When it comes to choosing keywords for a PPC campaign, you can find many articles on PPC.org that can help you with just this such as [How to] Find the Right Keywords For Your PPC 
Campaign, PPC Keyword Selection Tips and How Many Keywords Should You Have In An Ad Group? Instead of creating another one of these types of articles about keywords, I thought I would show you a real life example of where these tips are used for a real PPC campaign. Who’s PPC campaign shall we look at? Well, mine! Although it is not live yet and in the draft/development stage, the keywords I have used for my campaign will hopefully help you understand why I chose them based on the above article.
Before we kick things off, we need to know what my campaign is going to be about. I have a book on steam engine restoration that is sold on Amazon and eBay. I want to create a PPC campaign to take advantage of the Christmas rush and target those that are looking to buy gifts for others that are interested in reading about steam engines. From this, I can list a few things that the keywords need to take mind of:
- We are targeting the Christmas rush – CPC is going to be a big factor in getting best ad placement. But, from a little research already, there is not much competition out there already, so I can afford to go vague if I want to, as well as specific with keywords.
- We are targeting people looking for gift ideas – the keywords used should reflect this.
- The landing page could be the Amazon/eBay listing – at the moment, I simply do not have time to create a custom landing page for the book. People are familiar with Amazon and eBay’s layout so it would be better to take advantage of this as the next best alternative.
I know it is not the most detailed analysis of the objectives of the campaign. But, it is enough to come up with some solid keywords to use for the campaign. Below is a list of keywords that would work well for such a campaign:
- Vague keywords – These are the keywords I am bidding for that are vague but will have low CPCs since the competition is low for them, ‘steam engine book’, ‘buy steam engine book’, ‘steam engine gifts’, ‘steam engine present’ and so on. If there was lots of competition for them, I would not bid for them as the vagueness means I could be miss-targeting and paying lots for it too! The point of bidding for these is to entice those interested in steam engines to consider buying the book, which is obviously going to be of interest to them as it is in the same category to what they are searching for.
- Negative keywords – I don’t want my campaign bidding for anything such as ‘sell steam engine’, ‘steam engine info’ or ‘running a steam engine’ because they are not wanting to convert and buy a product – they want information only or to sell a product.
- Niche keywords – This is where the majority of conversions will comes from, ‘buy Mamod book’, ‘buy Mamod steam engine’, ‘Mamod guide’, ‘Mamod restoration’ and ‘Mamod gifts’. Since the only book out there on such a make is mine, this will be extremely niche with a extremely low CPC.
A good tip, if you are struggling with keywords, is to see what people are searching already. Start off with one or two lines in Google and see what comes up underneath to see what is commonly searched – this will help you see what people are searching for so you can include such keywords in your campaign.
