One of the more common questions you hear from web site owners and marketers doing pay per click (PPC) advertising is "How do I come up with more keywords to bid on?" What they are additionally saying without stating the obvious, is of course "How do I come up with keywords that others haven't thought of?"

Andrew Goodman outlines in his report, "21 Ways to Maximize your ROI from Google AdWords Select", why he feels many advertisers are missing the boat in not bidding on enough keywords. Unfortunately, says Goodman, too many start with what they consider as a decent sized number of relevant keywords (i.e. 100), but are soon forced to bid more just to stay ahead of their competition. Additionally painful, under Google [and soon Overture as well, my comment] is that they often experience many of their keywords becoming disabled due to low clickthrough rates. Unfortunately, says Goodman, this is where too many advertisers stop short. They should keep going -- adding to and varying these initial 100 keyword phrases until they are bidding on potentially hundreds of "fifth and six generation" variations of their first keywords.

I agree with Goodman, but before delving into how you might obtain more keywords to bid on, let me first qualify that answer. Not only you should you be concerned with finding MORE keywords - but the RIGHT keywords. After all, the primary goal of any pay per click campaign is not to just to get visitors or drive traffic to your site, but to get visitors that will convert into a sale or lead. As you develop and fine tune your campaigns the truism remains "quality over quantity". So while general keywords may generate a lot of visitors to your web site, highly targeted and specific keywords are more likely to be used by people who have done their research and are now ready to buy. And, as usual to really know if they are worthwhile you'll need to track your results.

Now that I've made that point, here's a list of suggestions to start with in building up your own keyword inventory:

1. Find a general keyword and add or expand on it. Try a yellow page search, Yahoo! directory or Open Directory (dmoz.org) search to get some basic classifications and keywords down. Google AdWords has a keyword suggestion form that is useful in coming up with general and similar keywords for beginning your quest. (https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox)
   
2. After you flesh out 5 - 10 primary keywords to build from consider whether or not your site's content and existing pages are developed around any of these primary keywords. Since you're going to have to refer people to some part of your site related to their query, you need to know from the start if you'll be able to direct them to existing pages, or if new content, product pages or landing pages will need to be created. It's been stated that on average 25% of keyword submissions to Overture fail to get accepted, so to get your keywords past the editors you'll want to become familiar with each search engine's listing guidelines. Put simply, though I can offer here that the relevancy requirements in most PPC engines are such that the site and page content that the listings refer to must clearly and obviously reflect the search term in order to qualify it.
   
3. Take primary keywords and add specific words to it. Consider different keywords combinations around these 5 - 10 primary keywords. Two tools we recommend are Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool and Wordtracker's Keyword Universe tool. You simply put in a keyword and are provided with many different additional keywords combinations stemming from it as well as some indicators of popularity. Many PPC engines also offer keyword suggestions to advertisers in their administration areas for you to use.
   
4. Review competitor's site pages and pay per click buys for additional keywords. Look at the keywords in their titles, descriptions and HTML source code (i.e. keyword meta tags) at their sites as well as in their advertising.
   
5. Look for stats pages containing information on traffic delivered to competing sites. Dan Theis, author of e-book, "Search Engine Optimization Fast Start" offers this suggestion. He says it's often possible to come up with competing web sites who have erroneously forgotten to password protect their stats, and they can be readily found through the search engines. I myself have stumbled on a number of them, and thanks to his ebook know how to look for more.
   
6. Review your site's visitor statistics and search engine referral information for keywords. Your logs are a goldmine just waiting for you as far as potential keywords you can bid for. Reports available through Inktomi inclusion programs will also yield some information on phrases that visitors found you through.
   
7. Lastly, start thinking like one of your customers. Consider asking your customers or others outside of your business what they would type into a search engine. Look at whether they are more commonly using singular or plural forms, may be including brand names, or geographic (location specific) terms in their queries.

I hope these suggestions on developing your keyword inventory have been useful. Until next time!