PPC Advertising: Understanding Keywords

Pay-per-Click advertising is a quick way to get your brand to the top of the search engine results page. But before you jump in with both feet, it is important to understand a few basic concepts – especially keywords. Today, I’ll try to lay out some keyword tips that will help to guide your way on the PPC journey.

Understanding Intent

At this stage, many marketers jump right into keywords, long-tail vs. short-tail, and research tools. But before you start in on keyword research, it is vital to understand the concept of searcher intent. The concept of searcher intent gets behind the specific keywords used to ask what the searcher is trying to accomplish. Typically, searcher intent can be broken down into three categories: Navigational, Informational, and Transactional.

• Navigational: The intent in a navigational search is to reach a particular site.
• Informational: The intent in an informational search is educational or seeks to answer a question.
• Transactional: The intent in a transactional search is to buy something.

Determining searcher intent is highly valuable, as navigational searches are much less likely to convert to a sale than a transactional search. What’s more, properly determining the searcher’s intent will shape the content you deliver to them. A customer conducting an informational search is probably looking for reviews, while a transactional searcher is looking for discounts and deals.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Developing a list of keywords really isn’t all that difficult, but an effective PPC campaign needs more than just a huge list of words to target. When it comes to keyword research, you don’t want the highest traffic words but the words important to your target audience.

The key to finding the right keywords is going after long-tail keywords. These are highly specific search queries that reveal more about searcher intent than generic, short-tail keywords. Many keyword tools will give you basic short-tail ideas, which makes it the job of marketers to take that base list and create a more complete list that includes long-tail keywords matched to specific searcher intent.

Here’s the bottom line: you’re better off targeting a large number of low volume keywords than a small number of high volume keywords. You’ll pay less and get more conversions – which should be the goal of every PPC campaign.

PPC Advertising

There is a whole world of best practices for PPC advertising, from bid structure to keyword plans. But the first step to success should be understanding your keyword strategy. I’ve barely even touched the surface of keyword strategy here, but hopefully, the idea of searcher intent combined with long tail keywords can help to get your PPC efforts off the ground.

But if you’re ready to take your search advertising to the next level, you might have to bring in a PPC expert. At Fusion Group USA, we can optimize and test your PPC advertising campaigns to ensure you’re getting the maximum return on your investment. We’re confident we can improve your advertising campaign, so give us a call to set up a totally free consultation today!