What is keyword management and how to implement it for PPC campaign

Keywords are not only important for SEO but also equally important for Pay per Click advertising or PPC. The specialty of PPC advertising is that it is entirely different from traditional advertising and driven by the SEO Company philosophy. Although SEO and PPC are very different, the only similarity is that both campaigns use keywords as drivers. Since the success of PPC depends on how quickly searchers find you, it is heavily dependent on the use of right keywords. Every PPC campaign relies on extensive keyword research just in the way you would do it for search engine optimization. Why the keyword management aspect is so important for PPC and how you can carry it out will become clear as you keep reading this article.

Keywords for PPC

Keywords are the all-important link that connects the audience with marketers. There is no other way that searchers can ever find out marketers and vice versa. In this context, the importance of keywords is paramount for any marketing campaign that utilizes the powers of search engines. Since pay per click advertisement campaigns use the platform of search engines, it is imperative that it has to depend on keywords for performing satisfactorily. Running PPC campaign alongside SEO is an ideal choice because SEO implementation and results take time. On the contrary, PPC is fast acting, and you need not wait to generate organic rankings to drive traffic to websites. PPC or paid search helps to garner quick attention and drive quality traffic to websites almost instantly.

Keyword management

Since PPC is a paid campaign, you must be mindful about the spending. Keeping aside a budget is important, but it is more important to spend judiciously so that the return on investment improves. To do complete justice to your PPC spending, pay attention to keyword management that is critical in driving the campaign towards success. To strike a balance between expenditures and return on investment, focus on high-quality, low-cost keywords. This is only possible when you can line up the keywords to target. By undertaking keyword research under the guidance of Visionsmash.com, the SEO Company, you can make the list of target keywords for bidding. Keyword research tools are available, and you can even use Google keyword planner that is available free. Besides keyword research, many other aspects of keyword management contribute to a successful PPC campaign.

Managing negative keywords

To control spending in PPC campaigns, besides focusing on target keywords you must pay attention to negative keywords also. Negative keywords are a threat to your campaign because it can drain money and put your campaign in trouble. Therefore, how efficiently you create the list of negative keywords decides the course of the campaign. There are some words or phrases that you want to keep away from in the advertising campaign. You would not like these words to trigger the advertisement and must tell search engines about it. For doing it, you have to create the list of such words grouped under the head of negative keywords and convey it to the search engines. Since you have to pay for every click on the ad, being careful about negative keywords will prevent unwanted clicks thereby preventing wasteful expenditure. Moreover, it ensures that only quality traffic reaches your website.

Doing hourly checks on negative keywords at the beginning of the campaign and then gradually delaying the frequency of checking is the best practice in negative keyword management. However, you must do it at least once a month.

Trend audits for keyword

While keyword research uses historical data, there is enough scope to enrich it with inputs available from what is currently trending. To ascertain the trending keywords a good practice is to monitor the actual search queries by using tools like Google Analytics and AdWords. This exercise helps to identify keywords that are trending, and it is up to you to decide whether to take it or leave it. In the process, you might come up with new words and phrases that you had never even dreamt of.

Managing duplicate keyword

Going by the guidelines of AdWords, the best practice in PPC entails removing duplicate keywords. It is not difficult to fish out duplicate keywords by using the AdWords Editor feature. Doing a regular check for duplicate keywords is advisable because even though you might not be including duplicate keywords knowingly, it can happen advertently. Since duplicate keywords can negatively affect your quality scores, make sure that you avoid it. Duplicate keywords expose you to the risk of paying more for unwanted clicks.

Pay attention to keywords with low search volume

Who would like to retain low search volume keywords that are least remunerative? The ideal thing is to identify such keywords and remove it. However, acting in haste can do more harm than good. An experienced marketer knows that some keywords perform slowly and enter the LSV (low search volume) zone but stays there briefly before moving out on its own. Take time to ascertain that the drift of keywords into the LSV zone is not temporary before removing it. Moreover, it might not always be necessary to remove it because by slightly tweaking the keyword you can once again make it high performing.

Monitor the click through rate (CTR)

Another aspect that must be under close watch is the click through rate of keywords. Although you might have some high performing keywords, it makes enough sense to monitor the CTR, which helps to rank the keywords. The highest impacting aspect of CTR is that any sudden change must be taken seriously, as it is a sign of some new entrant in the market that caused the change. It signals that it is time to review your PPC strategy and incorporate changes that can help the CTR to bounce back.

Keyword management is not a single activity but consists of some tasks that you must perform diligently to keep your PPC campaign on track and drive it towards success.

Guest article written by: Pauline Smith is a digital marketing expert who takes a particular interest in CMS. She had been briefly associated with Visionsmash.com, an SEO Company and is presently heading her firm. A mother of two lovely kids, spending time with family is what she likes most.

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