Saturday, July 18, 2009

Create Adwords Campaigns Using Keyword Tools

By Russel J. Peterson

One of the most important elements of an effective Google Adwords campaign is selecting the right combination of keywords and keyphrases. There could be millions of keywords associated with your niche and playing a guessing game for the 'right' keywords can be costly. Google offers its own keyword selector tool to make the process of choosing keywords easier, but there's are a handful of other tools you can use to fine-tune your campaign.

Almost all Adwords masters use a three-step strategy when selecting keywords. First, they will start with obvious keywords and run them through the keyword tool to determine the volume and types of searches performed. Then, they may start researching synonyms to find out similar and related searches being conducted by their target market. Finally, they will identify underperforming keywords and eliminate or tweak them from the campaign.

If you're looking for ways to build an effective Adwords campaign, you'll need to choose the right keyword tool and then follow the three-step strategy outlined above. Howie Jacobson, author of the book 'Adwords for Dummies' explains that the most favorable keyword tools you can use for PPC campaigns are: Google's Keyword Selector Tool; Keyword Discovery; Word Tracker; and a basic Thesaurus.

The most popular tool is Google's Keyword Selector Tool. It is free and you can access it through your Adwords account. The tool allows you to run your keywords on its system and provide you with synonyms or other relevant keywords in your niche. This tool can also compare keywords based on a wide set of statistical data such as search conducted per month, average searches in a year, average cost per click and many others.

Keyword Discovery allows you to manage numerous lists of keywords and keyphrases, compare keyword data and produce reports easily. This is a much powerful tool than Google's and are suited for Adwords and SEO veterans. The only downside to this is that you need to pay for Keyword Discovery. Consider getting this tool once you have experience with Adwords.

Word Tracker has a paid service and a free tool. The free keyword tool is quite useful for cross-referencing keyword data. It only provides very basic data such as the number of searches conducted within a month for a keyword or keyphrase. It is also important to note that the data this tool produces may have some discrepancy with Google's Keyword Selector tool.

Using keyword tools can be an effective way to 'mine' for long-tail keywords and synonyms in your niche. You'll have an opportunity to compare and analyze dozens, even hundreds of keywords easily and can export the data into an Excel spreadsheet or other document for easy retrieval.

Use free keyword tools in building your keyword list for any niche. That's the most important advice I can give to anyone just starting out on Google Adwords. In this way, you get to see how your niche and the mind of your market work allowing you to create effective ads with high click-through rates.

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