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by Brandy Eddings

(Another awesome guest post by Brandy Eddings, CEO of New Edge Media. I love it, she makes me look smart)

I’m going to run with the football theme again, writing the last one I thought of another analogy that I started using with my clients that works really well.

Football coaches have tough jobs. They have to watch each player carefully to make sure they are performing their best, decide which ones play and which ones to bench. All the while, they have angry agents all over them wanting the player they represent to get some field time. As the coach they have to stand their ground and only let the players that they feel will get in there and win the game.

The same rule applies when clients or bosses request poor performing keywords to be added or remain active in paid search campaigns. If you have tested the term and know it will not perform well, stand your ground and don’t be afraid to tell your client or boss that it should not be an active keyword. Remember that you are the expert that is managing the account, you are the coach. One bad player can lose the entire game just as one bad term can have a negative effect on the overall ROI.

Just in case for some reason you still cannot convince them to ditch the term, create a separate campaign and ad group to keep these terms separate from the well performing keywords. This way you can limit the amount of spend and hours the keyword is active. In some cases I will even limit the geographical area to just the area that the client is located in, for those off the wall terms they just want to find themselves with that no one else would search for let alone actually convert into a lead or sale. Just make sure you stay on your toes when the client travels.