Website Design Articles :: Pay per Click Advertising

Keywords - Examine your log files

The secret of success in your pay-per-click-advertising campaign is to create a highly targeted keyword list which matches the services offered through your website. Having an ever-growing, ever-adapting keyword list and using keyword data to tune a campaign are critically important.

Does it matter what keywords result in clicks if your campaigns are successful? Well, yes, if you care about your budget. Improving on your click-through-rate (CTR) will lower your monthly spend and elevate your ranking.

There are several articles on this site and elsewhere on the web which will help you define your list but one that is often overlooked is to use your own web log or statcounter results.

Your Web log is a rich source of keyword research since it captures the keywords visitors used to find your search links and click on them.

Line of Site Clients can see which keywords their visitors are using by logging into the comprehensive statcounter supplied with all sites.

Depending on how you have set up your campaign or ad groups, the data gleaned from your log files will show whether your phrase match keywords can be improved upon.

Phrase match keywords are those entered in double quotes eg "website design" and which display your ads when the keyword is entered with other terms alongside eg 'website design costs'.

Using the "website design" example, examining your log files may show that a significant amount of traffic is generated by the phrase "website design costs", in which case adding the term as an exact match keyword in square brackets - eg [website design costs] to your ad group can result in an improved CTR meaning lower costs and an elevated position.

You should also look in your log files for phrases including your keywords that don't fit your business eg 'website design courses' - in this case 'courses' and add the word as a negative keyword to your campaign list of keywords. Negative keywords are entered by preceding them with a minus sign eg -courses.

You can add negative keywords at ad group or camapign level in which case the negative keywords will apply to all ad groups in that campaign. Thus by looking at your logs and the mix of phrases used by searchers, you can eliminate inappropriate keywords and wasted clicks. A reduction in traffic maybe, but those visitors are unlikely to turn into customers.