First let’s define the phrase “keyword research”. Many newbies to the internet mistakenly think the term “keyword” is actually one (1) word. Well, it could be, but normally it is not. Anytime you hear the word “keyword” think “key-phrase” instead because normally most keywords are in fact  “phrases” that someone is typing into a search engine in order to find something.

So where is the best place to begin your keyword research? The answer may be right under your own nose. Chances are the best place to begin a successful Google Adwords campaign is to look on your own website. There are actually two places on your website to begin. First, look at the site itself. What keywords are you optimizing for? In other words, what words are you using on your site that makes the average user know that they have come to the right place.

Maybe you are an accident attorney that practices several states in the Southeast. In that case, wouldn’t it make sense to have the keyword phrase “accident attorney” and “southeast” in prominent positions on your site? And if that is the case, then shouldn’t you be bidding on keyword phrases that include the word “accident attorney” and also “southeast?”

Another place to begin keyword research is to look in the not-so-obvious place, and that is on your server. Most hosting companies have a software interface that has many useful programs and tools incorporated into it. For example, many hosting companies such as HostGator and SiteGround use an interface called CPanel. CPanel has a useful software tool called Awstats. Awstats collects collects much information about the visitors to your sites. In many cases not only can you see which sites that arrived on your site from, but also which keywords they used to search for your company. This information is invaluable.

I would bet that over 95% of the users of Adwords don’t access this information. If one customer found your site using a particular keyword phrase, doesn’t it make sense to bid on that particular keyword (as long as you consider it to be a keyword that is pertinent to your business)? If you don’t know how to take advantage of this tremdously valuable information already sitting on your hosting server, then ask your hosting company or a techie to help you get it. It only takes a minute or two to access, but the information could be invaluable.

There are many more tactics for the doing proper keyword research, including legally spying on your competitors. What? You don’t know how to legally spy on your competitors and swipe some of their best performing keywords for your own? In this case, what you don’t know about running a successful Google Adwords campaign can definitely hurt you.

There are many free and paid resources on the web that will educate you about doing proper keyword research. Take the time to learn them and if you don’t have the time, then pay someone with experience in adwords campaign management to manage your Google Adwords campaign for you.

There is an old business principle: “The only way you can be certain of anything in the world of marketing is to test it first.” Make an assumption; test that assumption. Now, based on the results of that test, either keep your assumption or make a new one.

Let’s give a real-world example. Say you are a medical malpractice attorney and plan on obtaining the majority of your business using television advertising. From the commercial on T.V. you will be directing them to your website for more information.

Those of you who have advertised on television before know the costs can run into the thousands and even more. How do you know whether the website that you are sending your prospect to is going to convert for you or not? You don’t – at least not until you test.

Wouldn’t it be better to tweak your copy, the layout, etc. so that conversions and sales are maximized BEFORE you spend all that money on the commercials? Why, of course it would. But how?

Easy. Spend money on a Google Adwords campaign first so that you can drive low-cost traffic to your site and test your marketing assumptions. Google Adwords is the best marketing medium I know of to get IMMEDIATE feedback for your business.

In the above example, the legal firm could set up a complete Google Adwords campaign and be driving traffic to their site in less than 10 minutes. How quick is that!

Here’s another scenario. Let’s say that you have decided that a Google adword campaign may not be an efficient way to make money with your product. Maybe you have tried it before, but found that your cost per click was prohibitive and that there just wasn’t enough profit to be made in order to justify the overall costs associated with setting up and running the Adword campaign.

So instead, you have decided to focus all of your efforts on free search marketing. In other words, you want to have your website show up in the organic (or free listings) on the first page of Google when customers search for keywords relating to your product or service. That is all fine and good, but the real question becomes, which keywords to you optimize your website for?

In other words, what words or terms are you going to use throughout your site so that Google knows what your site is about and they can rank your site ahead of your competitors. But the MAJOR question is which keywords actually CONVERT. After all, wouldn’t it be foolhardy to spend all of that money on SEO (search engine optimization) only to find out that those particular keywords aren’t going to bring “paying customers” to your site?

Well, a lightning-quick way to find out which keywords lead to conversions is to (surprise) set up a Google Adwords pay-per-click campaign. Next, carefully track which keywords bring visitors to your website and (more importantly) which keywords lead to sales. Now, instead of wasting perhaps months of precious time, you can know in a few days how you need to optimize your site.

