One of the activities that I enjoy doing the most is rock climbing. When I tell people that I like to rock climb there are usually 2 responses I get.  The first one is “Isn’t that dangerous?” and the other is “you must be pretty strong huh?”.  There may be a little bit of truth to those statements, but that’s not the whole story.

Yes, climbing can be dangerous, but only if you don’t know what you’re doing and are careless.  Running a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign is similar in that there is the potential danger of wasting money due to the same reasons.  If you just throw a bunch of keywords into a campaign, add some money and wait to see what happens…you may get lucky…but it’s much more likely that you’re going to waste a lot of money.

The other statement “you must be pretty strong huh?”…well that can definitely help, but there are much more important factors that go into climbing like technique, proper equipment, balance and good communication your belayer. Many people who are not as familiar with PPC advertising think that running a PPC campaign all comes down to the money. In other words, the highest bid for a keyword wins. This could not be further from the truth. (more…)

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I love being in the kitchen, huge five course meals are my specialty because then I get to concoct my culinary delights for hours on end.  I cook Thanksgiving dinner every year on my own – it takes me seven straight hours and, because of that, Thanksgiving is my favorite cooking day of the year.   Not that it isn’t already an obvious metaphor, but a good recipe is the same as a good online marketing campaign.  You have your ingredients:  SEO, PPC, web design, social media engagement and PR.  Then you have your methods of combining them:  Should you braise, boil and simmer, sauté, or just bake for an hour – possibly with a cheesy crust?

Managing a client’s marketing campaign is very similar to my kitchen escapades.  Now not every client is going to be up for a seven hour turkey basting extravaganza, some are your average week night meals complete with a protein, a grain and a green.  However, these guys still take creative thought – you can’t serve the same meal every night, there needs to be some variation in ingredients and flavors even though the basic concept may still be the same.  Larger meals are more exciting for plenty of reasons:  you plan it out days ahead of time, your shopping budget is bigger, there’s more than one course, you never stick to a recipe and you almost always end up burning something (occasionally salvageable depending on who’s coming to dinner).

I appreciate other cooks in my kitchen as well; it’s the best way to learn new things since I’m completely self-taught to begin with.  Every time a dish is produced you’re able to generate immediate feedback and shift gears accordingly for the next go-round.  I’ve never made the exact same meal twice because of this as it continues to evolve each time I attempt it.  While I definitely have more experience at the stove than I do at my laptop I’m assuming that the same can be said for the way I put a good campaign together.

The principles are easy:  Understand your ingredients, know what works together and what can be complementary, eat what you ruin – I guarantee you won’t make the same mistake twice.  Satisfy not only your hunger, but your need for nourishment.  Don’t make a huge production out of every meal – my best meals have been the ones with no planning where I just open the pantry and put together something based on what I already have, there’s a lot more creativity required.  Always use fresh ingredients, keep sea salt handy and never ever put soy sauce on tomatoes.

Photo Credit: birdies-perch

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WordStream recently launched a beta version of its new keyword suggestion tool, appropriately named “The Free Keyword Tool.” The UI is clean and simple to figure out, which makes it a quick, user-friendly addition to the task of keyword generation.

The functionality is pretty user-friendly:

• Step 1: In the first box, I give it my list of preliminary keywords or phrases (I see no mention of a keyword limit, so the more the merrier).
• Step 2: Those keywords generate a list of related keywords in a second box that I may choose to add to my preliminary list in the first box.  For example, if I have “greyhound” in my preliminary list, I may decide to add “dog,” “pet,” “adoption,” and others to help narrow out keyphrases related to Greyhound buses.  Because box #1 is a simple text box, I can also type in or delete any keywords.
• Step 3: After I’m done with my preliminary list in box #1 and considering the related keywords in box #2, I can start browsing through the final suggestions (read: zillions).  I can also copy the first 100 results into a notepad or Word doc (w/ relative volume estimates), or, even better, I can email the keywords to myself, my boss, my client, or whomever.  Pretty handy.

So, the pros and cons …

Pros:

• Extensive keyword suggestions – could be helpful in coming up with valuable negative keywords.
• Email keywords feature is very nice – allows me to quickly save and share keywords from any computer without having to worry about losing my work.
• “Related keywords” feature helps narrow down my initial list and gives me more targeted keyphrases than those generated from my preliminary list alone.
• Simple, self-explanatory UI.

Cons:

• Extensive keyword suggestions (yes, this could go either way) – if you’re looking for very specific suggestions and don’t want to spend too much time browsing through keyword ideas, this may not be the tool for you.  Most ad campaigns don’t need thousands of keywords anyway.
• There is no way to edit the final suggested keyword list online without first downloading the list or emailing it to yourself.  Maybe that’s something WordStream can include later, seeing as how it’s a popular feature of other keyword tools.

Needless to say, there is no perfect keyword suggestion tool.  The best ad campaigns are initiated from content on your site, considerations from all your favorite keyword tools, and, most importantly, simple common sense.

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