Synonyms, Misspellings and Two Word Phrases
Anyone running a real estate Google AdWords campaign and monitoring their web site stats for keyword phrases used by consumers should have noticed that there are a number of words that Google will interpret as synonyms to your keywords, expecially if you use broad match keywords. Google will also treat certain misspellings as synonyms, including misspellings of community names. Most annoying, at least to me, is that Google will often treat nearby communities in the same metro area as synonyms for each other, or will equate the larger metro area with an included community name. This may be OK for some of you. But in my case, I do not want leads looking for homes in northern Denver suburbs, which are 20-30 miles away from my primary market area, or in downtown Denver, which is not my expertise.
Some of the synonyms I have noticed:
real estate = realistate = realestate = realastate = property
homes for sale = real estate for sale = mls
Based on this, it is not absolutely necessary to include all of the synonyms in a keyword list, only the primary one. However, knowing what Google considers synonyms, you can also use this to your advantage. How? By creating phrase match keyword phrases i.e.: "keyword phrase", for the synonyms as well as the primary terms, and bidding lower on the synonym phrases than you do for the primary phrase. Google will use your more precise phrase match whenever possible, before it resorts to the broad match term. This also works for community names that are two words. For example, I have a community here called Highlands Ranch. I offer a lower bid for HighlandsRanch. This one doesn't happen real often, but when it does, the lower bid still gets the ad to the top position, without overbidding.
For the same reason, I have negative keywords in each community specific ad group for other nearby communities, which Goggle will often substitute as a synonym, even though there may be another community specific ad group that is really a better match for the user's phrase. This drove me crazy as I was testing! My testing methods now include testing similar searches for communities NOT in my campaign, just to see if one of my ads for another local community gets displayed. If it does, then that is one more negative keyword for my community specific ad groups. Why is this really important? because each of my ads is very community specific, and I only want the user to see the ad for the exact community they entered, and not some other community in the metro area that Google happens to think is close enough to consider a synonym community name.
Plurals
Google will sometimes, but not always, be smart enough to recognize and trigger your ad for plural forms (and misspellings) in a broad match keyword, but will generally NOT do that for a phrase match or exact match keyword. So, if you use phrase match or exact match keywords, be sure to include a separate keyword and bid for the plural version and for common misspellings. In some cases, you may need to bid higher for the plural version, simply because it is usually the most popular version used by most consumers.
Capitalization and Punctuation
Never use punctuation or capitalization in your keyword phrases, even in exact match phrases. When picking an ad to show, Google strips all punctuation and ignores case in the user's search phrase when matching keywords. However, if you do capitalize something in your keyword list, and have a non-capitalized version of the same keyword or phrase in the same list, the AdWords editor will treat them as different keywords, and you can easily miss the duplication, and possibly mis-bid on one or the other. The AdWords editor will often tag these as overlapping keywords, but you will see that only if you do a traffic estimate.
Keyword Grouping
Use ad groups to separate keywords by community and broad categories. For example, I set up one ad group for each community for all "real estate" phrases, one ad group for the same community for "home"/"homes" phrases, and a third ad group for that community for "house"/"houses" phrases. Because of Google's synonym behavior, I also include negative keywords in each ad group for the words in the other two. For example, the Home/Homes ad group has negative keywords for House/Houses.
This grouping lets you better track and monitor detailed AdWords stats, including conversions (IDX advanced search registrations in my case) if your site supports embedding Google's conversion tracking code in the appropriate places. For example, in my market, I found that the House/Houses ad groups, in general, produced very low impression counts, and very low CTR and conversion rates, resulting in much higher cost per conversion, so I rarely use those ad groups any more. This frees more of my AdWords budget to focus on the other two, both of which produce conversions at lower costs.
Phrase Match, Broad Match and Exact Match
It is very simple to setup a basic real estate ad group with a very small set of general, broad match terms, such as: mytown real estate, mytown homes, etc. However, this simplicity has its cost: higher bids for top positions and higher cost/conversion. It is also tempting to go to the other extreme with lots of exact match keywords. While this can reduce bids in some cases, it also produces a risk that your ad will not be displeyed if the user enters their search terms in some unusual way. I prefer the middle road. Most of my keywords are phrase match combinations, with a few broad match keywords in each ad group (at a lower bid than any of the phrase matches) just to catch the stray user who may enter the search terms in some unusual way. This is a calculated trade-off in regards to bids vs. maintenance effort.