When you are done testing, you can shut down your campaign and begin using free search traffic to sell your products. But wouldn’t it be better to have the best of both worlds? Why not direct traffic to your site using both paid and free advertising. In the above example, we assumed that the former Google Adwords campaign was not profitable because the bidding on specific keywords was too high. Perhaps it was too high because you didn’t know what you were doing.

Many times we have found that the folks in the top 3 ad positions in Google Adwords are paying LESS (sometimes far less) than those in the bottom positions. There are many reasons this is so and there is not enough space here to go into the details, but unless you are willing to invest a sufficient amount of time and money in the tools you need to play the Google Adwords game, then perhaps you need to consider a professional Google Adwords campaign management company who can play the game for you so that you can spend all your energy on making those sales when the traffic comes.

How about a sure-fire way to absolutely dominate your competition in the Google Adwords game? Focus on your landing page. It IS the landing page, stupid…and many companies have stupidly taken the advice of so-called Google Adword experts and played the game all wrong.

While your competitors are focusing on things like keyword research, writing good ad copy, attractive headlines, and worrying about what to bid on keywords, YOU should be focusing on your landing page. Oh, yes, focus on the other aspects of running a successful Google Adword campaign, but never lose focus of the most important piece of the whole puzzle…your landing page.

So what is a landing page? Let’s start by defining what a landing page is not. A landing page is not the home page. It COULD be, but in most cases we have found that the best page in a website for the customer to “land” when they click on your ad is the page that has the information that the searcher was looking for.

For example, if you are a legal firm that offers a wide variety of services, and a prospect types in “accident attorney” doesn’t it make sense to send that prospect to the page in your website that talks about your services for accident victims? What if you sell all different types and colors of widgets and your prospect types in “green widgets”, would you send him to your home page or to the page that has pictures and pricing of the green widgets that you sell? Duh.

In fact, having the wrong landing page is perhaps one of the most common mistakes that newbies and (unfortunately) the “pros” make. I challenge you to do a search in Google and click on some of the ads that display for that keyword and notice how many times you end up on a page that has absolutely nothing to do with what you searched for. Chances are that you will have to do some clicking around to find out exactly what you want. Not good.

There are also ways to take advantage of captivating the searchers attention by using a little “keyword magic” on your site, where the keyword that the prospect searches for is automatically inserted into the headline. For example, let’s say that someone types “defense attorney” into Google and you had bid on that keyword. Your ad appears, the prospect clicks on your ad, and they land on your website. Now imagine a huge headline that says, “Looking for a defense attorney?” The prospect is now overjoyed because they easily found exactly what they were looking for.

But in the next moment another prospect types in “malpractice attorney” and your ad appears because you offer those service as well. When the prospect clicks through to your site they see a headline that says “Looking for a malpractice attorney?” Same site; same landing page, but different headlines. Wow! With the proper tools and the right expertise, this “magic” can easily be accomplished.

There are other things that must be done to a landing page in order to help you get more conversions. A few of them are as follows:

1. Keep it simple. Remove anything that would distract your prospect, such as excess navigation links.

2. Have a clear call to action. If I had to guess how many websites using Google Adwords have clear calls to action, my guess would be about 2-3% of them. Trust me. LOTS of money being wasted here.

3. Judicious use of audio or video on the landing page. Using audio or video you can easily satisfy requirement #2. Not only can you give your visitors a sense of warmth, but you can tell them exactly what to do in order to contact you so that you can help them.

Of course, there are MANY more things a proper landing page should include, but you are starting to get the picture. Proper Google Adword campaign management may begin with good research and a good ad, but that’s not where it ends. “It’s the landing page, stupid,” and if you are having trouble, then get a professional Adwords Consultant.

First, let’s explain what we mean by the phrase “ad position”. Ad position refers to the rank of your ad someone searches in Google. For instance, let’s say that someone searches on the phrase “best loans”. Google will do its best deliver the most relevant ads and the most relevant organic (or free) listings for that search query.

Paid ads will normally be at the very top and off to the right-hand side. Let’s say there are seven paid ads and all of them are listed down the right-hand side. If my company’s ad is at the very top, then my ad is in “ad postion #1.” If my ad were 5th from the top, then that would be “ad position #5.”

