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How do you find relevant keywords for your bol PPC campaign?

Lars Hurkmans·Co-founder·16 November 2023·Reading time 10 minutes

You find relevant keywords for your Sponsored Products campaigns in two ways: you let bol select them automatically, or you add them manually. For the manual route you use keyword tools such as bol Search Trends, Bollify's Keyword Discovery and MarktMentor's Keyword Guide. In practice, a combination of automatic and manual works best. This article is part of our long read on Sponsored Products.

How does bol's automatic keyword selection work?

With automatic selection, bol's system takes the lead. Based on the information in your product title, listing and specifications, it chooses the keywords that seem most relevant for your products. Three factors play an important role here:

1. Analysis of your product data: The system analyses your product information, such as the category, title, specifications and product description, to identify relevant keywords. That is why it is important that your product has the right information before you start advertising.
2. Comparison with similar products: It also looks at products that are similar to yours and adopts keywords that are used for those products.
3. Fast and broad selection: This process is quick and makes sure a wide range of potentially relevant keywords is considered.

Thanks to automatic selection, you usually have a list of relevant keywords for your campaign within sixty seconds. This means you do not have to research and select keywords yourself, which saves a lot of time. It also gives you an extensive list of keywords that may be relevant for your products, which can increase the visibility of your products. Once the list has been generated, you can then remove keywords manually.

Although this system is fast, simple and efficient, it is not perfect. It also suggests keywords that may not be cost-efficient in terms of ad costs and conversions. On top of that, it does not explain why certain keywords were chosen, so you miss important insights for shaping your advertising strategy.

That is why, although automatic selection offers a good start, it is advisable to review and optimise this list manually. This ensures you only invest in keywords that actually add value to your campaign. You can combine this with tools that offer more information about keywords.

How do you add keywords to your campaign manually?

With manual selection, you decide yourself which keywords you want to add to your Sponsored Products campaign. You do this simply by typing in the keywords, in bulk if you like. There are two ways to enter keywords:

1. Exact keywords: If you place a word between quotation marks, only that exact keyword is added. If you enter "marten repeller", for example, you only advertise on that specific keyword.
2. Keyword groups: If you add keywords without quotation marks, combinations of the keyword can be added too. If you add the keyword marten repeller, for example, this can also lead to keywords such as ultrasonic marten repeller.

You can also combine manual selection with automatic selection. For example, you can first let bol generate an extensive list of suggestions automatically, after which you remove the irrelevant keywords yourself. To set up both this method and the manual addition of keywords effectively, using keyword tools is essential. Below we discuss three of these tools.

What can you do with bol Search Trends?

Bol Search Trends is a useful tool within the bol platform that gives insight into the search volume of specific keywords. It also shows related keywords that are linked to the term you enter. That makes it a good starting point for determining relevant keywords for Sponsored Products. There are, however, a few limitations you should take into account:

1. Manual keyword entry: To use bol Search Trends, you need to have an idea yourself of which keywords could be relevant. This requires prior knowledge and the manual entry of these keywords. That can be a challenge if you are not sure which keywords are relevant, so you may miss important terms. That is why combining the automatic keyword selection of Sponsored Products with bol Search Trends can be an effective strategy. You get an extensive list from bol, which you then refine with the insights from bol Search Trends.
2. Limited information: bol Search Trends only offers information about search volume, but lacks other important data needed to fully assess the relevance of a keyword. This means that, despite getting an idea of a keyword's popularity, you still have to consider other factors, such as the competition and the likely conversion rates.
3. No export options: Another drawback is the lack of an export function. This means you have to copy the keywords manually if you decide to use them in your Sponsored Products campaigns. That can be time-consuming, especially if you work with a large list of keywords.

In conclusion, bol Search Trends is a good tool to supplement the automatic selection of Sponsored Products, but it is less suitable as the only tool for building your keyword list. It can help you refine and optimise the list generated by Sponsored Products, but for a thorough and fast keyword analysis you are better off looking at more advanced tools such as Bollify's Keyword Discovery or MarktMentor's Keyword Guide.

What does Bollify's Keyword Discovery offer?

Bollify's Keyword Discovery builds on the functionality of bol Search Trends and takes it to a higher level. This tool offers a more efficient and data-driven way to find relevant keywords for your Sponsored Products campaigns. These are a few features that set it apart:

1. Bulk keyword analysis: Unlike bol Search Trends, where you have to enter each keyword separately, Bollify lets you enter up to 10 keywords at once. The tool then generates up to 100 related keywords per keyword entered, which can lead to a list of up to 1000 keywords.
2. More data: Bollify's Keyword Discovery goes beyond just showing search volumes. It offers additional insights such as the number of organic and sponsored listings per keyword, the price level on the first page of the search results, and the average review score on that page. This extra data helps you make a more informed choice about which keywords have the most potential for your campaign.
3. Filter and export options: With Bollify you can filter keywords based on specific criteria such as search volume, which helps you quickly identify the most relevant keywords. It also lets you export your keyword list in bulk, so you can easily integrate the selected keywords into your Sponsored Products campaigns.

Compared with the standard bol Search Trends, Bollify's Keyword Discovery offers a more comprehensive approach to selecting keywords. It combines speed with more information, which makes it a valuable tool for sellers who want to optimise their keyword strategy without being fully dependent on bol's automatic selection. It lets you work in a data-driven way while keeping control over which keywords you choose for your campaigns.

