How to set up Adwords Account for Keyword Research

[BobGW]

Hello,

At the advice of some knowledgable people around here, we are setting up a $200-$300 Adwords campaign to determine keyword research.

Our site is already doing well but we want to make sure we are targeting all the appropriate terms.

What do we need to keep in mind in setting up this campaign. I assume we would do some broad match terms with a bunch of negative matching.

Thanks!

[BobGW]

And by the way - thanks John and David for such good responses so far

[BobGW]

So what percentage of the total keywords will the Adwords keyword tool find for me, 80%? 90%?

We've already got 500 keywords from Google Analytics, and about 300 implimented on our site.

I'm trying to come up with the cheapest strategy.

[DavidKonigsberg]

If your goal is keyword research only you want to use exact match and use the keyword tool for ideas. Seo rankings on a keyword is like a exact match in adwords.

If you are using it to find new words i would use the modifier + match type

[john4math]

I would start with exact or phrase match keywords, as broad match can go quickly through your budget.  If you know of queries you don't want ads to show for right away, go ahead and put those negatives in (also as either phrase or exact).  Watch what queries are being triggered closely as the campaign runs.  If there are queries that are getting phrase matched that are doing well, you can add them to your keyword list.  If there are poor performing queries, you can add more negatives (based on your opinion or performance), or delete the keyword which is matching the query.  If your exact or phrase match keywords are doing well, then I would try broad.

You can see the actual queries by going to the Keywords tab, and in the "See search terms..." droplist, selecting "All".

Also, have you considering trying any display network advertising?  Remarketing campaigns can be relatively inexpensive, and convert well, so you might want to try setting that up first.  Remarketing would be targeting people that have already visited your site before.