How to Generate a Massive Keyword List

When it comes to keyword lists, size does matter. The more targeted keywords you have,
the more opportunities you will have to bring traffic to your website. The more qualified
traffic you bring to your website, the more opportunities you will have to earn
commissions. As you may remember from Section 2, I talked about different techniques
and strategies you could use to build a preliminary keyword list. This section will show
you how to build a comprehensive keyword list. I will also show you how to use webbased
tools to help you explode the size of your keyword list.

1 - Start with Products and Services

To begin, you should make a list of all of the products and services you will be promoting
on your website. Think of product or service names, model numbers, and other details
used to describe your products and services. If you were a potential customer, what
keywords would you use to find the products and services listed on your website?
When you first start brainstorming, focus on generating a list of general keywords. Using
general keywords during the first phase of your keyword research allows you to uncover
more specific keywords later.
Keyword Brainstorming Example:
Let's say that you wanted to promote credit cards on your website. What are some general
keywords that could be used to describe the credit cards featured on your website?
• American Express cards
• Citibank cards
• Chase Bank credit cards
• Discover card
• Low interest credit cards
• Balance transfer cards
• Instant approval cards
• Cash back cards
• Airline miles cards
• Credit cards for bad credit
You will be able to find more keyword variations by focusing on general keywords first.
After you have a list of general keywords, you can drill down and start adding more
specific keywords to your list:
• Blue Cash from American Express
• American Express Rewards Gold Card
• Citi Platinum Select Card
• Discover Platinum Card
• Chase Ultimate Rewards Express

Keyword Tip:
As you are building your keyword list, make sure you take time to put these keywords
into a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel. This will help you to organize your
keywords. You can group your keywords in any logical way that makes sense to you.
Some people do it by product/service category, others by product/service name. It's up to
you. I typically organize my keywords by AdGroup.

2 - Use the Google Keywords Tool

As I mentioned in Section 2, one of the best tools to do keyword research is the Google
Keywords Tool, located at (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).
This tool is freely available and doesn’t require you to sign-in.
The Google Keywords Tool will not only return keyword variations, but will also suggest
related keywords. When you do a search for a particular keyword the results are returned
by relevance. The most relevant keywords will be at the top of the list.
Google Keywords Tool Example:
Using the preliminary keyword list from the credit card example above, we can start to
build a more comprehensive list, and uncover new keywords we haven’t even thought of
yet. For this demonstration I’ll start with a general keyword like Citi Card so you can see
the process I go through when building a new campaign.


This search returned 115 keyword variations of the keyword “citi card” and suggested 77
additional keywords. Most of the keywords returned are variations of our original
keyword, however, Google also suggested some related keywords like “cash back card”,
“apply for a card online”, and “chase card”. This synonym search is a very helpful feature
because it reveals keywords that could easily be overlooked.

Save Your Keywords
Google will allow you to save the keywords recommended by the Keywords Tool. You
can add them individually, or click "Add all". This will save the keywords while you
perform additional keyword searches. When you're finished, you can export the list as a
text file (.csv format). These files can be opened up in Microsoft Excel or any popular
text editor.

Look for Negative Keywords
A negative keyword is a word or phrase that will prevent your ad from being displayed.
In our previous example, you may notice that Google returned keyword phrases like “citi
card login” and “citi card account”. As an affiliate you don’t want your ad showing up
for these searches because you only make money when a new user completes a Citi®

Card application. If you were bidding on the broad matched keyword “citi card” and
didn’t specify these negative keywords, you would receive several untargeted clicks from
existing Citi customers, who are looking to pay their bill online or get in touch with
customer service.

As you’re doing your keyword research try to find as many negative keywords as
possible to ensure that your ad is only being displayed for relevant searches. In some
cases I invest as much time looking for negative keywords as I do for new keywords.
As I mentioned earlier, I prefer bidding on specific keyword phrases because it reveals
more about the user’s intent. For example, if somebody just types in the word “citi card”
by itself, it’s hard for you to determine if they’re an existing customer trying to pay their
bill, or if they’re trying to apply for a new card.

When the user types in a specific keyword phrase like “citi credit card application” or
“compare rates on citi rewards card”, you can more accurately predict what the user is
looking for, and provide them with a highly-targeted offer.
Finding Keywords in Different Languages and Countries
If you’re planning on marketing products and services in other countries you can change
the country and language settings to your desired location. For example, let’s say you
were promoting computers in Mexico. You could change your country and language to
Mexico/Spanish. This would return localized keywords and results. I’ve included an
example below for the keyword “computadora” (computadora means computer in
English).


As you can see from this example, Google now returns variations of our keyword in
Spanish, with search volume and competitive estimates for Mexico.