Keyword refinement is something that should be an ongoing part of any optimization strategy.   Data review can be used to expand your campaigns to reach more visitors, refine your campaigns to reach visitors more profitably, or even to reach fewer visitors overall.  Start the refinement process by reviewing:

·         Canned reports in Google

·         Internal site-search reports from your site data or another analytics package

·         Advanced search query reports from an analytics package

Review of this data should result in a list of negative keywords, a list of new phrase and exact match keywords, and/or a list of broad match keywords.  Depending on how much data you can get you may also have insight into new landing pages to test along with existing or new keywords.

Look for the search queries that Google is not doing the best job of matching with your relevant keywords.  For example, if Google is mapping ‘sport watches’ to a specific branded ad group, you are showing your visitors a limited view of the products and brands you carry.  Use of some negative exact match keywords may help improve results.

Most analytics packages and Web site platforms will allow you to see what your visitors are searching for in your internal site search bar.  The data you can pull from this can be useful to build out ‘Brand + 1’ keywords, other general long-tail keywords, and for understanding what your typical customer is looking for when they come to the site.  If they are searching for product X often, then there’s a good chance you aren’t making it easy enough to find that product in the navigation. Consider building keywords for that product and possibly featuring the product on the Home page or a category page.

Regardless of the results, this type of exercise will help you make sure your AdWords budget is being spent effectively and that you’re supplying the right content to the right people at the right time.