How to Earn a High Quality Score - Keywords (Building your SEM Campaign)

Developing keywords is an ongoing process that requires the right tools, “thinking outside-of-the-box” mentality, and patience! First we’ll discuss keyword selection.

Keyword Selection
Ensure that all keywords are specific to the product or service you are selling. Using “broad keywords” will draw large amounts of traffic from all walks of inquiries and exhaust your budget very quickly. Conversely, using niche terms will provide limited traffic and will give less ROI since your ad will appear very sparsely. Broad keywords will lower your quality score while niche keywords will give you less opportunity to build it.

Let’s use video cards as an example

Does this mean ATI video card will only bring conversions?

 “ATI video card” (phrase match) will draw traffic that is likely to turn into conversions. However, no keyword is perfect and the goal is to limit the amount of “tire kickers” who are unlikely to “convert” after clicking on your ad.

Keep in mind that “conversions” are different for every company. An example of this would be if your objective as a company is to generate leads, than a conversion would be associated with people signing up for your newsletter, downloading a coupon, etc.

So SEM is strictly for conversions?

Conversions are not the only method for measuring the success of your SEM campaign. This is where SEO and SEM cross paths and the development of customer loyalty, word of mouth, brand awareness and other additional benefits start to contribute to the success of the campaign. Some benefits are harder to measure than others, but all important.

What do you mean by customer loyalty?

If we assume your site has information on ATI video cards (since you sell them, it’s a safe assumption) and the user finds the information he is looking for (no bounces), we just improved our quality score for that keyword and a user left satisfied with the information he found (remember, higher quality score means less money required for CPC). Furthermore, there is a possibility the customer will revisit the source of his information and make his purchase there! Building loyalty (increase in page views, page depth, time spent on site, etc) is an integral part of an SEO campaign that SEM can further assist with as a secondary objective (the first being conversion). 

What if my customer doesn’t know what they want?

This will be covered in a more advanced blog post. Stay tuned.

Ok, so I have my keywords…what’s next?!

We aren’t done with keywords just yet! We need to look at negative keyword next!

Negative Keyword Selection
“Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won't show for search queries containing that term. By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI” – Google Adword Center

Adding negative keywords is an essential part of your campaign. You want to avoid keywords which will draw unwanted traffic and will end up costing you money (CPC). Negative keywords will also filter out impressions that have a higher probability of not being clicked, which would lower your quality score due to poor CTR. Some negative keywords are universal such as “free” and “cheap” while others are dependent on your campaign. For example

Toronto restaurant name: Asiago
Negative keywords: cheese, fromage, etc

New York restaurant name: Toronto Bistro
Negative keywords: GTA, Ontario, Canada, etc

Okay…NOW can we move on?

Next we’ll talk about Adgroups and Ads…in my next blog!

SEM Campaign Part 0 - Hurting your Site? (Quality Score)
SEM Campaign Part 1 - You are here
SEM Campaign Part 2 - Ads and Adgroups
SEM Campaign Part 3 - CTR