Now to most people and many inexperienced in Adwords campaign management , it would seem that the higher ad positions would be the most coveted…after all, the higher the ad, the more clicks, right? Absolutely. Chance are that (all things being equal) if your ad is high on the page, you will get more clicks. But those clicks don’t necessarily translate to more sales. In fact, many times those clicks can end up costing you money than you think. Here’s why…

One must consider the buying stage that a customer is when they are clicking ads. True, they may click your ad first if you are near the top of the page, but the typical potential buyer is more than likely at the “research stage” at that point where they click the ads closest to the top of the page.

Research has proven that many times the further down a page a searcher goes, the closer the searcher is to making a buying decision or the more desperate the potential customer is to find the correct solution to the problem.

Let’s explore a scenario and say for the sake of even numbers that the top ad position for the keyword “divorce attorneys” can be obtained for $10, but to be in position #6 on the page only costs you $4 per click. Now, let’s assume that the top position gets 30 clicks out of a hundred searches, but only 5 of those result in a lead because the searcher is not finished “researching”, as they are clicking on all the ads to get a feel for the advertiser.

So ad position #6 gets 15 clicks, but those clicks result in 5 leads. Who wins? Well, ad position #1 paid $300 (30 clicks X $10) for its clicks and got 5 leads. That is a cost of $60 per lead ($300 cost / 5 leads). Ad position #6 cost the advertiser $60 (15 clicks X $4) and since they obtained 5 leads, those leads only cost $12 per lead ($60 cost / 5 leads).

In this scenario, ad position #6 won, but hold on a minute! What if position #6 only got 4 leads. That changes the actual cost per lead to $15, but if the average conversion resulted in a sale of $1,000 in legal fees and the conversion rate was say 50%, then even though ad position #1 cost a lot more per lead, it is ultimately more profitable than position #6.

Sound confusing? It should because it IS confusing and normally requires expensive third party software to test properly. If you are not testing or your account is being managed by someone who hasn’t asked you the right questions, then your campaign may already be in real trouble.

The only real way to find out what is best for you is to test, test, and test again. Professional Adwords management always starts with good keyword research and ends with proper testing. Though, in reality, top Adwords managers never stop testing what works for their clients.

That’s right, in Adwords management you need to know exactly how to identify “keywords that KILL” and how to permanently weed them out of your Adwords campaigns. Failing to rid your Adwords campaigns from these nasty, life-sucking keywords will result in ridiculous advertising costs and lots of unwanted spending in your Adwords campaigns.

When you log into your Google Adwords account do you ever notice the keywords that get tons and tons of clicks but zero conversions/sales? It may seem like those particular keywords are perfectly relevant to your product and that they are the perfect keywords to advertise under. While many times it may seem that these keywords are necessary to advertise under only the results can truly tell.

No matter what, if a keyword is resulting in tons of clicks and failing to bring in enough conversions it is necessary that you delete that keyword. The results have spoken; “This keyword brings unwanted traffic to your site.” There’s only one type of traffic you want to buy for your website and that’s “targeted traffic”.

You definitely need to delete these “murderous keywords” because they will cost you a fortune over time. Try advertising under long tailed version of these keywords and see what kind of results you get. Many times the long tail keywords out perform their root keyword phrases by a long shot. Instead of falling in love with the killer keywords like all of your competitors try do dominate the long tail keywords in your niche. As an expert in Adwords management I’ve found that long tail keywords can be your best friend.

Killer Keywords cause severe damage in Adwords Management-

Not only do the KK’s cost you a fortune but they also majorly mess up your results when it comes to managing your keyword bidding. In Adwords management you adjust bidding up and down according to how much it costs to get a conversion. Well, obviously with a Killer Keyword it’s going to cost you a lot per conversion because killer keywords get tons of clicks and very few conversions.

By now you should understand that you’re clearly an idiot if you’re going to hang on to those keywords that get you loads of click and no conversions. If a keyword doesn’t convert delete it! If you find yourself hanging on to Killer Keywords just because they seem perfectly relevant to your product or just because your competitors are dumb enough to advertise under them then perhaps its time you save yourself a lot of money and failure by outsourcing your Google Adwords management to a professional.