Benoit Vatere, LookSmart’s VP Distribution Network hosted a round table event with Media Post’s Social Media Insider Summit on August 18th, 2011. Benoit lead the group in a discussion on techniques and strategies for integrating search with social marketing. Of the 20 people in attendance, there were industry marketers from American Express, Bing, IBM, Kelley Blue Book and Nielson.
As a search ad network, we know that a marketer’s keyword list is integral to the success of their campaigns. Keeping a list static for too long can mean missed opportunities and missed revenue, so it’s important that search marketers be constantly adjusting their lists and testing new keywords. As regular readers of this blog know, at LookSmart we try to assist advertisers at key times of the year by aggregating together large lists of seasonal keywords around events like Valentine’s Day and Back-to-School. But what about the rest of the year? We often get questions from advertisers, especially those who are relatively new to search marketing, about what tools they can use to do their own keyword research. Luckily, there are a plethora of inexpensive and even free tools available.
Here’s a quick snapshot of some tools to check out. We haven’t used all of these tools ourselves, so we can’t speak to the quality of each and every one, but we hope this list will at least provide a good starting place for those of you who are interested in expanding your PPC keyword lists. If you try any of the tools, let us know in the comments section how they work!
In no particular order:
• Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Spyfu: http://www.spyfu.com/
• Wordtracker: http://www.wordtracker.com/
• Market Samurai: http://www.marketsamurai.com/
• PPC Keyword Toolz: http://ppckeywordtoolz.com/
• Wordstream: http://www.wordstream.com/free-keyword-tools
• KeywordSpy: http://www.keywordspy.com/
• Speed PPC: http://www.speedppc.com/
• Keyword Elite: http://www.keywordelite.com/
• SEO Book Keyword Typos Generator: http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi
• Keyword Ninja: http://www.keywordninja.com/
• Sktool: www.google.com/sktool/
• SEMrush: http://www.semrush.com/
• KGen: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/kgen/
• Wordpot: http://www.wordpot.com/
At LookSmart, we often see that advertisers drive more traffic and conversions when they adjust their campaigns to take advantage of seasonal keywords. With tax season upon us, we know many advertisers are looking to expand their campaigns to account for the increase in tax related searches. As such, we have prepared a list of approximately 7000 relevant keywords that you may want to incorporate into your campaigns.
Keywords cover a range of tax season topics including:
Just a quick note to let everyone know we’ll be exhibiting at Search Engine Strategies New York on March 22nd and 23rd. If you are planning to attend, we’d love the chance to speak with you about our search advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers, including some new pricing models we have in the works. Feel free to stop by booth #1301 at any time during the show, or, if you’d prefer to set up a scheduled meeting with one of our account executives, drop us a line in the comments section, and we’ll be in touch to set something up.
For those of you interested in optimizing your search campaigns for the Super Bowl (February 6th in Arlington, TX), we have created a list of over 5,000 search terms that you may want to think about incorportating into your campaigns if they are relevant.
For those of you planning on heading out to Vegas for Affiliate Summit West next week, please be sure to check out LookSmart VP Gill Brown's presentation on "Uncovering Advanced Paid Search Strategies." Oh, and also, put $20 on black for me, would you?
It's not too late for paid search advertisers to make last minute keyword changes in anticipation of the holidays! To help, LookSmart has compiled a list of over 8,000 PPC keywords relating to the following categories:
Holiday Season is officially upon us, and many search marketers are making final adjustments to their keyword lists to accommodate the uptick in holiday-related searches. To assist in this effort, LookSmart has compiled a list of over 35,000 keyword ideas, including ones for Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
We also have lists prepared for specific categories like Toys, Clothing, Home, Electronics and Holiday Items.
If you would like us to send you the keyword list, please email us with the subject line "Send Me Holiday Keywords" and we will get it to you right away.
As regular readers of this blog know, we are big proponents of tweaking keywords and bids to account for seasonal shifts in search patterns. There are a lot of industry resources available to help you ramp up your holiday spend around Q4 – you’ll find some on this blog and in our twitter feed – but we also like to make more specific materials available to help search advertisers get the most out of their pay-per click spend.
The results are in and SMB advertisers are in agreement: traffic quality ranks as a top priority when it comes to getting the most from PPC campaigns. This past month, LookSmart surveyed over 120 of our SMB channel advertisers to better understand their current priorities and long-term objectives when it comes to ROI, customer service, platform capabilities and the quality of traffic they receive from their search partners.