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The live site project that I kicked off a few weeks ago has been ticking along nicely, however I realised I was remiss in calling it week 1, week 2 etc, as some things have taken longer than expected. Hereafter, this post will be in “parts”. A broken database link has meant that many of the plans involving the blog and syndication of the RSS feed haven’t happened yet, however we have begun building a solid profile on Twitter, picking up followers with similar interests along the way.

The good news is that traffic to the site has begun building. From a base of near zero, the site has picked up a decent daily visitation for this stage in its lifecycle, and jumped up in a big way in its Alexa ranking

Part 2 of the project involves using some paid search to begin driving our traffic. Utilising some credit that Google have kindly provided with copies of NETT magazine (which incidentally, they are no longer doing, as I expected in my Three Practical Tips for Traffic Generation – although Yahoo! is still offering credit for new sign ups), we are going to run some keyword research and place some bids on search terms.

First of all, we need to look at the four keywords or keyphrases that we think will be obvious search terms:

• Funny T-Shirts
• Bollocks
• Scientology
• Whaling

Now, feeding these through the Google Keyword tool, it tells us a few things.

Both “scientology” and “whaling” are good in terms of their search volume, but face a lot of competition for position in search rankings. Other slightly less competitive terms we should consider are:

• Japanese Whaling
• Japan Whaling
• Scientologist (small change, but makes all the difference to the competitive set and search volume)

Within the Scientology bracket, other terms that are high in search volume are Tom Cruise and L Ron Hubbard, which make sense to also add.

The good part about the Google AdWords system is that it scans your site and offers suggestion of search terms. As a result, we can add two more:

• Japan Whale Hunt
• Tom Cruise Religion

For funny T-Shirts, search terms narrow a little. While not huge in terms of volume, the best of the bunch seems to be “Cool Shirts”, and unfortunately the term “bollocks” doesn’t give us any alternatives (other than Sex Pistols references and cockney rhyming slang)

So all up, we are using twleve different keywords or keyphrases. While not a huge number, it means that we don’t have to spread bids too thin in order to acheive better positioning. We have set a $0.40 PPC bid, and we will monitor this to see how it performs. If we need to up any of the bids for particular terms, we can look at those that are not performing and consider if we need them or not.

In writing the copy for the ad, there are 3 things we definitley need to get in there – what the product is, how much it is, and where people can get it. Luckily, Google provides space for a URL, so we are OK there. In the two ads we have created, we are including the slogans as the headers to the ads (Whaling and Scientology), and the body copy includes the fact that the shirts are just $19.90. Much has been written about writing effective AdWords copy, but if you manage to incorporate these elements, you are well on the way to an ad that will drive traffic.

So that covers our activity for this part of the project, I look forward on reporting the results shortly.

Related posts:

1. Bollocks.com.au – Live Site Project Week 1
2. Finding the Right Keywords
3. Do AdWords and AdSense AdUp for Your Online Business?
4. Three Practical Tips for Traffic Generation
5. 4 Final Pointers on SEO Fundamentals

Tags: AdWords, Bollocks, Google, PPC, Search Advertising

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 6:19 am and is filed under Advertising, Client Case Studies, Google, PPC, Search Advertising, Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.