Regular readers of this blog know that I throw a particularly cautious eye on the activities of Google. This is because most of the time that they make a change, it is not to the benefit of the marketer. Trust me, they only want to fleece more money from us. But this time it looks like it has backfired. Maybe they will give us a little slack over the next few months.
This will change your campaigns and forecasts, and market research efforts today.
Google is now giving out search volume data on keywords in their suggestion tool. They have been giving out similar information for a while now, but now this data is actually accurate.
You no longer need to extrapolate or guess at traffic numbers. You now KNOW traffic numbers.
Head on over to the Google Tool and see for yourself:
Hey Folks. Loren is giving a talk on screencasts, live video, and video distibution channels tonight at the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs. It starts at 7pm EST. You can check out the live feed here:
The team at Snowcap is at Startup Riot for an all day pitch event. We’re not pitching, but listening. Loren is broadcasting live from the event at his site:
Running a search campaign requires that you collect and analyze a bunch of data. Of all the metrics you are collecting what is most important question that you should be asking? Some might say what is my conversion? Others might state cost per click. But chances are you aren’t collecting the most important thing.
What should you be asking: Why are my potential customers here? This is by far the most important and overlooked aspect of a campaign. Let’s say for example that you are a jeweler and advertising on terms related to “ruby.” Now, from your perspective that makes perfect sense. You sell rubies so you should naturally be advertising on them right? Not always.
What you should be asking yourself is what do people typing in this term really want? In the case of “ruby” most of that traffic is actually looking for information on the Ruby on Rails programming language and framework. So you might be paying for quite a lot of traffic that completely misses the mark.
When you are researching your market you want to break up all your keywords into really tight groupings. Each of these is a segment. Now ask each of these segments. So in our jewelry example we might have a tight group around “ruby” terms. When you drive traffic from this segment you’ll want to ask them “What were you looking for today? What is your most important question?”
When you start collecting this data the psychology of each and every single terms starts to unfold. By analyzing their answers you’ll realize that a majority of the traffic search on “Ruby” wants computer stuff and not gems. On the other hand you might find that “Rubies” is the where your audience truly lies.
But wait, it gets better. when you collect this data you can immediately integrate it into your search campaigns. When you analyze the data you can prioritize a list of concerns that people in a particular segment have. You can use this information in your landing pages and absolutely trounce conversion. When you speak to your audience in the same language and hit on all their major concerns you are much more likely to close the sale.
Go out and start digging into the psychology of your market. I bet you’ll find a huge pot of gold.
Grinding out a proper keyword list is like foreplay – it requires time and patience to do it correctly, but most rush through and do a very poor job. A robust, exhaustive, and targeted keyword list is the foundation of well executed online search marketing campaigns.
I usually begin with as many relevant “seeds” as possible. A seed is the main word or phrase pertaining to your market. For the example in the video, I only used one seed – “green card.” For a full campaign prepared for launch, I would have chosen even more seed terms like “immigrant” “immigration” or “lawful permanent residence.”
In this video, I talk further about the basics of Keyword Building:
As promised, here is the Excel file with the full ad group layout for the seed “green card” and an additional tab with a template that’s ready and waiting for your keywords.
