Keyword research is a pretty big part of affiliate marketing. Sometimes it’s what it all comes down to. There are a lot of things to consider when you do your keyword research, so hopefully I’ll make a few things clear for you and make your keyword selection a little more solid.
How many keywords?
Really it’s however many are profitable. There’s money in single word short tail keywords, and there’s money in tens of thousands of long tail keywords. I’ll give you a few examples and then you can research and test new keywords for your campaigns.
Short Tail Keyword :
Auto Insurance
Long-Tail Keyword :
Dodge auto insurance
Uber Long-Tail Keyword :
2005 Dodge Stratus auto insurance
Short-Tail Keyword :
ringtones
Long-Tail Keyword :
Verizon LG ringtones
Uber Long-Tail Keyword :
Kayne West Stronger Verizon LG ringtone
Each type of keyword can convert for a specific niche. There’s more volume in plain short tails, but the long tails can add up pretty fast and you can get good volume with them.
Keyword Tools
I won’t really go into too much detail here, as I don’t use too many keyword research tools. I have an account with every single one lol, but I rarely use them. It’s fairly easy to generate 100k+ keyword lists without any tools. If I had to pick a paid tool to go with, it’d either be WordTracker or Wordze. Or something like KeywordSpy if you just want sheer volume of keywords. The free Google keyword tool isn’t that bad either, and it’s free.
Match Types
This deals mostly with Google Adwords. Match type selection is VERY important when it comes to your campaign. The three types are :
broad match
“phrase match”
[exact match]
Let’s cut phrase match out of there because I don’t really use it. I start all my keywords with just exact match, which means if I add [dodge auto insurance], my ad is only going to show up when “dodge auto insurance” is searched for exactly. Once I test the how profitable the exact match keywords, I expand it to broad match and test the conversion rates on them. There’s a lot more volume in broad match, but also things to look out for…
Negative Keywords
When broad matching, negative keywords are sooo important. You have to eliminate people that aren’t looking to buy, since those people are much less likely to convert. For example, say you want to sell plasma TVs. So you broad match the keyword “plasma TV”. You ad will show up for :
plasma TV information
plasma TV help
plasma TV maintenance
fix plasma TV
plasma TV support
All of these people aren’t looking to buy a plasma TV, but they may click your ad on pure impulse. This is where a negative keyword list helps you A LOT. I’d add the negative keywords :
-information
-help
-maintenance
-fix
-problems
-support
That way, my ad wouldn’t show up for any of those keywords described above. We’re now reducing our budget while increasing our profits, yayyy!!!
Outside the Box
Many keywords out there convert that you wouldn’t think of. Completely random keywords can convert on an offer – you never know if you don’t try. It’s harder to test weird keywords on Google, so I’d test out on Yahoo and MSN first. I can’t really say too much about this area except that it does exist, because I can’t really think outside of the box about nothing. It all depends on what campaign you’re running, and what you think the lines are within what will convert and what won’t.
Hopefully this article gave a little more insight as to how I look at keyword research, and a couple important factors that come into play.
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that’s more like. great stuff right here.
sorry for the double comment but a question just popped in my head. If you don’t use keyword research tools, how do you compile your list of long tails?
Hey Paul,
That’s a great article. Pretty basic stuff but a good reminder that it all boils down to keyword research. Thanks.
-Gyutae Park of Winning the Web
Saving it for another article ;).
Solid post, i see you run exact matches then expand to broad. I just read a post on another blog today where broad then exact was advised. I guess budget determines what’s what.
He’s saying that he doesn’t use *many* research tools. Alot of the free ones like the free Wordtracker and Google Keywords tool are quite sufficient for initial testing.
But what I’m wondering why don’t you use phrase match for testing?
That’s definitely an interesting way to test out your keywords in Google. I’ll have to try that and see how well it works out for me.
Thanks for the info.
you bastard :)
Hopefully that article is coming soon! I want to know that same thing.
agreed, good stuff.
Great post man. :) Very good information!
~Jonathan Volk
Great Post. When running any adwords campaigns I would usually use all three matches but it makes more sense to me know to use exact match and then expand on it from there. I am going to have to start using negative keywords as well.
Nice post.
I would like to see how you take a 2000+ keyword list and separate those into AdGroups and what-not. I have found this by far the most tedious and painful process. I’m sure there is a efficient way to do it, but I haven’t found it :P
cheers
Wow. This post really really helped me. I’m not going to go into details because I’ll look like a complete moron, but I’ll just say now I know at least one reason I’ve been losing as much money as I have been =)
Absolutely a must read for a newbie trying to get into aff marketing. Most aff gurus give out the same information, but this post actually puts it into a very easy to understand format.
Great post!
Why don’t you use “phrase match”? Any reason why?
I’ve read this subject numerous times on numerous different posts, but never quite as succinctly at this post. I don’t think you could make it any easier than that. Thanks.
Yeah, alot of marketers use all 3 types of matches. Why don’t you use phrase?
Great information and guides. Will use them to market my Research Center. Keep it up.
I only use phrase and exact, I’ve never been too good at building a negative keyword list.
I’m also curious as to why you don’t use phrase?
Nice article. Time to try it out.
Yeah, second that. Whats up with not using the phrase match? I can understand not using the content network, but why no phrase match?
“It’s fairly easy to generate 100k+ keyword lists without any tools.”
!!?? Without tools? 100k? I guess this is why I’m not an uber affiliate. But how long does it take you to break all of these up into ad groups? It seems it could take literally DAYS, of straight keyword gen + ad grouping, just to get up a test.
Yikes… Now I see where I’m going wrong.
no waiiiiiii
This is great dude, keep up the good work!
Yeah, you’re not kidding. If I am lucky enough to come up with ~2,000 keyword list it takes me at minimum a solid day to break them into adgroups. Any more than 5k and it would be pretty unbearable.
yeah..really nice post.
thanks.
now, time to practice… :-)
my guess is the negative keywords :P
Wow Paul this is more like it, great post, things like this will get you loads of visitors!!
In the post you said, “Once I test the how profitable the exact match keywords are”. How do you tell which keywords are converting? Do I need to get out of Adwords Starter Edition to be able to tell that?
Very true. There is money in words and it’s just a matter of getting the correct and most profitable keywords. Thanks for those tips. Very useful post once again. :)
http://www.zingwat.com
Awesome post as usual, keep the good work up!
Great article man, inspiring.
woah… does webkinz world and “bastard” go together? I want to see one of those fuzzy little stufties say “bastard”.. lmao
“Many keywords out there convert that you wouldn’t think of.”
That’s so true. We’ve had the oddest things convert – keywords that you’re certain won’t convert, but that’s why testing is crucial. Test everything!
Great tips, i finally seem to get the point :)
What tool do you use to replace the bidtool from overture? I’m looking for a free tool which shows keyword bids and haven’t found one yet…
Great article Paul. Very informative.
I never thought of negative keywords. It would save a lot of money by eliminating the people who aren’t looking to buy anything.
I wanted to know ‘It’s fairly easy to generate 100k+ keyword lists without any tools’ how you do this?
I assumed that it was almost a necessity to use a keyword tool?
:D
Thanks, Will.
Great tips, any tools that can help generate some of the more obscure keywords?
Great Post Paul!
I would also like to know why you do not use phrase match. Thanks for the informative post.
Wow great information on keywords I have not used ant keyword yet but I know they
are very important.
Thanks
Steve
Are you adding negative keywords in a Exact, Phrase or Match? Say I want to rank for colon cleanse.
Would I add negatives such as (super, ultimate, oprah,discount, cheap,free…. etc)?