Brad Geddes of bgTheory discusses the importance of constant research and refinement of your keyword list to guarantee you are reaching the correct audience.

Keyword research is the lifeblood of PPC advertising. If you do not have a matched keyword in your account, you ad does not show. While this sounds simple, this statistic from Google may amaze you:

20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days

There is no way to ever find every keyword. There are roughly 300 million searches on Google a day. That means approximately 60 million search queries conducted on Google every day have not been conducted in the last three month.

Continuous research and refinement of your keyword lists are necessary to reach your potential customers. You should not just be finding new keywords, but also removing underperforming keywords so that you are not paying for clicks that do not convert.

There are three steps to building & maintaining keyword lists for your PPC campaigns:

• Finding keywords
• Grouping keywords
• Refining keywords

Finding Keywords

The first step to keyword research is to find new keywords. The simplest, free, tool to use is the AdWords Keyword Tool.  The first use of this tool is to input words or phrases and Google will suggest related keywords. The real power from this tool is shown when you use the second option, website content. You can input a URL and Google will crawl the page and suggest keywords based upon that page’s content.

While you should start by having Google crawl and suggest keywords from your landing pages, this tool does not restrict you to only using your own domain. There are many excellent sites you can start examining around the web with this tool. Always keep this tool in mind. Whenever you are on a site that discusses your products or services, input the URL into the keyword tool to see if you can find new relevant keywords.

Use this tool to first create a list of your keywords. Once you have a list, it is time to organize the lists into ad groups.

Grouping Keywords

All the keywords in an ad group should be closely related. The ad copy you use for that ad group should describe every keyword. If it does not, the keyword needs to be moved to a new ad group. While this type of grouping is a good place to start; you also need to understand the commercial intent of the word to determine the appropriate ad copy and landing page.

The more commercial a word is, the most likely the searcher wishes to conduct a transaction online. The ad copy and landing pages for highly commercial keywords should be focused around getting the user to conduct an immediate action.

Non-commercial words are generally informational searches. That does not mean these keywords cannot be monetized. The searcher needs to know additional information about a product or service before they can continue through the buying cycle to complete a transaction. The ad copy and landing pages should be focused first on giving information, and once that information is given, then move the searcher into the action focused sections of your website.

Microsoft has an excellent suite of tools called Microsoft adCenter Labs. One of the tools is named Detecting Online Commercial Intent. Input your higher search volume words and higher CPC keywords into this tool to determine how commercial the word is so that you can determine the type of ad copy and landing pages are necessary to engage the searcher based upon their buying cycle stage.

Refining Keywords

When you use phrase or broad matched keywords, you really do not know what the searcher actually searched for that triggered your ad to be displayed. You have some idea based upon the initial keywords you choose, but it is important to note that broad match words will never convert higher than exact match words. Therefore, you need to find the actual search queries so you can decide if you want your ad to show for those keyword variations.

To find out this information in AdWords, use the Search Query Report. This report will show what actually searched for that caused your ad to be displayed. If you use AdWords Conversion Tracking, you will also see the conversion metrics for these keyword variations. When you see keywords that are not in your account and are converting, add them as keywords so you can control the bid price and display. When a keyword is not converting, then add it as a negative keyword so you ad is not displayed for non-converting searches.

By using a three step process of finding, grouping, and then refining your keywords you will be able to create and manage robust keyword lists that reach consumers who turn into customers.

Brad Geddes is the Founder of bgTheory, a company dedicated to PPC education & training; a regular blogger, twitterer, presenter for AdWords Seminars, and a frequent conference speaker.