Tools and Strategies for Optimizing Keywords

Use these tools to find new keywords and to identify which keywords to optimize

• Use the Keyword Tool to brainstorm ideas for keyword lists and find negative keywords while you're creating a campaign. Once the tool has generated some initial ideas, you can then enter the relevant results back into the tool to generate even more specific keyword ideas. Add relevant keywords to the ad group that focuses on that theme or product.

• Use the keyword analysis field on your campaign's Keywords tab to see an in-depth view of your keyword's performance, including its Quality Score on a 1-10 scale. You might want to delete keywords with low Quality Scores and add more keywords that are more like those with higher scores. If you really want to run on those keywords, consider moving them to another ad group and test them with a new ad. If they still don't perform well after one month, delete them.

• Run a search terms  to see all the search queries that have triggered your ads. You can use this report to identify relevant queries driving traffic to your website and add them as new keywords. If you see any irrelevant terms, add them as negative keywords to your ad group or campaign.

• Use the Traffic Estimator to find keyword traffic and cost estimates to identify potential keywords. By knowing the estimated traffic for your keywords, you can also set appropriate keyword bids that will maximize your ad's exposure within the limit of your daily budget.

Optimize keywords for better CTR
If you are CTR-focused, you may want to delete keywords with high impression counts but low numbers of clickthroughs. These keywords may be too general or not relevant enough and are accumulating many impressions but very few clicks. For CTR, it's also very important to focus on negative keywords to prevent impressions that aren't likely to lead to a click. Along with negative keywords, consider trying different keyword matching options like phrase match to reduce the number of irrelevant searches.

Optimize keywords for better ROI
The bottom line for any keyword is how much value it generates compared to its cost. To determine the profitability of a keyword, you can track the conversions from that keyword with Google's free conversion tracking tool. Once you have conversion data, you can identify and delete keywords that accumulate high costs but very few conversions. Once you understand the value of each keyword, you can also increase that keyword's profitability by adjusting its CPC or CPM bid. For keywords that show a profit, increase the bid to increase exposure and generate more traffic. For keywords that aren't profitable, decrease the bid to lower your costs.

Try to understand what stage within the buying cycle a user might be in. For instance, users searching with terms like "reviews" or "ratings" are probably still researching the product and might be less likely to make a purchase at that stage. To target serious buyers, you might try using keyword phrases that include conversion-related words like "buy," "purchase," or "order," and use "reviews" as a negative keyword. You can also include specific product names you sell and model numbers. Users searching on highly specific terms know exactly what they are looking for and could be more likely to convert for you.

Use appropriate keyword matching options to control who sees your ads
Experiment with keywords matching options. The four matching options determine which Google searches can trigger your ads to appear, helping you control who sees your ads. With broad match, you'll typically receive the most number of ad impressions.

Use negative keywords to eliminate unwanted clicks
Negative keywords can help increase your ROI and conversion rates by preventing your ad from showing for searches that include that word or phrase. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your costs, and increase your return on investment.

When constructing a negative keywords list, try to be as exhaustive as possible. However, be careful that none of your negative keywords overlap with your regular keywords, as this will cause your ad not to show for that keyword. For instance, an advertiser for a financial institution that provides loans but does not offer actual rate quotes may want to include 'rate' and 'rates' as negative keywords. However, if he wanted to include 'fixed rate mortgage' in his keyword list, he should not include 'rate' among his campaign negative keywords list.

You can use negative keywords for a number of reasons:

• Filter out different products or services: For example, a real estate agent who is focused on selling homes may wish to include not only the negative keywords rent and renting, but also use the Keyword Tool to find ideas for variations such as rents, rental, and rentals to use as additional negative keywords.
• Filter out irrelevant searches: For example, an advertiser may discover that the name of one of his products also happens to be the name of a musical group. In this case, it’s a good idea to include negative keywords such as music, band, concert, ticket, lyric, album, mp3, and the pluralized versions of these words.
• Filter for serious buyers: Advertisers hoping to make sales may want to filter out research-oriented searches by adding negative keywords like review, rate, rating, compare, comparing, comparison, and the pluralized versions of these words.

Use the Edit Campaign Negative Keywords tool to add negative keywords to an entire campaign at once.