Say it isn't so

Every once in awhile an expert of some sort says something I disagree with strongly enough that I think they are misleading the public. This morning I had that experience while watching CNN and Clark Howard speaking so positively of the free dating sites. All I could think was that he must not be single because if he was, he would know that those sites are nothing but trouble in a box.

But that's not what this post is about. I read a post on twitter (yes it's my favorite social media outlet) from the owner of Organize.com (Kevin Warren) who, IMHO, misunderstood what he read in an article on Practical E-commerce . Kevin stated,"Paid search is all about keywords. The more targeted keywords you have in your accounts, the more sales you are . . . going to have." While I do agree that having a variety of key terms including obscure phrases that people actually use, I don't agree that you have to have as many as possible.

I think that article was focusing, instead, on the quality of the terms you choose and the importance of targeting the right terms. When I read blanket phrases like the one above, I know there will be many people who read it and go out and suddenly put a bunch of key words in their adwords campaign expecting better click throughs.

Unfortunately, unless you have a good quality score for those terms and a plan of action for the clicks to the landing page the results will not be good at all. The words with low quality score won't even show up in searches so that's time and effort wasted.

If the landing pages for the campaign don't have a clear, direct action for the visitor, then people end up paying for clicks that don't produce.

Choose key terms wisely, be sure they will get you a good quality score, and have a plan for each click to your site. Then your key words will pay off and you'll see results.