You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, so why would you create a search engine marketing campaign without a solid keyword strategy? A well-thought-out strategy can be the difference between a successful strategy and one that does nothing more than spend your money.
Segment your Topics and Goals
Your ads should be informative and or solve a problem for your target audience. Therefore, you want to separate and prioritize your ad topics by your overall goals. As you know, sales goals are not the only key performance indicator of an advertising campaign. You may find downloads of spec sheets valuable, as this is a strong indicator of purchasing intent.
Regardless of your overall goal, you want to make sure the following three parts of your ad align in order for your keywords to have a high-quality score.
- Optimize landing page copy: Choose your keywords then optimize your copy so when your audience uses a search engine, the engine can crawl your page.
- Match your ad copy to your keywords: If your landing page talks about high-efficiency dishwashers, at least one of your ads should include a headline that talks about your high-efficiency products.
- Make sure your goals align with your campaign settings: If your campaign goal is to increase website traffic, your ad will be tailored to be informative. If your goal is to get more leads, you will want ad copy and keywords to align with that goal.
Think and Search Like Your Customers
Before you begin selecting keywords for your upcoming campaign, you first need to think about two things: what is important to your business and what is important to your customers. Your goals are not the only important part of a marketing campaign. What your business can offer your customers in terms of solving their needs is very crucial. Your keywords should not only match your website and campaign but should also match their intent (what they will search for).
Example:
You sell high-end shower fixtures. You want keywords to match your products such as “brushed nickel shower heads” but also want keywords that your audience use in their search such as, “replacement high-end shower fixtures” or “upgrade your showerheads”.
You can also use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find variances of your keywords and phrases. These variances are relatable searches to the information you entered. They can help you better understand how your customers think, what information they are looking for, and how they ask the search engines to find that information.
Do What Your Competitors are Doing
There are a variety of keyword tools available to help you more effectively plan your campaigns and content. Most of these keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner analyze a URL by crawling the link you enter for keywords. The results will pull all keywords that are on the website/page. Scan through that list for relevant keywords your competitors are using that you too can add to your campaign. After all, the endgame is to beat your competitors and to do so, you want to show up where they are when appropriate.
Look Outside the Results
There are two very helpful places to find additional results on how your audience is searching for your business. At the bottom of your results is a section labeled ‘People Also Ask’. This section shows results similar to the search term or keywords someone entered.
The second place to look is in the overview section of your campaign or ad group. Similar to the ‘People Also Ask’ section. This section shows which keywords are most searched as well as where your ads are shown,
Note that not all searches may make sense for your business or ad campaign, but it is still very important to evaluate and determine if you can use these.
Keyword planning and setup is a very important part of any marketing campaign. Your ads are not the only place that needs to incorporate strong keywords and phrases. Additionally, the keywords you think are best may not be the only way your audience is searching for topics related to your business. With the right planning and tools, you can easily optimize your campaigns to get you the best possible results.
Did you know that GreenHouse Digital + PR can help create marketing campaigns? From highly optimized content on stunning landing pages to keyword research and SEM campaign creation, we can help you achieve your marketing goals. Reach out for a free consultation or assessment of your current keyword strategy.