Is it Better to Focus on a Few Successful Keywords?
Posted: June 12th, 2009 | Author: Matt Levenhagen | Filed under: Tips & Advice, Twitter PPC Questions | 18 Comments »This was a question posed to me on Twitter. It demanded a longer answer than 40 Characters allow so I decided to post it here for her and everyone else’s benefit. Here’s the question:
Twitter PPC Question
This is a question that deals with time and resources right? You have only so many hours to put into an account. And it is reasonable to conclude the more keywords you have the more work you’ll spend on non-performers or junk.
So to answer this question, generally, yes, having too large of an account of keywords can be more challenging and time consuming to manage; it can take away from more important tasks, management and expansion efforts. Obviously the more time you put into a lot of non-performers, break evens or unstable keywords, the less time you have to manage the cream.. the best keywords.
That’s not saying not to have any other keywords though and not to test every possible keyword or variation that have a chance of succeeding. But do that with the thought in mind to scrape the cream out of those and add to your top performers.
Every accounts different, but I know I’ve done this myself and have advised others to. If you have campaigns or keywords that aren’t performing well or you don’t have time to manage them all, pause them. Sacrifice keywords that are only doing so, so.. to focus and master keywords that are doing awesome for you.
Focusing your energy on getting the most out of your top performers is just smart.
Depending on a wide range of variables and environments.. and markets.. a keyword can be demanding; especially if you aren’t the only one that knows that keyword is profitable. 
You don’t necessarily want to get into a bidding war and compete against automated ranking systems etc, but at the same time, you do want to manage positions because they matter from a conversion and volume perspective. That along with split-testing ads and all the other things that go into increasing performance and ROI can really improve your bottom line.
If you are spending all your time on difficult keywords, you won’t have the time to do the above.
Beyond that, where is your time better spent. You also have to consider that landing page. Work on your sales system and funnel. So if you are managing too big of an account, that can take time away from other essential elements of your sales processes and business.
And even if you pause so, so performers, you can unpause them at a future date when you have the time.
Continue to test new keywords, trends etc in your market, but always be gaging what your time is worth and prioritizing your efforts.
The only other alternative to add to what you can tackle is to get help. To hire or outsource.. even then you still want to focus their time as well.
Also, as a side note, this may also help you improve your profit margins. Cutting the fat will not only make you more profitable because your time is spent on more profitable activities, but sometimes keywords can have an impact on costs and make your income more unstable.
Hope this helps!
-Matt Levenhagen
P.S. If you have a question about PPC that you’d like to throw at me on Twitter, follow me! And ask! My account here: Matt Levenhagen on Twitter Note though, I won’t promise I’ll be able to answer every question; I am a busy guy. My thinking is a few a week max?.. or more depending on their complexity. 
Hello Matt
Nice write up on that. I’ve been thinking about this as well. Also, do you use the one keyword to one ad technique to maintain higher CTR?
See you on Twitter..@hanjicode
hanji
Hi Hanji,
Yes, sometimes.. whether that means it’s one variation of a keyword or not is a ‘per situation thing’. Yes, I spin off performing keywords to have more flexibility, control with QS after they are doing well for me. Certainly test that without deleting the keyword in the original group; just pause it to make sure you can match that performance.
But, it’s important to keep the ad group tight from day one; it’s not entirely necessarily to have one variation of a phrase for each group; especially when you are just testing a market..
An ad group, even if we are testing a batch of variations, we are going to focus where there are at least 1, 2 or 3 keywords per phrase in common.
And the phrases need to target the same buyers in that product or market.
You have some flexibility with dynamic keywords insertion too; that’s what that was designed for.
That’s how I look at it and approach it.
I’m certainly not going to have a different ad group for every keyword in my account. That’s crazy talk.
But they do have to have a common root set of keywords.
-Matt Levenhagen
Focus on keyword is the best. But sometimes wee need some variation.
Hi Ber2!
We need to test variations.. yes. And keep profitable variations; dump unprofitable or time wasting ones.
Keyword variations all can be looked at as mini-markets. All will perform and react differently. Subtle changes in a keywords spelling or structure will do better or worse.
So it’s all a case by case basis… manage your energy and time towards the money not the time drainers.
-Matt Levenhagen
Nice article, thanks.
Yes a brilliant article Im pleased to have found it
Just focusing on few keyword will lead us to success. Because it reduce what we need to manage.
As you said it always depends on the type of site but in general I think it makes sense to focus on the keywords that are most central to your business. Those are the ones that will bring in visitors and money. If you have extra time, you could try out some other slightly less relevant keywords and see how they perform.
I personally focus on few keywords for the home page and then optimize aditional pages for the rest
Very innovative! thanks for sharing the tips which will prove to be very helpful in future as well…
Thanks for the comments everyone.. normally I change the username names to a regular name based off the e-mail or make one up. (like Bob, or Mr. Charles), but…
..since it’s a post about keywords, we’ll let these go.
-Matt
I am building a website, with cook books as my niche. There are over 150 different types of cook books I will have for purchase on my website, but I do not have any keywords to target all of these items.
You can start just using your head. Think of keywords that perfectly target those pages, that you think will draw those that will buy your products, optimize those pages with them.. and assuming you are interested in PPC, set up campaigns targeting them.
Beyond that there are a wide variety of ways to find great keywords for any product or landing page. Including using keyword tools..
There are free to paid options out there. Check out Google’s Free Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Market Samurai, NicheBot.. to name a few.
If you want even more help, join my membership.. you’ll become a keyword research ninja in no time.
Good Luck!
-Matt Levenhagen
I typed nomad 3 times and got 1 swag buck everytime i dont know if this is a quincedence or what but tell me your most successful keyword
Quite likely that isn’t going to happen.
Good article about Sucessful keyword I am looking forward to reading more from you.Really Interesting concept!!!
Interesting concept about sucessful keyword really this article is super helpful …
The good thing about having so many keywords is that you’ll be able to choose among these keywords the high performing ones. The negative side of these tons of keywords is you’ll feel distracted of so many options presented to you.