Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Generally speaking, you can use any keywords that you want. Based on what you've said, there's no reason that someone selling cat toys could not use the phrase "siamese cat."

Hi Dave,

You can bid on any keywords/phrases you want to in Google or Yahoo, however if they are not relevant to what you are selling, you are risking having them be disabled, de-activated or not accepted for listing.

Google and Yahoo each have their own acceptance standards and level of tolerance. Yahoo is less tolerant than Google.

The keyword or phrase does not have to be in your ad title or any of your ad copy, however, as Kathleen states, you are rewarded if your title or ad copy does contain the keyword phrase by having it bold-faced.

Many times you can hit PPC gold (low bid, high CTR) by bidding on keywords that are associated with a product/service but are not the product/service such as your "Siamese Cat" when you are selling toys for cats. This is done all the time.

Again, the downside is that if you don't accumulate enough clickthroughs or with the new Google keyword state model if you don't bid high enough your keyword/phrase will become inactive which also slows the whole account.

Also, if your keyword/phrase is so far away from being relevant you will waste money on clicks because you will never get any conversions.

You can also start looking at how you match the keyword phrase such as broad match, phrase match, exact match, negative match, but that is another discussion.

I hope that helps.