Although this tool is very useful for finding relevant keywords for Sponsored Products, there is one more tool that deserves to be highlighted.

How do you find keywords with MarktMentor's Keyword Guide?

MarktMentor's Keyword Guide makes adding keywords manually easy. With this tool you discover keywords in two different ways: via a search term you enter, or via specific products.

How do you find keywords via a search term?

Similar to bol Search Trends and Bollify's Keyword Discovery, you enter one or more keywords, after which a list of related keywords appears with information about search volume, the number of competitors and more. Compared with Keyword Discovery, the Keyword Guide gives extra insights that are worth mentioning:

• Insight into keyword relationships: The Keyword Guide shows how different keywords are connected to each other. This includes information about short-tail (general) and long-tail (specific) keywords, as well as contextually related terms. This information is important for deciding which type of keywords you want to include in your campaign.
• Sales needed to be found: A special feature of the Keyword Guide is that it gives insight into the number of sales needed to rank high for certain keywords. For Sponsored Products, this indicates the level of competition and sales potential of a keyword.
• Focused on relevant keywords: The Keyword Guide uses a unique method to analyse keyword data, using algorithms that combine both current and historical data to determine relationships between keywords. This approach offers extensive insight into the performance and connections of keywords over a certain period, which is essential for developing sustainable keyword strategies. One of the advantages of this system is that only the relevant keywords are shown, so you can put together a list of keyword candidates fairly quickly.

How do you find keywords via products?

With the Keyword Guide you can also discover keywords by entering specific products. This is similar to the automatic keyword selection of Sponsored Products, where you can identify relevant competitors with good sales performance and use their keywords to expand your own list.

Just like with Bollify's Keyword Discovery, you can export keywords in bulk, which makes it easy to add relevant keywords to your campaign quickly.

In conclusion, MarktMentor's Keyword Guide is a handy tool for adding keywords manually to your Sponsored Products campaigns. It offers in-depth insights and helps you develop an effective keyword strategy.

How do you build an effective keyword strategy with the Keyword Guide?

You build an effective keyword strategy by combining MarktMentor's Keyword Guide with bol's automatic selection. That way you use both the keywords suggested by bol and relevant keywords from the Keyword Guide to enrich your Sponsored Products campaigns. There are two ways to do this:

Option 1: match bol's list with Keyword Guide results

In this approach, you first let bol generate a list of automatically selected keywords based on your product information. You then use MarktMentor's Keyword Guide to determine which of these keywords are most relevant and which ones you want to keep. This is how it works:

1. Automatic selection by bol: Let bol select keywords automatically based on your product title, listing and specifications. This quickly generates a list of potential keywords.
2. Keyword Guide check: Take the list of automatically selected keywords from bol and enter it into MarktMentor's Keyword Guide. The Keyword Guide provides you with extensive insights into these keywords, including search volume, competition and relevant related terms.
3. Matching and optimisation: Review the results from the Keyword Guide and compare them with the keywords automatically generated by bol. Select the keywords that seem most relevant and cost-effective for your campaign. You can optimise the list further by removing unnecessary keywords.

This approach combines the speed of automatic selection with the in-depth insights of the Keyword Guide, giving you a well-balanced list of keywords for your Sponsored Products campaigns.

Option 2: direct keyword research from the top products

Another effective approach is to collect keywords from the best-performing products in your category, a method you will find worked out further in our article on product research with the Niche Explorer. This way you respond directly to what successful competitors are doing and use their keywords as the basis for your campaign. You can supplement this method with relevant related keywords from the Keyword Guide. This is how you go about it:

1. Identify top products: Research which products in your category perform well and score high in search results. These products are a good source of keywords because they are already successful. You can easily find these products via the Product Database.
2. Keyword research from top products: Analyse which keywords these products are found on. We can do this via the Keyword Guide.
3. Keyword Guide enrichment: Enter the collected keywords into MarktMentor's Keyword Guide to get extra insights, such as search volumes and competition. The Keyword Guide can also show related keywords that you can add to your list.
4. Supplementing with related keywords: Use the related keywords from the Keyword Guide to further supplement and refine your list. This helps you create an extensive list of relevant keywords.

By combining these two approaches, you benefit from both industry best practices and advanced keyword analysis. This allows you to lay a strong foundation for your Sponsored Products campaigns and make sure your ads are shown to a relevant audience. Regularly updating and optimising your keywords is also essential to keep your competitive advantage and keep improving your campaigns.

What should you remember about keywords for your Sponsored Products campaign?

In short: you collect keywords for Sponsored Products on bol via automatic selection by bol and via manual selection with tools such as bol Search Trends, Bollify's Keyword Discovery and MarktMentor's Keyword Guide. The strongest approach combines the speed of automatic selection with the depth of a keyword tool.

Want to know more about Sponsored Products and how to use them effectively? Then read our article on what Sponsored Products are and when it makes sense to use them. If you want to learn how to bid successfully in the auction, we have an article on bidding. And if you want to know how the algorithm behind Sponsored Products works, there is an article on the algorithm. For a broader keyword strategy for your findability, read our explanation of a keyword strategy on bol. We wish you every success with your Sponsored Products campaigns on bol.