PPC, Keywords, & False Synonyms

Some people, even some pay per click experts think that the way to succeed is to bid on scores of keywords in each category, or for each product. You'll have every keyword variation in every possible order, every thesaurus entry covered... perhaps 50 or more keywords per product.

True, you do have to try a bunch of keywords to discover which are the best for your offerings. It takes testing to see which ones lead your consumers not only to click on but also to buy.

But it's all too easy in the process of throwing up volumes of words, especially when you're marketing something beyond your experience for a client, to unknowingly use what I can only call false synonyms, or pseudosynonyms.

For example, one of my clients sells two fungicide products- one for fingernail fungus, another for toenail fungus. I was reviewing about 40 test keywords suggested by Google's keyword tool when I realized I didn't know if "nail treatment" meant a fungal treatment, or some other kind of nail treatment. What's the general usage of the phrase? I don't know- I'm a guy!

So I searched Google for it, and found that it was used more for 'doing your nails', the pretty updo kind of thang- not for medical fungal nail treatments. Google's keyword tool didn't know that. I'd need a more specific keyword, then, something like "nail fungus treatment". That explains why I had a 0.8% CTR on a very popular keyword.

Lessons:

1. Don't assume that all those general phrases apply to what you're selling.
2. Look at your new keyword list twice and wonder if anything might have another more common usage than the one you're thinking of.
3. Watch out for those low CTRs on high-impression keywords when checking on your tests.