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Making the decision to delete keywords is one of the hardest to do. The worry, or fear, is that if the keyword is deleted today it might perform tomorrow.

One of the most important variables to consider is that, in most instances with search engine marketing today (be it PFP, PFI or organic search), payment is only expected after a keyword has received a click.

No click, no payment. The issue is often with the cost associated with clicks: if a term is costing a lot of money then is it really working or delivering what it needs to?

The answer to this has to come from some form of tracking - only when keywords are made accountable can they be deleted from a portfolio.

Once again, the optimization of keywords is very much focused on paid search. And while adding keywords is seen as common practice, the removal or deletion of words is seldom done. For this reason there are a number of basic options for keyword deletion, as follows.

• Deletion of keywords due to cost – the correct determination of the removal of keywords because of cost should be associated with performance.

The idea is to delete keywords based upon a return principle, i.e. if the cost greater than my return threshold then I must either eliminate it or, in some instances, reduce the overall CPC.

• Deletion of key words due to performance - very similar to the technique mentioned above, the removal of keywords due to cost, this is based upon performance.

However, depending upon the performance the singular keyword may not be associated with cost.

For example, should a keyword portfolio contain 500 phrases that don’t perform against return metrics but only drive a single click each, is the problem about cost of keyword or performance?

On mass, the click volume of underperforming words can be the determining factor of overall success and therefore regardless of singular cost the keywords must be screened based upon their impact as a group.

• Deletion of keywords due to relevance - keywords that don’t perform have a cost associated with them and the two reasons for deletion cited above discuss this.

However, the biggest factor for why a keyword doesn’t perform is often lack of relevance of keyword to subject matter on the website itself.

A keyword must be relevant to the site as, the more relevant it is, the better qualified the user and the higher the likelihood for success against conversion.

The important of relevance is so key that in each of the objectives chapters the deletion of keywords will be examined in greater detail and associated with the portfolio classification.