For local businesses, take whatever keywords apply to your business and then add your state and as many close-by cities as possible. For example, a Cincinnati IT firm might use this list, which includes suburb names and deliberate misspellings of "Cincinnati":



Ohio computer consultant

Cincinnati computer consultant

Cincinati computer consultant

Cincinatti computer consultant

Tri-state computer consultant

Tri state computer consultant

Eaton computer consultant

Jamestown computer consultant

Miamisburg computer consultant

Sidney computer consultant

Troy computer consultant

Milford computer consultant

Loveland computer consultant

Use a mapping site to compile a list of nearby cities and paste that into an Excel spread-sheet. Using term like 'computer consultant', 'IT company', 'IT consultant' you can mix and match it with the cities and towns for a great addition to your keyword list.

The passkey to untapped markets is to have loads of keywords. You will also find lowered bid prices, better CTR, and a successfully managed pay-per-click. The effort will pay off.

There is a secret to multiplying your keyword list by three as well as bidding on keywords overlooked by the competition.

Quotes and brackets hide more surprises than you'd realize. Stephen Juth's tool AdWord Acceleration (www.AdWordAcceleration.com) helps you identify which of these variations will cost you less money and where there's less competition to fight through.

Now as you're slogging through the sometimes tedious job of trying to come up with an exhaustive list of keywords, you may overlook a singular here or a plural there or forget a synonym or two that are closely related to one of your niche phrases.

An added service that is available from Google to help with just such a problem is the Expanded Phrase Matching. This service adds singular and plural matches for your keywords and offers similar phrases and relevant synonyms where there may be a deficit.

You'll need to be careful here, however. This service will work for broad-matched keywords in your list, but it won't work for phrase matches or exact matches.

Broad-Matched Keywords

When you insert keywords at the time you're setting up your campaigns, these are the keywords that don't have any delimiters around them. For example:

used cars

Japanese used cars

used cars for sale

Be careful! By not providing a list of negative keywords associated with "used cars" you will end up with your ad showing on these searches:

used cars

german used cars

used cars cleveland

used police cars

Your ad may well show up when someone searches using this wacky phrase:

cars used in filming dukes of hazzard

Phrase Matches

Keywords with quote marks on them fall under this category. Such as:

"used cars"

"Japanese used cars"

"used cars for sale"

Having quotes on your keywords will have your ad showing up when searches are done on these search terms in this order with no other words filled in, as shown in this list:

used cars

old Japanese used cars

used cars for sale chicago

Your ad won't show for this search, however:

used police cars

Exact Matches

These keywords are placed with square brackets around them. For example:

[used cars]

[Japanese used cars]

[used cars for sale]

Using exact match means that only the searchers who type in this precise phrase will get to see your ad. The following searches will not see your ad:

used cars chicago

german used cars

old japanese used cars

used cars for sale chicago

used police cars

With negative words included in your keyword, your page impression number will be fewer because your ads will show in a lesser number of searches. That will result in an automatic raising of your click-through-rate. This is the greatest part though: by lowering your page impressions by 20 percent, your click-through-rate actually is raised by 25 percent, not the expected 20 percent. Now check this out:

If you cut unwanted impressions by 30 percent, your CTR will increase by 42 percent.

If you cut unwanted impressions by 40 percent, your CTR will improve by 67 percent.

If you cut unwanted impressions by 50 percent, your CTR will double.

The use of negative keywords can really give your broad/phrase matching keywords a boost, but they won't change anything for your exact match keywords. By managing your pay-per-click well, the use of negatives can make a big difference.