With all the keyword tools out there, it’s very easy to generate a huge keyword list in a short amount of time. By the time you grab all the short terms, long tail phrases, an every possible permutation of buy words, geo terms, and mis-spelling errors, your list can be totally unmanageable in size. So the first step I always do when I am building out a new campaign is to scrub down my keyword list.
Scrubbing the list is basically removing any non converting keywords from your list, before inserting them in your campaign. Negative keywords are great, but not having the keywords in your account to being with is even better. What I do is first gather all possible keywords from every source I can find. Keyword Discovery is my first tool of choice, but I also use all the free tools from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others to make sure I have grabbed every possible word. I place them all into my keyword slicing/dicing program. (Sorry I can’t provide a link, I searched all over for a good one and never found it, so I had a program coded based on what I needed).
Here are some examples of things I scrub out:
1. Dupes. First thing is to remove all duplicates from the master list.
2. 50 characters and longer are deleted. I have never had terms this long convert well enough to keep them in my campaigns, so I axe them at the start.
3. I run a number search, 1-9 on the list. Often these are really bad keywords, like people typing their account numbers or phone numbers into the search field. Odds are they will never be searched on again.
4. Profanity/sexual terms. Most PPC providers will decline these, so best to remove them yourself.
5. Spam terms. I have a whole list of the common spammy terms people append on to common search terms. I don’t want those on my final clean list.
6. GEO terms. If you are running a US based offers, you want to scrub all other country related terms from your list. I remove all terms relating to the non-converting countries, and cities in those countries.
These are just a few examples of things I scrub. The more you can scrub your master keyword list before beginning to build your campaigns, the less work it is for you down the road. Plus your campaign will have an overall better quality score. Remember, we are all working with essentially the same keywords, it’s how you use them, and don’t use them that will make you successful.
Nice examples.
Just curious as to what you use to build out your adgroups: Do you do group them together manually, or do you use a tool for that as well?
If you Google “keyword grouping tool” you’ll find some decent free tools…
I particularly like this one: http://www.marketingtoolsexpert.com/keyword-grouping-tool/
KW grouping is SUCH a pain…
Awesome post! So its better to remove words ahead of time than to use negative keywords?
[...] I am going to share you an interesting article written by Chad. He shows how to remove non-related keywords from the hugh keyword list. In the present, it is very [...]
Scott- I always say the fewer keywords in the acount, the better. So anything you can remove that won’t convert should help the overall campaign.
[...] I was able to pare down the list of 10k keywords down to 8,257 using some of the keyword scrubbing techniques described here. The more non- converting keywords you can remove from your lists the [...]
[...] I was able to pare down the list of 10k keywords down to 8,257 using some of the keyword scrubbing techniques described here. The more non- converting keywords you can remove from your lists the [...]
I have been doing PPC now for a few days, just got into it, been doing CPM/CPC, and creating websites for awhile, originally was a programmer, but programming becomes a bit much and boring
So a few questions, I have been using wordtracker for keyword researching, and maybe SEO book a little bit, any other tools you suggest? Keyword Discovery I still don’t really understand. Looks weird, haha.
Great tips, and thanks! I have been posting my results for each day on my blog (losing money currently…)
Hello,
I was curious what a keyword slicing program does? What exactly does your custom software do for you?
Thanks,
Toki
Hi,
Not sure I understand #5 – Spam terms. Would you please expand on that?
Thanks,
Mark
Good example of keyword scrubbing. Mostly i used Google keyword external tool for keyword research.
Excellent post on how to pare down your keyword list before starting your campaign. In the long term this also saves cost as the clicks you pay for are less likely to be wasted.
Keep up the good work.
Great post, I strongly agree
I always think about removing the spammy keywords and adding as many negative keywords as possible.
Regards
Great post, keep up the great work. I also focus on adding as many negative keywords as possible.
This keeps the cost of your campaigns down as you won’t end up paying for clicks that are not gong to convert
Regards
Great technic. It is hard to breakdown your keyword list, I have a hard time knocking out terms all the time.