Keywords: Good vs Bad

What are keywords?

Keywords are words AND phrases which are relevant to the content of your website. You can use keywords in your Adwords advertising in order to target specific searches your potential clients are making. "Orange tabby kitten" is a keyword. "orange tabby" counts as a different keyword, and "kitten" is considered yet another different keyword. When choosing keywords for your ads, the most relevant keywords to their content tend to win.

Note: common misspellings and plurals of keywords are automatically accounted for in your adwords campaigns. Therefore, you don't need to create separate keywords for those instances.

Good keywords:

• Contain words or phrases your customers would most likely search for when trying to find your product of service. When trying to find good keywords, ask yourself, "If I were my customer, what would I be typing in to find my product?"
• Are not overly specific. If your keywords are very specific you may have a better conversion rate with those keywords because you are giving them exactly what they are searching for. On the other hand, you will miss out on a lot of people who weren't as specific in their search. For example, a keyword "blue yeti microphone" would produce more potential clicks than "silver blue yeti microphone" while still being specific enough for your target audience.
• Are not too general. If your keywords are too general, you could end up paying for ads targeted to unqualified leads. As in our prior example, if you simply targeted "yeti" you could be paying for ads aimed at people searching for pictures of the abominable snowman, which is very different from a podcast microphone. 

Bad Keywords:

• Are too specific. In the example above, a bad keyword would be, "silver and white blue yeti microphone on sale for $90 with included cords"
• Are too vague. As stated before, "Yeti" would be too general.
• Aren't targeted toward your customer's searches.