# of key words

[shade]

My company is a specialty contractor that designs and builds custom structures solely for the commercial market, i.e., we don't deal with residential or prefabricated products. I have reviewed my competitors' key words as suggested in the forums and distilled them to a list of about 25 to 30. I've also used exact two and three word searches and developed a list of negative words to hopefully eliminate visitors who are seek8ing products we don't supply.

I note in the AdWords forum that many, if not most, are suggesting ad words in the hundreds. I wonder if I'm missing something. I've taken the position that I don't care about volume but being sure the right people (potential customers) see our site and ultimately give us a chance to bid on their product. Am I'm looking at SEO and PPC for the wrong reasons?

[Chris Boggs]

Hi Shade...welcome to the forum.

No. You are correct that it is wise to prequalify as many clicks as possible in PPC in order to gain your most desired visitors. However, there is true uncertainty when you try to look into a searchers mind. Many people who type in a keyword that is somewhat related to your product may in fact be looking for exactly your product. Others may not even know that your product is what they are looking for. That is the importance of the Title and Description of your listings, both paid and eventually organic. If you place the correct T and D in both your paid ads and your content (using SEO "best practices" methods), you will be more likely to gain qualified leads from search engines results pages.

Thus is is important to consider as many possible combinations of keyword phrases that may lead to leads. In AdWords, you actually have to bid on plurals and any popular misspellings, which can easily raise your total number of terms much higher than Yahoo! SM.

Hope that helps. Let me know if it doesn't and I'll come up with a good example.

[shade]

Chris,

Thanks for your comments. I've developed all of the plurals and singular for my words using various key word tools. I've also used almsot as many negative words in an attempt to minimize the visitors who just don't fit. For example, our average sale is $100,000+ which pretty much takes it out of the realm for residential. We're like the heart surgeon trying to keep the people with colds coming to the office! Do you ( or others) use negative words to any degree? Have you found them effective or just a method to make the Ad Word process look more sophisicated?

[Chris Boggs]

Negative keywords are very effective. They are one of the best "prequalification" (or disqualification) tools offered.