What is keyword optimization?

When a person opens up a search engine on their browser, they type in what they’re searching for, let’s say, dog leashes. The search engine then does a lighting fast search to find websites with the words ‘dog leashes’ in them. The search engine lists these websites in order of their keyword position, that is, which website has the most relevant information in relation to the keywords.

Let’s say you sell pet products. As the advertiser, you want the searchers to land on your website as many times as possible. In order for this to happen, you increase your chances of having many people visit your site and spend money if your site pops up on a search. Optimally, it’s best to be in the top ten positions on any search.

Now, the next question begs, “What is the best way to get a top ten position in a potential customer’s search?”. Well, this is where keyword optimization starts.

Choosing Keywords

In setting up your pet products website or other marketing methods such as PPC, one of the options you have is to choose keywords that are most relevant to your website. For pet supplies, you might choose: leashes, pet food, aquariums, grooming, etc.. But it can go much deeper.

It’s important to know where to look to find relevant keywords for potential customers to search. There are many free tools available for you to use. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are two of the major search engines that offer this service. Using algorithms, they assess advertiser competition and general keyword usage by each web searcher on their respective site. They provide useful data for you the advertiser to use to maximize your knowledge of who’s searching for what. Poke around on these sites and learn these useful systems.

It gets very deep when you learn that keywords like, discount turtle food, exotic birds, ferret supplies, or lizard boutiques could be very useful tags (well, except for lizard boutiques!) for your website or ad campaign. You’ll find on these free keyword tools that the lists are endless when it comes to relevant keywords, no matter how specialized the niche!

The general rule of thumb to the number of keywords to use is about 20 – 30 words or phrases for your page. You can narrow down this list considerably if you use the information above and find out which are the most useful to you and your business.

Do your own digging to find out how to maximize your exposure with keyword optimization. The difference between knowing and not knowing can make or break your advertising effort.

Want to find out more about making tons of money online with keyword optimization? How about a step-by-step program to help you do just that! Click the link below to find out how…

Quality Score for Ad Relevance

Adwords’ Quality Score for keywords measures the relevance of a PPC ad to search queries made by users online.  For example, a user who searches for “ppc” as the keyword will be given a list of search results of PPC web sites.  When the user clicks on any of them, any Google ads on the page will be about PPC or similar keywords.  The ads in the page entice users, who are interested in the subject in the first place, to click on them to know more about similar topics.  When users see the PPC ads on the page, or click on them, the advertising was successful, and the keyword used to advertise is rated accordingly.

The Quality Score for keywords is an important metric in Google’s advertising system, benefiting users, advertisers, and website publishers alike.  Without the Quality Score, ad relevancy is not assured, and displayed ads will not match the needs of users, leading to a failure in advertising.

Quality Score Calculations

Every time there is an ad keyword matched to a search query, the Quality Score for the keyword is calculated, because this means the keyword can bring about an ad.  Quality score is calculated using the CTR of click-through rate, which is the quantity of clicks that the ad receives compared with the number of times that the ad was shown (or what is known as “impression”).  Well-targeted keywords have higher CTRs than general keywords, as well as a well-crafted PPC campaign.  A high CTR leads to a high Quality Score.

A keyword’s initial Quality Score is derived from how well it performed for other advertisers in the past.  Adwords has a monitoring system in place that tracks each keyword’s performance in previous PPC ads.  A base score is then derived and is the keyword’s initial Quality Score for new PPC ads.  How it performs from then on will either lower or raise the Quality Score.

Leveraging Quality Score for PPC Campaigns

Since a high Quality Score means that the keyword performed effectively for other advertisers in the past, Google places a premium on advertising cost for such keywords.  Knowing that a group of keywords for your new PPC campaign has low Quality Scores should tell you whether to redesign the campaign or not.  A poor Quality Score means past advertisers did not do well with the keywords, but a high Quality Score also means that many advertisers are launching their own PPC campaigns with these keywords, offering stiff competition.

Deciding on improving a keyword’s Quality Score means optimizing the Adwords campaign account, setting up descriptive ads and ad groups, and aiming for closely related keywords for all groups.  A sound PPC campaign strategy to optimize Quality Score is also aided by the Keyword Analysis tool that can suggest ad optimization in landing pages, ad copies, and other performance enhancement activities.