Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Presenting the Six Keyword Decompression Questions

The goal of keyword decompression is to respond so accurately and completely to searchers' real motivations that you become the obvious choice the instant they see your listing on the search engine results page (SERP), and then you parlay their attention into interest, desire, and action on the landing page — and beyond.

To accomplish this task, you must be able to answer the six keyword decompression questions:

• Keyword: What pain/itch do they want to stop?
• Trigger: Why are they searching right now?
• Attention/Attraction: What promise do they want you to make?
• Interest: How can you immediately show that you can keep this promise?
• Desire: Why won't they buy your product or become a lead?
• Action: How can you eliminate their risk?

If you can answer these questions about your best prospects, you'll be able to sell to them. If not, then your marketing will be ignored — or worse, help your competitors by filling in the gaps leading to the sale.

Searching and the AIDA formula

You might have noticed the last four questions correspond to a classic direct marketing formula: namely, AIDA, which stands for attention, interest, desire, and action.

Search marketing fits nicely into this model. When someone types a keyword and gets lots of hits on a SERP with more than 20 listings, your ad has to attract her attention despite competition with every other ad and listing and element on that page. Each represents a promise, so you must write the ...