In times past there was no trouble getting an upper position in those highly searched, general keywords like ‘china’, ‘business’, ‘running’ and ‘headache’ for a nickel a click. When you did a search on Google for one of those terms, you would get only 1 or 2 results, indicating to you that you could bid a minimum price for your clicks.

But advertisers had a very hard time getting a generic term like “running” to stick, especially in the early days before phrase- and exact-match options were available. A person who typed in a keyword like “business” could have any of a thousand completely different ideas in mind for what he was looking for, so he was not only unlikely to click on your ad, but even if he did click on it, he was that much less likely to buy anything from you.

Now the rules have changed in the world of PPC management. There’s no longer a minimum CTR, so maintaining a certain number of clicks isn’t an issue. And advertisers are much smarter now than they were even two years ago and are turning these generic terms into profitable information marketing opportunities.

So currently it is worth the effort to put bids on the highly searched, general keywords. The question is how do I make them work?

Here are the secrets:

Use test runs, try out different copy, tryout others, write new ads till you get one that works. This is time consuming, and you will have failures before you have success. But you will break it down with your tests until you find the winning combination.

Utilize the full benefits of negative keywords.

With your ads you want those who you don’t want clicking to be disqualified. When you offer “Golf Instructions: Free” you will get unsuitable folks clicking. However if you offer “Golf Video $49″ those who are serious and likely to buy will be the ones clicking.

Use your hard earned clicks to their fullest by offering information as well as merchandise. Landing pages to gather opt-ins and offer a tutorial or e-course or other ‘free’ guides are valuable tools that will establish you as an informational source and your customers will look to you for future needs. As an added bonus your visitor value will increase. Then those general keyword clicks will be like gold to you.

Managing PPCs - The New Rules

The keywords on your list each have their own market.

Each keyword stands for the state of mind the person had when typing it.

Behind each of the words your clients type in while searching is a desire, necessity, inquiry, or premise they have, but may not be aware that they have.

Keyword markets vary, some are larger and some are smaller.

For each keyword the competition will also vary.

Some keyword markets produce more dividends for the winners than others.

Some keywords will have an overabundance of competitors making the bid prices above market value and unrealistically high.

In contrast some keywords are left out even though using them would bring you to a stronger market with better responses, and they can be found using a reliable keyword tool.

If you want buyers, instead of lookers, display for your customer his thoughts and feelings. That is when he will buy.

Tags: Keyword Tools

Popularity: 63% [?]

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!