Keyword Selection

If we require our web site to be highly ranked in search engines, then we want to find out the words that searchers use to get our site, Search Engines are dividing their visibility of results in terms of SEO and PPC, where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is Organic Search Result and PPC (Pay Per Click) is Paid Search Result, selecting the keywords for a campaign is the most vital part of SEO and PPC. As per google PPC guidance the best practice of keyword selection consists of 5 steps

1. Expand (SEO and PPC)
2. Match (PPC)
3. Scrub (SEO and PPC)
4. Group (PPC)
5.  Refine (PPC 

1.  Expand:  This activity will support for both SEO and PPC keyword selection process 

Step 1:

• Understand the business logic's
• Think how users will search your business through online?
• What are the possible keywords are there to reach your business?
• What are the competitor targeting keywords?

Get answer for the above questions and collect your keywords in an excel sheet for eg: if my business is online pet shop that to only for dogs and cats in Bangalore

 Keywords idea

1. online pet shop
2. pet shop online
3. dog pet shop
4. cat pet shop
5. dog pet shop online
6. cat pet shop online
7. bangalore online pet shop
8. online pet shop bangalore

   Note: Collect enormous keywords list, from that we can pick the best target keyword 

We done with our 1st step J

Step 2:

Now we need to go this URL : https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner use your gmail credential to login into the account 

a.   Click “search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category” button

        b.  Drop your keywords idea into that box and select the targeting location as “bangaluru” and then click “Get Idea”

        c.  Now it will generate the list of keywords (808) under keyword ideas, click the download button

d.  Download the file in Excel CSV format  

e.  Save the file 

f.  Find the excel output: our input is 8 keywords and it gives 808 keywords 

This whole process is called as expanding the keywords idea 

2.     Match: This activity will support only for PPC Campaign.

4 types of matches are there to selecting the keywords in PPC Campaign

1. Broad match –> online pet shop
2. Phrase match –> “online pet shop”
3. Exact match –> [online pet shop]
4. Negative match -> -free 

Broad match: it’s a default setting if you select the broad match keyword as online pet shop in your PPC campaign it will show the result for the keywords like online, pet, shop and other possible combinations

Phrase match: here we need to specify the keyword in “”, what order you specify in the codes will reflect in the result eg: “online pet shop” is your phrase match keyword then it will reflect in dog online pet shop, but it won’t reflect in dog pet online shop

Exact match: here we need to specify the keyword in [], whatever keyword inside the brackets will reflect in the result eg: [online pet shop] is your exact match keyword, only for that keyword it will reflect in result, remaining it won’t

Negative match: here we need to specify the keyword in -, if your business won’t have free products then free is a negative keyword. Eg: -free this is your negative match keyword; in result it will neglect the combination of the word free 

3.      Scrub: This activity will support for both SEO and PPC Campaign.

Now we are having a dumb of keywords, it’s time to select our target keywords

Best Practice:

• Keywords related to the business
• Keywords with high monthly search volume and low competition
• Two to three keyword phrases (long tail keywords) selection is usually best 

4.   Group: This activity will support for PPC Campaign.

Now we came up with our final target keywords list, it’s time to group the keywords under their category

Eg: In our business we are dealing with dogs and cats products, so split the general keywords in general section, dog related keywords in dog section, cat related keywords in cat section and finally Bangalore related keywords in bangalore section

No	General	Dog	Cat	Bangalore
1	online pet shop	dog pet shop	cat pet shop	bangalore online pet shop
2	pet shop online	dog pet shop online	cat pet shop online	online pet shop bangalore

5.  Refine: This activity will support only for PPC 

Once we implement this group of keywords, we need to monitor which keyword is performing and which is not. Performing keyword we can add more budget and non-performing keyword we need to give more attention like why it’s going wrong and how to over come ?  

Reference: Google Adwords starter Guide 

Summary

Even if we choose SEO or PPC campaign keyword selection is the most important factor. Google suggest 5 simple steps to select the valuable keywords for the business. Post your doubts or questions in the comment box, we are happy to reply J