Culling
As your ads mature, and you get a good sampling of what users are actually entering (or not) for their searches, you will need to make some hard decisions about certain keywords that may not be performing well. Their CTR may be very low, resulting in high bids to keep them in top positions, and/or the cost per conversion may be very high, sapping your budget. Some may be getting lots of clicks, and yet producing no conversions! I really focus on conversion rates and long term cost per conversion as my primary determining factor. By long term, I mean over two-three months. If a particular keyword is not converting at all, or has a very high cost/conversion, say 60% over the average cost/conversion for the entire campaign, I may disable it by lowering its bid to .01. I will NOT delete it! I want its history to stay there forever to remind me of why I disabled it. Culling keywords allows the money saved to be automatically re-allocated to the keywords that are producing conversions at a lower cost/conversion.
Catching Long Tails with Phrase Match Keywords
A "long tail" keyword is a phrase that is more words and is therefore more precisely targeted than a basic keyword. Where "real estate" is a basic keyword, "cheap mytown real estate for sale in mysubdivision" is a long tail keyword phrase. Finding good long tail keywords can reduce your PPC costs significantly because you can bid less for them and still get good ad positions. However, if you try to use every possible combination a user may enter, it can add lots of effort and overhead to your keyword list. Also, in the case of Google, excessive use of complex long tail keywords can actually hurt your results. When Google sees that a particular long tail keyword is very seldom actually used in searches by consumers, it will often temporarily disable that keyword, so it won't display your ads. You can see now this behavior with the new "spyglass" Google has added to the online ad group keyword statistics.
As I mentioned in Tip #5 above, phrase match is a partial answer for this. Using just a few well chosen combinations of critical keywords in a phrase match allows consumers to add any other words they like before and after the phrase you specify to make their own long tail searches, and you will still catch them all. For example: phrase match keywords "mytown real estate", "real estate mytown", "real estate for sale mytown", "mytown real estate for sale" will catch the great majority of long tail user searches that include "real estate". I refer to these a "short tail" keywords, to differentiate them from single word and long tail keywords. This ability is exactly why Google has phrase match keywords in the first place.
Anyone running a real estate Google AdWords campaign and monitoring their web site stats for keyword phrases used by consumers should have noticed that there are a number of words that Google will interpret as synonyms to your keywords, expecially if you use broad match keywords. Google will also treat certain misspellings as synonyms, including misspellings of community names. Most annoying, at least to me, is that Google will often treat nearby communities in the same metro area as synonyms for each other, or will equate the larger metro area with an included community name. This may be OK for some of you. But in my case, I do not want leads looking for homes in northern Denver suburbs, which are 20-30 miles away from my primary market area, or in downtown Denver, which is not my expertise.
Some of the synonyms I have noticed:
real estate = realistate = realestate = realastate = property
homes for sale = real estate for sale = mls
Based on this, it is not absolutely necessary to include all of the synonyms in a keyword list, only the primary one. However, knowing what Google considers synonyms, you can also use this to your advantage. How? By creating phrase match keyword phrases i.e.: "keyword phrase", for the synonyms as well as the primary terms, and bidding lower on the synonym phrases than you do for the primary phrase. Google will use your more precise phrase match whenever possible, before it resorts to the broad match term. This also works for community names that are two words. For example, I have a community here called Highlands Ranch. I offer a lower bid for HighlandsRanch. This one doesn't happen real often, but when it does, the lower bid still gets the ad to the top position, without overbidding.
For the same reason, I have negative keywords in each community specific ad group for other nearby communities, which Goggle will often substitute as a synonym, even though there may be another community specific ad group that is really a better match for the user's phrase. This drove me crazy as I was testing! My testing methods now include testing similar searches for communities NOT in my campaign, just to see if one of my ads for another local community gets displayed. If it does, then that is one more negative keyword for my community specific ad groups. Why is this really important? because each of my ads is very community specific, and I only want the user to see the ad for the exact community they entered, and not some other community in the metro area that Google happens to think is close enough to consider a synonym community name.
Plurals
Google will sometimes, but not always, be smart enough to recognize and trigger your ad for plural forms (and misspellings) in a broad match keyword, but will generally NOT do that for a phrase match or exact match keyword. So, if you use phrase match or exact match keywords, be sure to include a separate keyword and bid for the plural version and for common misspellings. In some cases, you may need to bid higher for the plural version, simply because it is usually the most popular version used by most consumers.
