Google Ad-Words help?

[Kyle Pingsterhaus]

If I am trying to market my bakery using google adwords, would it be a good idea to include keywords related to "cake recipes". I am selling cakes and do not provide recipes, but since it has a low CPC, do you think it may draw in hungry customers anyway??
Thanks =)

[Anatoly]

No, you want to choose keywords that are relevant to your business. Think about it logically. If you are searching for cake recipes, you are not likely to go to a bakery website. On the off chance that someone does land on your page, the likelihood that they will be converted into a customer is small. More than likely, they will be frustrated that they spent time on your website only to find out you do not offer any cake recipes. This could also be flagged by Google as keyword stuffing, which is black-hat SEO. This will cause more damage than good. I'm not saying that your site will be blacklisted just for this one keyword, but do it enough and you will have problems. Bottom line, when it comes to SEO, don't try to cheat the system. Hope this helps.

[Marcel]

First of all advertise only locally, i.e. if your bakery is in some small town, advertise only in that area. CPC for local searches should be very low.

Depending on your budget, you can set any bakery keyword you want, but the ad title should be the bakery's official name to increase your brand awareness (this is a very important long term side-effect).

On your website, you should present a lot of nice pictures, make the visitor to feel "at home" and provide him the information he wanted, otherwise your business' trustworthiness will suffer.

So, all in all, you are free to test stuff, see what's going better and learn from it. There is no magic formula to success.

Good luck.