You’re probably familiar with Overture and Wordtracker, as well as AdWord Accelerator, which is a great tool in PPC management for sorting out the real competition between keywords and bid prices and selecting the best performing ads. But there are others that give it a different emphasis and have their own characteristics that make them unique and very valuable. AdWords Analyzer is one. Keywords Analyzer is another.
In your toolbox in the garage, you need both a Philips and a flat head screwdriver, not just one or the other. The same goes for these top keyword tools. Each has its use, and having more is like having a bigger toolbox.
And there is still more to learn. The first keyword list that comes to mind, even if it is long, will be incomplete. AltaVista once reported that 20 percent of all its searches were totally unique in AltaVista’s history. You never know what people are going to hunt. So here are some fresh ideas for successful PPC management:
o You’ll want plenty of synonyms and related topics in your keyword pool to make sure you’re reaching the people who are looking for what you have.
o You can try bidding on brand names, although you’ll have to resolve copyright issues yourself. Google has had its own legal headaches as a result of allowing AdWords users to bid on trademarked names. However, the names of companies, magazines, associations, famous people and famous places can be associated with your product. For example, for “pool” you could bid on the name of the famous pool player Jeremy Jones. For drums, you can bid on “Buddy Rich.”
o Misspellings are a big opportunity, because many advertisers don’t bid on them and the click-through rate is usually higher. For a Lord of the Rings promo, “Tolkien” (misspelled) got twice the CTR of “Tolkien” (correctly spelled).
o LexFN.com is a very useful and interesting website for PPC management. It is an elaborate thesaurus that uses web technology to find dozens of synonyms and related concepts. This can be a very fun site to play! If you only bid on the obvious generic version of a keyword like WalMart and don’t bother with other variations like Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart, Google’s “extended phrase match” feature will attempt to match this for you and by will generally be successful. . However, those clicks will almost always cost you more money than bidding on the exact keyword. It’s best to bid on the exact variations, the same way people write them.