Jennifer Slegg - Search Engine Marketing Consultant |

When doing keyword research it is important not to get in a rut and simply look at keyword research as “consumer” only… or worse, from the business point of view rather than the potential customer’s point of view. But smart keyword researchers realize there are many angles to consider when planning your keywords so that you don’t miss out on a particular segment which could equal clicks and conversions. And this is especially important because not all pay per click advertisers consider all the different angles that a searcher might search on, meaning less competition and lower cost per clicks for you. And if you are struggling to get more traffic on specific pay per click platforms, such as Microsoft adCenter, this can enable you to add some new keywords to your campaigns and get some additional traffic from any of these angles you weren’t previously bidding on.

Obviously, this shouldn’t take the place of your main keyword research, but to enhance what you currently have or to add to your repertoire when you do research for new campaigns.

So look at your keywords and market from some new angles, and see if you can’t enhance your pay per click campaigns by considering new or complimentary keywords from these angles: Keep reading…

Being a top AdSense expert, I inevitably get many emails from publishers who have gotten their AdSense account suspended and then I get the sob story about how they won’t be able to pay their mortgage, they will have to let all their employees, etc etc. Trust me, I have heard it all! But regardless of their AdSense account being suspended, the real reason of their immediate money issues is the fact that they had all their eggs in one basket… in this case the AdSense basket. The same can go for someone who is working one killer affiliate program that suddenly ceases to exist one day, and is left with no viable alternative option to slip into the deceased affiliate program’s place.

The same applies for those that have their one killer website… their pride and joy, but unfortunately the one that brings in 95% of all their income. If you are old school SEO enough, you will remember that many people found themselves in this position when the now-infamous Florida update hit in November 16th, 2003. When Google updated their algorithm (which wasn’t done in a continuous style back then like it is now) that day, the forums lit up with people whose websites literally stopped getting any Google traffic overnight. And with the huge Google share even back then meant that people who were living the good life with their Google rankings suddenly found themselves scrambling in panic-mode to not only restore their rankings but to also restore the sudden loss of income, whether AdSense, affiliate income, or other.

So if you are one of those who has most of your eggs precariously balanced in a single basket, here is what you can do to diversify a bit so that you won’t have to go into panic-mode when disaster strikes your bottom line, and why you should do it. Keep reading…

There are always those people who are looking for things for free… even when you know that what they are looking for isn’t free (looking for a “Free iPod” or “Free XBox” anyone?). But when you are broad matching your PPC campaigns, you want to ensure you aren’t paying for ads when it is the freeloaders looking.

Here is a list of common freeloading keywords that you can add to your negative keyword list.

free
freebie
cheap
complimentary (and mispellings of the word)
“free download”
“free sample”
offers
comp
complimentary
gratis
pass

If you sell any kind of software or subscription service, you will also want to add these keywords to your negative keyword list too.

crack
crack
warez
cracked
keygen
keygen
torrent
password
p2p
hack
cheat

Now, if you are offering something for free, you need to take care that you aren’t actually losing traffic because if this, such as if you are offering a free consultation or free eBook!

Not sure if you are getting traffic from any of these freeloading keywords currently? If you are using dynamic keyword insertion in your URLs, you will be able to track the exact keywords people are using when they click your ad. So if you are selling iPods or XBoxes, you can see how many of those people were actually looking for free iPods or XBoxes, and not seriously looking to purchase one. People looking for freebies rarely convert, particularly when they are searching for these types of products.

Cheap can be a tricky one, because in some markets it can work well, but in others it is much harder to convert. If you are selling a service, for example, you don’t necessarily want to be known as “cheap”, especially if customers are paying a premium for your service… if you are good at what you do you can charge a premium for it that someone new or not as well known wouldn’t be able to do. If you are selling a product that you are pricing very competitively, this can be a good converting keyword for you. Remember people who are using the keyword “cheap” are usually shopping around for the best possible price and might hit 4 different advertisers looking for which one is the cheapest. So if you are the cheapest you have a much higher chance of converting… but if you aren’t, this is one you will want to either watch very carefully for conversions or add to your negative keyword list. Bottom line: “cheap” can be successful if whatever you are selling or offering is the cheapest, but people are looking for the cheapest above anything else you can offer and your conversion rate will reflect this.

Once you have selected which negative freebie keywords you need to add, simply cut and paste it into your PPC campaigns so that you will no longer be serving up broad match ads when they keywords searched for include those words.

So, the majority of people who read my blog (if not all of them) know that the PPC in the title means Pay Per Click. But have you considered the use of acronyms, abbreviations and industry lingo in your own PPC campaigns?

SEO? ROI? NHL? PDA? RPG? B2B? Yes, we all use shorthand abbreviations when writing IMs today, but I have definitely noticed it creeping into YSM (yes, that is Yahoo Search Marketing) & AdWords campaigns quite frequently. But should you let it encroach on yours? While using acronyms and industry jargon can be perfectly acceptable in some situations, in other cases all you will achieve is confusing your potential visitor and handing them over to your competitor on a silver platter. So here are some things to keep in mind when using industry jargon and acronyms in your pay per click campaigns.

Keep reading…

Are you feeling a little overzealous about your use of keywords? If you have the nagging worry that you just might have used your chosen keywords a few too many times on your webpage, chances are good that your probably you did.

But how too many is really too many when it comes to search engine optimization? Well, you’d probably be surprised. There are plenty of “thou shall nots” that webmasters seem to break constantly, simply because they don’t realize that keyword spamming is an actual penalty that will cause their site to get booted right out of the Google index. Here are some of the things you can check and do to ensure your on-page keywords don’t trip the spam filter and are working most effectively for your site’s optimization.

Keep reading…

When planning and researching your keywords to target for either pay per click advertising campaigns or on-page keyword focus within your content, most marketers don’t realize they are leaving a lot of potential keyword options on the table. And what’s more, these alternative keywords are often less expensive to purchase or less competitive to target in the search results for. Why is this? Because too many people take what keywords the various keyword tools give them to heart. There is a huge wealth of traffic to be gleaned by targeting variations of your top chosen keywords.

So what exactly do these “variations” refer to? It definitely goes far beyond the typical misspellings, which is what most people think of when considering alternative keywords. And while misspellings are a crucial part of your keyword variations, there are more areas to look at. Here is what they are and how you can use them to your advantage when creating keyword lists.

Keep reading…

At Seodays, we talked about keyword density and how important keyword density is when optimizing your content. However, not everyone understands how keyword density works… and how going overboard with keyword density can sink your entire page to the bottom of the search engine results, if it even ranks at all.

Keyword density is a tricky one because the percentage you should have can vary depending on the market area. In a non-competitive area, you don’t need to worry much about it too other than to make sure those keywords are on the page, preferably in the first half of the content rather than the second half. But if you are in a competitive area, you need to hit certain percentages of keyword density, and placing them at specific places within your content, without crossing that invisible line where your content becomes so keyword heavy that it becomes spammy.

Keep reading…