Capitalization and Punctuation
Never use punctuation or capitalization in your keyword phrases, even in exact match phrases. When picking an ad to show, Google strips all punctuation and ignores case in the user's search phrase when matching keywords. However, if you do capitalize something in your keyword list, and have a non-capitalized version of the same keyword or phrase in the same list, the AdWords editor will treat them as different keywords, and you can easily miss the duplication, and possibly mis-bid on one or the other. The AdWords editor will often tag these as overlapping keywords, but you will see that only if you do a traffic estimate.
Keyword Grouping
Use ad groups to separate keywords by community and broad categories. For example, I set up one ad group for each community for all "real estate" phrases, one ad group for the same community for "home"/"homes" phrases, and a third ad group for that community for "house"/"houses" phrases. Because of Google's synonym behavior, I also include negative keywords in each ad group for the words in the other two. For example, the Home/Homes ad group has negative keywords for House/Houses.
This grouping lets you better track and monitor detailed AdWords stats, including conversions (IDX advanced search registrations in my case) if your site supports embedding Google's conversion tracking code in the appropriate places. For example, in my market, I found that the House/Houses ad groups, in general, produced very low impression counts, and very low CTR and conversion rates, resulting in much higher cost per conversion, so I rarely use those ad groups any more. This frees more of my AdWords budget to focus on the other two, both of which produce conversions at lower costs.
Phrase Match, Broad Match and Exact Match
It is very simple to setup a basic real estate ad group with a very small set of general, broad match terms, such as: mytown real estate, mytown homes, etc. However, this simplicity has its cost: higher bids for top positions and higher cost/conversion. It is also tempting to go to the other extreme with lots of exact match keywords. While this can reduce bids in some cases, it also produces a risk that your ad will not be displeyed if the user enters their search terms in some unusual way. I prefer the middle road. Most of my keywords are phrase match combinations, with a few broad match keywords in each ad group (at a lower bid than any of the phrase matches) just to catch the stray user who may enter the search terms in some unusual way. This is a calculated trade-off in regards to bids vs. maintenance effort.
Culling
As your ads mature, and you get a good sampling of what users are actually entering (or not) for their searches, you will need to make some hard decisions about certain keywords that may not be performing well. Their CTR may be very low, resulting in high bids to keep them in top positions, and/or the cost per conversion may be very high, sapping your budget. Some may be getting lots of clicks, and yet producing no conversions! I really focus on conversion rates and long term cost per conversion as my primary determining factor. By long term, I mean over two-three months. If a particular keyword is not converting at all, or has a very high cost/conversion, say 60% over the average cost/conversion for the entire campaign, I may disable it by lowering its bid to .01. I will NOT delete it! I want its history to stay there forever to remind me of why I disabled it. Culling keywords allows the money saved to be automatically re-allocated to the keywords that are producing conversions at a lower cost/conversion.
Catching Long Tails with Phrase Match Keywords
A "long tail" keyword is a phrase that is more words and is therefore more precisely targeted than a basic keyword. Where "real estate" is a basic keyword, "cheap mytown real estate for sale in mysubdivision" is a long tail keyword phrase. Finding good long tail keywords can reduce your PPC costs significantly because you can bid less for them and still get good ad positions. However, if you try to use every possible combination a user may enter, it can add lots of effort and overhead to your keyword list. Also, in the case of Google, excessive use of complex long tail keywords can actually hurt your results. When Google sees that a particular long tail keyword is very seldom actually used in searches by consumers, it will often temporarily disable that keyword, so it won't display your ads. You can see now this behavior with the new "spyglass" Google has added to the online ad group keyword statistics.
As I mentioned in Tip #5 above, phrase match is a partial answer for this. Using just a few well chosen combinations of critical keywords in a phrase match allows consumers to add any other words they like before and after the phrase you specify to make their own long tail searches, and you will still catch them all. For example: phrase match keywords "mytown real estate", "real estate mytown", "real estate for sale mytown", "mytown real estate for sale" will catch the great majority of long tail user searches that include "real estate". I refer to these a "short tail" keywords, to differentiate them from single word and long tail keywords. This ability is exactly why Google has phrase match keywords in the first place.
__________________
Hope this info helps
Hope this info helps
No comments:
Post a Comment