How to Find the Best Keywords for Your Brand

For example, outdoor apparel and products retailer Timberland is most popular for its hiking boots. Timberland may call its boots "footwear," whereas a consumer may call them "kicks" or "sneakers." Consumers may even refer to the Timberland brand itself as "Tims" or "Timbos." All of these differences must be reflected in your keyword campaign.

Another example would be if you sell handbags. The consumer might consider handbags to be purses, satchels, pocketbooks, etc. It's critical you take these differences into account. So which keywords should you buy? Goodman says all of them.

When beginning to build your keyword list, Wegner advised starting with brand and nonbrand terms. That means all versions of them, including singular and plural variations, typos, misspellings, and even regional dialects. For example, Goodman noted that people in Massachusetts tend to add an extra "r" to words, therefore Talbots not only owns the brand term "Talbots," but also "Talborts."

Include your store location, web address and URL as keywords. According to Wegner, these are some of the best keywords to have because they're cheap and, most likely, your competition hasn't bid on them. You also don't need any outside tools to complete this task because its your brand. You should know it better than anyone else.

Keywords will produce a greater ROI if they're more specific. You should begin with the major product categories for your brand. Wegner used Michael Kors as an example. The main category here would be "Michael Kors," then its products should be listed as "women's apparel," "handbags," "shoes," "watches," "accessories," "men's apparel," "gifts" and "sale."

Take it one level further by targeting women's apparel keywords like dress, dresses and their typos. Data shows that a good amount of people forget the second "s" in "dresses," so also add "dreses." You can also add keywords like tops, jeans, and don't overlook words like plus-size and petite. Under dresses, be sure to add even more detail, such as belted dresses, brown belted dresses, casual dresses, casul dress (another common misspelling), casual khaki dress and casual khaki cargo dresses. Don't forget about the typos and plural and singular versions of these words as well.