This will gonna cost you some money, but if you do it right you also gain the key to PPC success. Earlier this year I was sick of the lack of keyword tracking I had in place for one of my websites. I could see the top performing keywords, but I could not see which pages were ranking for those keywords. I wanted to get that information to be able to put customized ads onto those pages for better conversions. I managed to write some PHP code that dumped all necessary keywords into a MySQL database. It is not a pretty solution, but I am able to massage the data so that I can see the referring keyword (the exact search term/phrase), which search engine or website the visitor came from and (most important) what exact page the visitor entered my site on.
I let this go for a while to collect data and then started working on this MySQL export of over 500,000 keywords and phrases. On purpose I am collecting duplicates so that I can see which terms are most popular. Then I increased filtering and was able to get a lot of usable data that allowed me to put extremely targeted ads in place on those specific “landing” pages (normal pages on my website). That has been working out good I want to say.
Now I am taking this script and going to use it on my PPC websites as well. BUT, here is the kicker that will allow you to really benefit from this. Once the script is installed and operational, I will set some money aside and do a “Suicide”-PPC campaign. I will pick some of the most important and most popular keywords. An example would be ringtones, insurance, loan, mortgage, …. you get the idea. I will use phrase match or maybe exact match and of course plenty of negative keywords, then I will bid high enough to be on page one. Making sure I have a decent quality score and then let the campaign go and deplete the funds allocated. I want traffic.
Now when your campaign has stopped my goal is to analyze the data I collected. The importance now is not the landing page, but the actual keyword/phrase that was used. Why? Since my script will collect the entire search term I am able to see what people are really search for. That will give me a great insight into how people search in that specific niche. I will be able to collect ideas and trends and then use that data to build my “production” campaign based on those findings. The advantage is easy – I will have exclusive data that nobody else has or is shared with hundreds or thousands of subscribers that buy keyword lists from Spyfu, Wordtracker, or Keywordspy.
It should not be too difficult for you to get a similar script set up. If you do a Google search for retrieving search terms from http headers you will be on the right way. I am not able to share my code at this point for competitive reasons. I’d give you a link where I found lots of information to start my script, but the webmaster did let the domain name expire …..! Anyway – initially you will spend $100 or $200 on gathering the data, which – depending on your situation – is almost suicide, but then you will come back from dead like a (PPC)-Zombie with killer keywords in your pocket and can beat the heck out of your opponents.
By the way – I highly recommend using SpeedPPC for building PPC campaigns. This tool has saved me hours or days of work setting up PPC campaigns.
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