Your keyword lists are the root of a good PPC campaign. You should properly research and source quality keywords. Create a good long list. Go deep and go wide, by this I mean investigate every avenue and every avenue off every avenue etc.

Here's a quick example of how to expand your lists by investigating related avenues. In this example I'll use mortgage as the base keyword.

Mortgage is a very competitive keyword on the Net simply because the commissions are so high. So how do you break into the market without paying over the odds?

Create your first list and think of different ways your prospect could interpret mortgage e.g. buy house, bad credit mortgage, best loan, house purchase finance, no status loan, home finance, etc. This really is only slightly removed from the base keyword, you should dig deeper still.

Next try expanding into types of mortgage – flexible, interest only etc. take these and mix them up with your first list, as you do this you’ll find avenues of keyword groups present themselves from single keywords e.g. interest only house loan, flexible home finance etc.

You could create an Ad group focused entirely on mortgage company names take that further still and add a .com to the name or a co.uk or your own country extension e.g. www.somemortgagecompany.com.au It doesn’t matter if this domain doesn’t exist, people type things like this into a search engine so it’s possible you can pick up low cost traffic with these keywords.

Avoid the general keywords and dig a little deeper to expand on related terms or, here’s a good one, rephrase those terms e.g. turn cheap mortgage around and use mortgage cheap too. Put yourself in your prospects shoes. What would they search for? How would they type it into Google? People don't always type a search phrase in a logical order.

For some quick avenues to explore check out these keyword goldmines –

Plurals, domain names, serial numbers, product numbers, spelling errors, no spaces between the phrase words e.g. buywidget. Add .com or .net or .info etc, company names, company domain names, domain names and variations e.g. mydomain.com www.mydomain etc. Add superlatives e.g. best, cheap, cheapest, best buy. Competition site names, foreign words, US or UK spelling, product names, typo’s, hyphens instead of spaces.

Be sure to separate out all these keywords in to different lists. You should be setting up different Ad groups for each. It's important to not just drop them all into one campaign together. Instead place all the typos in one Ad group all the plurals in another and so on. This will make for easietr targeting of your ad writing depending on your Ad groups keywords. Plus tracking results will be simpler.

Another great source for keywords are your site Log files trhey'll tell you exactly what keyphrase has been used to find your site by a visitor.

Search for your main keywords on the search engines and see what related terms pop up. Check the meta tags on your competitors site. Check the copy on your competitors site.

Do you see were this is going. I trust that gives you an idea of the power of going deep and wide on your keyword list building. Remember this is the first building block on which to lay down your PPC management.


About The Author


Darren Yates is the creator of PPC Accelerator the shortcut to finding highly searched keywords and editing, formating and managing them in one place fast. Get your ppc mangement of to the best possible start. Watch the video demonstration - www.ppcaccelerator.com.

This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that we ask is that you do not make any changes, that this resource text is include, and that the link above is intact.

What Should You Know About Search Engines and Pay-Per-Click?

Here’s a fact for you, 85 to 95% of Websites are found through a search engine. You may have the most incredible Website on the Internet, but it will receive little or no traffic without search engine visibility and ranking. Can you imagine a billboard in

How To Turn Pay-Per-Click Into Profit-Per-Click.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a very powerful avenue for obtaining targeted, high-quality traffic for your website. Not only can you build your customer list and increase your sales, but you can also reach new and international customers who otherwi

The Perils and Pitfalls of Pay-per-click Advertising

In this age of speed dialing, T1 lines and other forms of high-tech instant gratification, many webmasters find themselves tempted to engage in pay-per-click advertising. After all, if you’ve just designed a state-of-the-art website, there’s nothing quite

How To Screen Your Visitors When Using Pay Per Click Advertising

If you are using pay per click advertising, I don't need to tell you that it can get very expensive if you have a lot of unnecessary click throughs. In this article I will explain how to screen your visitors and how to apply it to your pay per click adver

Pay Per Click Advertising And Marketing

When I think of Pay Per Click, I think of a marketing strategy that has two different sides - one where you pay for published ads and one where you get paid for publishing ads. Somebody is always paying for the click, whether it is you clicking on someone