Expanding your keyword lists: Using "members only" phrases

A recent campaign we had to do for a highly technical client in a very "business to business" type industry led me to this Adwords tip that maybe not everyone knows about. Here is the idea. Research has shown that up to 50% queries at Google each day are unique. People are drilling down and looking for all kinds of stuff. On the other hand, most of the other searches that are done are very general type searches, mostly of 1-3 keywords. Obviously, the more specific the keyword phrase, the better the conversion can be if you have what the person is looking for. But what about when you have a very technical subject, especially if it is an industry you yourself don't know much about, and you need to get some relevant clicks?

You can of course use wordtracker or the yahoo search suggestion tool or the google sandbox, or various other tools. But if you really want to find out other relevant keywords, and you are not an expert in an area, here is what you do:

Use the tools above to get a general understanding of what the keywords in the industry are, and then look through the organic search results to find resource sites and hopefully community/forum sites on that topic. Yahoo and Google groups sometimes are excellent resources for this also.

What you are trying to find are the way people talk who are in these industries, and to find the "members only" types of phrases they use. Every industry has the official term, and then usually they start shortening or changing it in everyday use. Lets take something I know nothing about--Airplane Mechanics. Suppose you want to sell a tool to airplane mechanics (or their bosses, who have all the money)

You could start with general keyword research, but how do these guys refer to their tools? What sites would they visit? Where would they hang out online?

Once you have the sites identified, you can look and see what terminology is used, view source on those pages, and take a look at the titles and meta tags to see what the sites webmasters considered important, and you will often find more terms that you wouldn't have thought of ordinarily, and also wouldn't have found from traditional keyword research tools.

Of course, if you already are an expert in the area, make sure to brainstorm a list of these words, as well as sites you know are important, to give to someone who is managing your Adwords account, and if you know any words that you DON'T want people to type in, make sure that your person knows that too. These are called "negative keywords" which you can put in to not show your ads on, and really save a lot of money on irrelevant clicks. One of the biggies is "jobs" unless you are specifically hiring. People looking for jobs in all kinds of industries click on ads a lot, and visit a lot of sites, which is great if you are hiring, but costly if you are not.

So the next time you have a technical campaign you have to do, try this out.

Rock on,

-Steve

Steve Blom
Certified Google Adwords Professional

Adwords Training Video Author:

Blog:
http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org

Free Adwords video:
http://www.adwordstraining.org/video/free_adwords_tutorial_video.htm

Contact: steve@adwordstraining.org