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Generic Pay per Click Keywords: To Bid or Not to Bid

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Using the right type of keywords for an online ad campaign is a major determining factor as to whether or your PPC boat will sink or float. One of the reasons why many PPC campaigns don’t work is because new pay per click advertisers bid on the wrong type of keywords. Bear in mind that there is no straight guide that guarantees the most effective campaign. There are, however, a few rules of thumb to guide you in some occasions.

There’s the age old question of whether or not to use general terms and phrases as keywords on online ads. As an SEO specialist, I’ve experienced clients requesting, and insisting, to use keywords that are too generic to optimize their site and I’d advise them against it because of the competition. The same also holds true for PPC marketing with a few other things to consider.

When choosing keywords for your ad, the use of generic terms and phrases is usually frowned upon. Though these terms is related to your business, chances are you're not the only one offering the said product/service. If your websites sell mobile phones for example, forget about using mobile phones as your keyword. Search the item in Google and you'd find that there are over 77 million search results and already 6 ads on the first page for this keyword. That’s how many ads (and pages) your website has to battle for visibility.

Bring that number down a few zeros by making your keyword a lot more specific. Try including the mobile phone brand and the model. If you sell to a specific area only, include that. The keyword: “Samsung g800 mobile phone London”, for example only shows 76,200 results with only 1 PPC ad.

Here's another reason why you shouldn’t use generic keywords. Given that there may be dozens of websites older (and maybe, bigger) than yours already using these keywords, and given that they are already putting out quite a large amount of money to bid for the keywords, you would have to do the same to get decent rankings in the search engine's result pages. Imagine the amount you would have to pay to guarantee quality placement.

Yes, in this case, your site achieves visibility. But being seen is not your ultimate goal. When a typical researcher finds your ad and clicks it, that’s already an expense on your part. But is there a guarantee that this searcher would become a client? Ever heard of “window shopping”? Imagine shelling out a huge mound of cash for a click without the guarantee of profit.

With generic keywords you have searchers looking for mobile phones that would not likely look for the product on your site, maybe they're not even looking for a product at all but just the information related on the term. But you have a pretty good idea what the searcher is looking for if he searches for “Samsung g800 mobile phone London”. A more specific search usually means the prospective client is looking to buy and not just look around the shop. If this is a product you sell, this increases your guarantee of a sale, the amount you bid would be worth the risk.

Now, here’s a tip if you can’t come up with your own list. There are dozens of good keyword suggestion tools in the market today that can help with keyword PPC research. One of my favorites right now is KeywordSpy. With this tool you can actually look into what keywords other websites in the same industry are using in their ad campaigns. I use this tool to look for keywords and exactly which companies are bidding on them. This way I know what I’m up against and if I stand a chance.

Regardless of the manner you use, don’t forget that the aim in choosing keywords is profitability and efficiency. That is to bid on the ones closely related to what you offer to produce leads without losing money on competitive keywords and phrases that would likely produce lesser profits.