NicheBlaster.com

There was a time not that long ago, but seems like ages now, that on a typical day I could get 14,000 clicks from the Google AdWords Content Network. Compared to a lot of other AdWords advertisers that was a paltry amount. The thing is, it really wasn’t that hard once you found the high traffic keywords that could unleash a traffic gusher on the Content Network. Advertisers would then turn these very cheap clicks into gold.

There really wasn’t any limit to what you could drive these clicks to: CPA offers, ClickBank eBooks, eBay and Amazon product links, CJ, and just about anything else you wanted. My poison was parked pages with a bunch of ads plastered on them. Yes, times were good, but it all eventually came to an end like most easy money opportunities do. The lifetime AdWords bans were handed down and a lot of us went onto to exploring other PPC traffic sources on a deeper level.

The Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) PPC ad network had some traffic volume for a reasonable CPC and they weren’t nearly as restrictive as AdWords. There was always MSN adCenter, but getting traffic out of them was like trying to get blood out of the proverbial stone. It hardly seemed worth the time and trouble. Then when it was announced that YSM was going to be rolled into adCenter we all groaned and hoped for the best.

To put it bluntly, the adCenter interface has always sucked – both the Web dashboard and the adCenter Desktop Tool, which for some reason has perpetually been in Beta mode. Constant page load timeouts and other errors made doing even the simplest things in adCenter an extremely frustrating experience. Trying to get around things by using the adCenter Desktop Tool was even more frustrating. Even after I purchased a new computer to replace my ancient Windows XP machine from 2002things  didn’t improve in the least. Fortunately, someone must be working behind the scenes at Microsoft as the performance of the user interfaces have become noticeably better.

The MSN adCenter paid search network consists of their Search Network and Content Network. This is the same way that Google AdWords segments their networks, but there are some stark differences in the types of search partners and contextual publishers between MSN and Google. I’ll cover this in more detail in a future post, but for now, let’s take a closer look at methods for generating keywords for MSN adCenter Search Network campaigns.

Perhaps the biggest mistake that adCenter advertisers make is using the Google External Keyword Tool to generate keywords for their ad groups. This is certainly understandable as most PPC search marketers have been so thoroughly conditioned to use the Google Keyword Tool for just about anything involving keywords and market demand. In some cases, the keywords produced by the Google Keyword Tool can yield enough impressions and clicks to work with for adCenter, but in many other cases, the click volume is often non-existent.

I’ve simply found that using the Keyword Research Tool from within my adCenter online account, produces keywords that have a much better chance of scaring up impressions than any other available keyword tool. This stands to reason since the adCenter Keyword Research Tool is drawing its data from the indexes maintained by Bing.com and Yahoo.com – at least one would assume.

The adCenter tool returns along with the keywords, the estimated CTR, estimated monthly searches, and the estimated CPC. I haven’t yet found much use for the estimated CTR, though it’s probably taken from historical keyword data. On the surface it would appear quite helpful, but I like to go in with a blank slate and hope I can achieve a high CTR for all my keywords.

The search count and estimated CPC are where I believe the gold is. Sometimes I’ll punch in a keyword for a niche I’m thinking about promoting on adCenter and I’ll give it a pass if I don’t see at least several keywords that have a minimum estimated search count of 1000. I may still take a chance on a niche if the CPC is over $1.00 for the top searched keywords, but at least I know it’s going to be competitive going in and will adjust my max bids accordingly.

As a comparison I punched “auto loans” into both the Google External Keyword Tool and the adCenter Keyword Research Tool. It’s a fairly competitive keyword and I was curious what would turn up.

The Google Keyword Tool returned a pretty generic set of keywords and not too many surprises as to the top searched terms:

The adCenter Keyword Research Tool returned many of the same top searched keywords as the Google Tool did:

However, there is a significant difference in some of the keywords returned. Have a look at the keywords in the screenshot above outlined in red. Notice anything different? The adCenter keyword tool returned several branded keywords that are no where to be found in the Google Tool. Also pay attention to the CPC for the branded terms. Most look to be significantly lower than the generic terms for “auto loans”.

With adCenter’s relaxed rules on TM and brand keyword bidding, you can most likely bid on these keywords and get them approved – at least for a while. You may find that if your landing page isn’t significantly about these terms, then you’ll probably get the keywords disabled in your ad group, but not always. Of course, you’ll need to have good keyword-level tracking in place for all your campaigns and keep a close eye on conversions and ad spend. It’s a double-edged sword, where broader keywords may get you cheaper clicks, but they may also cost you more in the long term with a lower conversion rate.

The main point here, is to mix things up a little. If you’ve been using the Google External Keyword Tool for your adCenter PPC campaigns, then it’s certainly worth a try to mix in some keywords from the adCenter Research Tool and see what kind of results you get.