create a column, and designate the core keywords as “hot” (definitely your customer), “warm” (probably your customer), “cold” (probably not your customer). It’s also a good idea to notate keywords like pet boarding that are problematic because they include both your customers and non-customers. (We’ll return to ambiguous keywords when we discuss writing ads in the “Attract / Repel” style).
