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Archive for the ‘Keyword Research’ Category

Keyword research is one of the most important steps of creating a successful PPC campaign. It’s also just as important to keep your keyword research going as a part of your ongoing management strategy. This category covers numerous keyword research tips and tricks, strategies, free tools and reviews on those tools. These posts are a must read!

Effectively Using adCenter PPC Tools

February 25th, 2010 | Jen | Keyword Research, Microsoft adCenter, Tools

After the announcement last week of The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, I thought it would be helpful to take a look at the adCenter tools that are available, and how you can use them to help grow and optimize your accounts.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop Tool
As an avid user of the Adwords Editor, I was delighted when Microsoft launched their adCenter desktop tool. Sure, I knew it wouldn’t be as robust or user friendly, but at least it was something! Over the past year I’ve stumbled upon a few things that I hope will help streamline the use of the …

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Long Tail Terms for the Holiday Shopping Season

December 11th, 2009 | Brian | Basic PPC Strategies, Keyword Research

In the second week of December, we’re quickly approaching the end of the biggest gift-giving, and therefore the biggest shopping, period of the year. So, here’s one of the most important questions a good search marketer can ask himself/herself to take advantage of the huge spike in search traffic: “What am I searching for?”

This is not a philosophical, soul-searching question aimed at self-discovery, but instead an attempt to determine which terms and phrases we, as experienced (or not so experienced, in some cases) search professionals, might be using to narrow down and qualify our options during our own holiday shopping.

Without …

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How to Use Negative Keywords in Yahoo! Search Marketing

October 12th, 2009 | Carrie | Keyword Research, Yahoo! Search Marketing

Match types can be tricky, especially when it comes to adding negative match keywords. Negative match keywords (or keyword exclusions) are a very effective way to reduce the number of unqualified clicks on your ad. But negatives can get confusing, and often times a manager will inadvertently add a negative that prevents a targeted keyword from showing ads. To me, Google keyword match types and negative match is pretty straightforward. My confusion settles in when it comes to adding negative keywords in Yahoo.

Recently in one of my Yahoo accounts I launched a campaign with keywords targeting satellite …

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How to Leverage Google’s Trademarked Term Bidding Policies

May 14th, 2009 | Andrew | Keyword Research

With recent news breaking that Google will be opening up keyword bidding policies on trademarked terms, it is time to reconsider whether this is a valid and cost-effective tactic to consider.

On its face, bidding on a competitor’s name or key product seems to be a money-losing proposition. After all, in pay-per-click advertising, we seek relevant traffic that is likely to convert into customers or leads. Someone looking for a direct competitor would seem to be the exact opposite of a likely customer – they are in fact searching, specifically, for your competitor.

But when you reconsider, you realize that a …

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Discovering Keywords On the Cheap

February 3rd, 2009 | guestblogger | Keyword Research

This week we are featuring guest articles from our PPC Hero allies! We requested submissions from our readers and we received excellent responses from some great PPC bloggers! The PPC Hero team will return to our regularly scheduled articles next week. Enjoy!

I love log files, analytics, and looking in your own backyard for PPC keyword strategies. I think your own site’s keyword data is the best and purest (though not the only) place to start your keyword research. Your site’s keyword data …

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5 Ways to Build and Expand Your Negative Keyword Lists Today

January 26th, 2009 | John | Keyword Research

It’s no lie, a lot of PPC bloggers talk about how to build and expand your negative keyword lists. But I’ve been ruminating on negative keyword list expansion here lately, and you know what? It never hurts to have a gentle reminder or refresher course now and then! Negative keywords are an integral part of your pay-per-click strategy (or at least they should be), and it’s important that you keep that skill set nice and sharp. With that in mind, I’d like to share 5 ways you can build and expand your negative keyword …

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Exploring Google’s New Search-Based Keyword Tool

November 20th, 2008 | Andrea | Keyword Research, Tools

If you subscribe to Google’s Adword’s blog you probably saw this recent announcement. Google has launched a new keyword research tool, simply called the Search-Based Keyword Tool. At first, I thought this tool was just a revision or upgrade to the keyword tool already included in our Adwords accounts. But this new tool does a few new things and their worth a mention.

The main screen is pretty easy to understand and if you’re logged into you Adwords account, it will automatically pull all of the account profiles you’re managing into a convenient drop-down menu for …

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Learn the Basics for Building a Killer Keyword List

October 21st, 2008 | Joe | Keyword Research

Yesterday, we discussed the pros and cons of the heavy hitter search engines. Today, as part of our PPC basics blog series, I’ll be covering the fundamentals to building a killer PPC keyword list. The goal of this article is to give new PPC managers some insight into building their initial keyword list.

I am sure that every PPC manager has their own technique/process for keyword research. So, …

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My New Favorite Keyword Research Tool: MSN adCenter Ad Intelligence

September 8th, 2008 | Joe | Keyword Research, Tools

Way back in January MSN announced a new adCenter add-in tool for Excel 2007 call Ad Intelligence. Recently, MSN adCenter announced that they are releasing this add-in for Microsoft Excel 2003. With this release more people are going to be able to utilize this tool so I thought I would conduct a quick review of the MSN adCenter Ad Intelligence tool for Excel.

The adCenter folks have done a good job pulling together a useful keyword tool that is quite robust. In fact, I can’t cover all of …

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