Low volume keywords. They’re relevant to your brand, but the engines might say otherwise. Seems like an unnecessary obstacle to any search campaign. Let’s say you’re a national brand with local offices; and given this tough economy, you still have goals for growth. You know search marketing is a cost-efficient and effective way to get your brands out there, but are only looking for customers in select metropolitan areas who are looking for your services. So, you build your search marketing campaign with a keyword list of specific search terms highly relevant to your business and consumers. This sounds like a great idea, right?  Run a campaign with targeted ads for select brands or services, or even your locations. But, as some advertisers have realized, it’s not always as peachy as it sounds.

Often times, Google will deactivate keywords that have a “historically” low search volume. There goes your great idea – a targeted search campaign that just so happens to include – and need – relevant, low-volume keywords. Until you become the next big thing in the media and social culture, sounds like you’ll be left in the dark (Maybe create a YouTube video of yourself grinding up an iPod in a blender. That seems to work.)

According to a Google rep’s response in a PPC Hero article, evaluating low volume terms “would put too much strain on Google’s servers.” Yet, putting more keywords on broad match does not seem to create any problems?

A couple of suggestions for struggling CMOs, brand managers and search marketers:

Try putting your keywords on broad match (higher likelihood of triggering ads) or extended broad match (highest likelihood of triggering ads…at a cost).
Increase CPCs for the keywords that are not triggering ads, this strategy sometimes helps.
Add more keywords that could generate additional traffic. Think of synonyms, too.

If you’re impacted by the engine’s interesting approach to these keywords, be sure to reach out to your Google rep with your case for why there is a need for low-volume keywords to remain available.  Be ready to offer possible solutions.  If we stand up and stand together in getting this problem resolved, we may get them to change their process.  If it worked for the quality score issue, it could work for this too.