Keywords
Keywords
This is quite the rabbit hole we are about to dive into, we recommend you hire someone to run your Google Ad Words, and you, the business owner has a working knowledge of it, so you understand what you are about to pay for. Marketing on the internet via a website is necessary to compete in today’s marketplace, but just having a website isn’t enough because people still need to find it. By knowing how a search engine works, you can optimize your website in a variety of ways, so it becomes an effective way to advertise to customers. Google also provides you with digital marketing tools that will help you generate these sales leads and learn about how your customers think about your company. Google does all of this through Ad Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Collecting and analyzing data allow you to make informed decisions about your business. This is what they call search analytics, and it is a billion-dollar industry.
Basically, you can pay Google to promote your website on their search engine. Keywords are the important words people use to describe what they want the search engine to show them. Websites aim to contain those keywords. Or keywords are the question, and websites are the answer. SEO is the process of making your website more scannable by a search engine, but more on this later. Google Keywording and SEO allow you to narrow in on the words that people use when they search for a given service. For example, the term HVAC is not widely used by searchers, but heating and cooling are used more often. Think of it this way, a customer has a problem with their home, so they jump on Google to search for a solution/help, Google allows your company to be listed as one of those answers that appear on the screen.
First: Get a Website
Before we further explain how searching the internet works, or at least how Google controls it, consider paying someone to make a simple but vibrant website for your company. You can’t take advantage of keywords if you do not have an optimized website. No website means you will be missing out on sales leads. (Take a look at our website section to learn more about this process). If a website isn’t in the budget, then a Facebook page also serves as an option, in fact, you should just have both.
Google Ads Vs Organic Results
There are multiple kinds of Search Results in the eyes of Google, but we are always dealing with a single search phrase that contains keywords. Our first step is understanding what types of search results are outputted after a search and where they appear on different parts of the web browser. Image the search results page on Google as being divided into multiple sections with each section having a different purpose.
When you search for something on Google there are several types of search results that appear on your screen and each place has a detailed method on how to get your company there:
- Google Local Services: Companies that are best rated frequently & Pay Google for a slot
- Sponsored (Formerly Ad): websites that are bidding on keywords
- Google Maps Embed: Companies listed according to your location then Star Rating
- Organic Search Results: Websites best optimized for the search results + a high trust score
- People Also Ask: The Google Snippet Feature is websites with the best information on a topic according to numerous SEO factors
(A trust score is a metric that measures how trustful your website is according to the search engine. Do not worry about boosting the trust score of your website at this point in time.)
Different Places on
Google Search Results:
Starting off, we should only be considering what comes up on the first page of Google after a search. The second page has far too low of a click rate to even considering. Now that you have a website, you need to get people to see it by optimizing for one of the above methods in the hopes you achieve Page 1 status. Page 1 is exactly that, your website appears on the first page after someone searches for something. Very few people click the second page and an even smaller amount click the third! In digital marketing, it is first page or bust. That is why you must target specific Ad keywords to essentially jump the line and appear on the first page.The first place, is the very top of the page, Google Local Services, 
Take a moment and read through our write-up on Google Local Services and how to get the ball rolling, so you to can appear at the top of a Google search.
Sponsored, formerly known as Ad, is the next section on the Google search hit parade. Getting into this section is discussed later on in this article.
The Google Map embed lists the business near you. It will always prioritize your device’s location and then takes into consideration a dozen of other factors to determine which companies get displayed. The most weighted metrics are the number of reviews and star-rating. To rank here you need to have a well-reviewed company close enough to the client.
Next we move onto the “People also ask” section, also known as the snippet, where Google places the best answers to your search. Let’s call this the gold standard or organic search, you wikipedias and .gov websites will be here and a for profit company a place you will never be able to get to unless you spend a great amount of time writing about your industry.
Last, and oddly least, is the best organic search result sites that Google has deemed to have the best SEO that matches your search. It is possible to appear here, but you will need to have an SEO optimized website with enough fact based information published on it.
Developing Ad Groups for
Google Ad Campaigns
Let’s go through some of the basic terminologies with examples, so you can wrap your head around this rather complicated, but highly effective way to target customers and generate leads. A Google Ad Campaign is a digital marketing campaign run on Google’s search engine. The Ad Campaign is made up of Ad Groups, these ad groups are created by you and are made up of keyword phrases. These keyword phrases target what you are trying to sell and are grouped according to the theme. If your keyword is Air Conditioners, then AC Repair, Local AC Service, and Cooling Broken might be some of the words you contain in your ad group. These keywords are the thing you are paying for via an auction-style bidding process.
The reason you are bidding, is multiple companies are also trying to use the same keyword for their ad groups. Google is only providing you with the digital marketing tools to set all of this up. This paid service allows you to scale your budget and only pay for the clicks you get, but to even get those clicks, you need to compete for the keywords in the bidding process. By paying Google to appear on the first page of their search engine, you are pulling people to your website, which in turn increases the chances they reach out to you, and this lead provided by Google could convert to a sale. Remember, your website is the place you are trying to get people to land on, once there, you explain all the details behind your AC promo. So, how do you generate targeted keywords for your Google Ad Group?
