Manage high traffic keywords & low traffic keywords better - cut your keyword costs

High traffic keywords have the potential to generate a lot of business on your website but they also generate a lot of costs very quickly because they get so many clicks. Learn to manage your high traffic keywords carefully... lest they eat your lunch.

Once you have developed a long list of advertising keywords you will inevitably find that a small handful of these advertising keywords generates the most traffic to your website. Which is usually good news. But these high traffic keywords do not always the most conversions. Which can be very bad news.

That is why you should...

Isolate your high traffic keywords

Actually, your first step should be to separate your advertising keywords into campaign groupings based on context and theme. For more detail on this step read:
Pay Per Click Campaign Management - Get Better Quality Scores, Spend Less Money. However, after you have separated your advertising keywords into logical divisions using your adwords campaign structure you still need to go a step further to achieve better keyword cost efficiency.

High traffic keywords

High traffic keywords (also called fat head keywords) are usually less targeted keywords, consisting of single words or very short phrases etc. Being less targeted these high traffic keywords tend to deliver lower conversion rates than lower traffic keywords which tend to be more highly targeted.

So, your bidding strategy for search targeted results will be different for high traffic keywords and low traffic keywords. You may need to bid lower on high traffic keywords to make them work with their lower conversion rates. But, even with lower conversion rates these high traffic keywords are very important and tend to deliver the most gross conversions because of sheer volume. The key concept is that this conversion rate will tend to be different for high traffic keywords and they should be managed separately.

High traffic keywords will begin to flow to the top of your reports if they are sorted by volume in descending order. This sorting makes it easier to spot your high traffic keywords then peel them off and move them into separate campaign groups. This separation will greatly facilitate applying your unique bidding strategy for these words. Separation will also allow you to focus on that handful of high traffic keywords without getting lost in a long list of mixed high and low traffic keywords.

Low traffic keywords

Low traffic keywords (also called long tail keywords) tend to be more specific with fewer single words, contain longer phrases, have more qualifying words etc. Because these low traffic keywords are more specific and qualified they generally have higher conversion rates and create high quality leads. Low traffic keywords can be managed more on a group level and less as individual words. Low volume keywords will also require less frequent tinkering.

How will this adwords campaign separation look?

Let’s say you are promoting a web site that sells office products. You have created your campaign categories to include, office furniture, copiers, printers, paper etc. Using this method of separating high traffic keywords from low traffic keywords for search targeted results you would now have your campaigns for each of these categories set up like this:

1. Office furniture—content
2. Office furniture—search (high traffic keywords)
3. Office furniture—search (low traffic keywords)

1. Copiers—content
2. Copiers—search (high traffickeywords)
3. Copiers—search (low traffic keywords)
4. Etc.

Then when you add in the adword group sub-sections your campaign structure might look like this:

1. Copiers—content category level
   1. Konika ad group level
   2. Canon ad group level
   3. Xerox ad group level
2. Copiers—search( high volume keywords) category level
   1. Konika ad group level
   2. Canon ad group level
   3. Xerox ad group level
3. Copiers—search( low volume keywords) category level
   1. Konika ad group level
   2. Canon ad group level
   3. Xerox ad group level

Separate your adword campaign budgets

Another advantage to separating high traffic keywords from low traffic keywords is the ability to separate your ad budgets and manage them accordingly. Because Google applies budgets on the campaign level your separation of high traffic keywords and low traffic keywords will have to take place on the campaign level rather than the adword group level to accomplish this separation of ad budgets.

When the budgets for low traffic keywords and high traffic keywords are mixed the high traffic keywords will tend to burn up the available cash on the front end and possibly limit your exposure for the low traffic keywords that that are so highly targeted and have good conversion rates and create high quality leads. separating the budgeting for these tow types of advertising keywords will help you balance the two.

Your organizational structure for campaigns is destiny. How you organize, categorize and budget your campaigns will have a dramatic impact on your success with pay per click advertising.