Effectively utilizing keywords = increase your eCommerce sales

 

Keywords are the groundwork of any Adwords campaign, and if incorrectly selected, they will not be beneficial to your company. Here are the steps you should take when selecting your Google Adwords keywords. Read here to learn more about Google Ads for eCommerce.

#1 Decide what is relevant

A good keyword is a word or phrase that is both specific and relevant to your product and business. Google is dependent on relevance, so you want your keywords to describe exactly what products or services your business is providing. That will help to increase the likelihood of your business appearing when a potential customer is searching for the products you offer on Google. Thus, it is pivotal that your keywords match your ad copy and your website copy.

> Read here about how to choose the right keywords in your Google Ads Campaigns.

#2 Consider your customers

When deciding which keywords you should use, put yourself in your customer’s shoes…if you were searching for the products your business offers what would you type in the Google search engine? Taking that step back and evaluating which terms would actually appear in a customer’s search is crucial when deciding your keywords.

#3 Be specific; link your keywords

Keywords that generate a lot of traffic are essential, but if they aren’t relevant to your business don’t select them! Traffic is great, but traffic from uninterested consumers doesn’t lead to conversions. Instead, it reflects poorly on your business and leads to higher costs. You don’t want to pay for irrelevant or uninterested clicks, so don’t select irrelevant keywords. Instead, you want to select specific keywords closely related to your products and linked to the wording in your pay per click advert (PPC). You should be sure to set your pay per click advert to directly match the wording on your landing page to ensure your generating even more relevant traffic.

#4 Create alternative keywords

When creating your keywords it’s important to consider other variations of those same keywords people may search. Think of synonyms, colloquials, and specific product names. It may even be helpful to include the singular and plural versions of words as well as alternative spellings.

If you are having trouble generating more keywords you can use the Google Adwords tool called the Keyword Planner. Using this tool, you can submit a keyword and select relevant/high ranking keywords from your results. After selecting a few keywords you like you can enter more phrases to generate even more results!

#5 Locate your customer base

You want to be sure you are targeting the correct audience for your specified products or services. In order to do this, you can adjust your location settings accordingly. Your location targeting should reflect the location in which you do business. You have the ability to set your locations based on the area of your customer base. This kind of targeting is extremely precise in the sense that your ad will only appear in search results if it is within your specified area. Hence, don’t utilize this function unless you have a very specific and distinct customer base.

#6 Determine your keyword match settings

There are four different ways to match your keywords through Google’s technology: broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match (described in #7).

• A broad match consists of matching single keywords within a chain, synonyms, and singular or plural forms of a word. There is no specific type of punctuation you need to use in order to set up a broad match.
• A phrase match is a little bit more targeted in the sense that someone will only see your ad if they search the entire keyword. However, there is some flexibility because someone may add words before or after your keyword chain and still obtain results. In order to set up phrase matching, you simply put “quotation marks” around your specified keywords.
• An exact match is even more specific. Any time someone searches for your product, they must search the exact keyword phrase. To obtain an exact match, you simply put your keyword phrase in [brackets].

#7 Eliminate negative keywords

A negative keyword is a keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase. Getting rid of negative keywords will prevent irrelevant searches from generating your ads, thus; your results will only appear in relevant searches. In order to eliminate negative keywords, you simply add a minus sign (-) before the specific keyword, and AdWords will exclude it. For example, if you add the word “free” as a negative keyword in your campaign group, it will make sure if someone searches “free” in line with other targeted keywords; your ad won’t appear.