First Step: Brain Storm & Research
Write down all the search terms associated with the ad campaign you want to run on Google. Get into the minds of your customer, what will they search for when they have a problem? What things come to mind when you think of ACs? What is the customer’s perspective when sitting in front of the keyboard? What words does the customer know about your product? This list of commonly used words or phrases will act as keyword phrases for your Ad Group used in the Google Ad campaign you will set up.
There are two simple ways to generate keyword phrases, often referred to as mid/long tail keywords.
The Key Words Everywhere plug-in for Google Chrome is very easy to use. This shows a ton of associated keywords with a given search. After you brainstorm a list of search terms you simply enter it in Google and let the plug-in do all the work. For example, if you search for air condition services, you will see this:
The ABC search method is a more comprehensive way to gather keywords. This uses Google’s auto-complete function in the search bar to your advantage. For this method, you simply type Air Conditioning A to Z and see what google auto-fills. The auto-fill is the most searched-for word(s) starting with that letter, so Air Condition R… auto-fills to Repair 99% of the time. You repeat the process for each letter of the alphabet.
Since you cannot control what a person types into the search bar, you need to predict the Keywords they use to describe problems they have in the home from their perspective. These search terms are often localized by Google when applicable, which means if you are searching for a service or product, it will suggest something near you. When a customer searches AC repair, then Google will promote local companies that provide those services. Which company Google promotes, depends on what websites have ranked highest for that particular AD Group. Think of it this way, each keyword has its own ranking and websites continually compete to be the answer that appears in the search results.
Targeting AD Groups—Group Keywords
Targeting keywords is the bulk of what you are doing, but you are actually setting up an entire advertising campaign on Google and choosing how long you want to run it, how much you want to pay for it, and what you are advertising via the keywords you select. You typically select several keyword phrases you believe customers are searching for and put them in your AD Group which then goes into Google Ads located on the search engine. This means you are paying Google to run your own advertising campaign on their search engine. But they give access to a ton of tools to customize it, focus it, and analyze it during and after its run. How much you pay depends on how aggressive you want to be, how competitive the Ad Group is, and how often a customer searches for something.
What are you paying for with Google Ad Words?
You are paying for clicks and how often Google chooses to place your company in the Ad Word search results. The amount you want to spend really depends on how many days you want to run a campaign. Let’s use one month as an example. Once you set a monthly budget for an Ad Campaign on Google Ads, Google then divides your monthly budget into a daily budget, and for every click, you get Google charges you and deducts it from the daily budget. A click’s cost depends on how competitive that Ad Group is, and you only ever pay for a click you get in the Ad Word Search Results. Once you set up your Ad Group it will show how competitive it is and how much each click costs towards your daily budget.
Setting Up A Google Ad Campaign
If you are looking to set up a Google Ad you have two choices, pay an employee who learned this in college or take on the day-to-day of this data-driven task yourself. We suggest first reading through this Start Guide Google has created.
On-Page Search Engine Optimization
There are two kinds of SEO. One, is the way the article is written, the on-page SEO. Two, the back-end optimization which basically deals with how fast the site loads, and how well it functions among other technical aspects. We are concerned with On-Page SEO as the back end only matters when you are getting thousands of people visiting your site at the same time. It is much harder to be on the first page of Google for organic search results. You can think of it this way, every search has two kinds of results, paid results (Google Local Services Ad Words) and results that are the best answers to the question asked (Organic). To be the source of the best answer, would place you on the first page of Google in the organic results section.
For example, the search term how to fix your AC will have both a paid and an organic result. The paid results are for HVAC companies in your area, and the top organic results link to a website called familyhandyman.com. This is also dynamic meaning it could change from search to search. How this site became the top source of organic information is not random. There are a bunch of techniques they have employed to make Google love it. It checks off all the components of a well-written article.
- Decent Google Description
- More than 1000 words
- Bullet Lists
- Steps
- Headings & Subheadings
- Easy to read
- Relevant pictures
- Front-loaded sentences that contain keywords
- Links to other trustworthy sources like Wikipedia
- Recent publishing date & author with trackable profile
- A Good Website Trust Score
They have optimized the article to perfectly answer the question: how to fix your AC. Here’s the kicker, the site is plastered in advertisements for HVAC-related services. This website is playing a different game, giving the user what they want to see, but also lending their article as an advertising place for HVAC companies. What you can do as a business owner, now website owner, is optimize your own blog posts about a targeted service, like how heat pumps work. Imagine if you are the top website that explains how a heat pump works, you are getting free clicks! This is the value of organic search.
Google Snippet Feature
This is the Gold Standard in organic results, Google feels so good about your website’s content that they have featured it as a key Q & A most users ask for. To get here requires your set to have a good trust score and is often searched for by people. Google Location Services and Google Maps will be discussed in another document.
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