This rule applies to the world of PPC, but not always in the way that you would expect. You're probably assuming I would say that a small group of keywords will account for 80% of the conversions in a paid search account. The truth is, this is only partly correct. In most cases, a small group of keywords WILL account for 80% of the ?spend? in an account. Now whether those expensive keywords actually lead to conversions is another story.

So then, what does the eighty twenty rule have to do with greedy keywords? Those keywords that drive a high amount of traffic (converting or none) will suck up the majority of the budget in a campaign. What does this mean to the campaign? If you have 50 keywords in a campaign that drive modest traffic and one keyword in the same campaign that is greedy, your 50 keywords might be missing valuable impressions. Adwords will sense that your budget could be depleted for that campaign before the end of the day, so it will refrain from showing ads with modest keywords that are less likely to drive traffic. Under campaign settings, you can set your ads to show at an accelerated pace but run the risk of missing impressions after lunch for those innocent 50 keywords that are not greedy.

Conceptually speaking, this is one of the reasons Adwords created the campaign level of organization in their structure. Ever heard the old saying, ?I just want to get my piece of the pie?? Think of campaigns within Adwords as pies. The account is the basket that holds all of your campaigns, or pies. Furthermore, keywords are the ants that eat those pies. Assuming that each pie is the campaign budget, you want to make sure all the ants are getting their fill. If there were one ant that was especially hungry, that would mean that the rest of the ants in that pie would receive less.

Thankfully in the world of Adwords, one can make virtually as many pies as they wish. In addition, they can make the pies in any size they wish. If there happened to be a particularly hungry ant in your picnic basket, you can make a special pie just their size that they can have all to themselves. This leaves a separate pie for all the other ants. If need be, you can put that greedy ant on a diet. If you have 50,000 ants to manage, you can always develop a special pie for the 15 greedy ants of the bunch.

If you haven't gotten it already, the idea is to put the keywords that suck up most of your budget into separate campaigns so that you can segregate them from the keywords that do not take up much of your budget. Doing this will eliminate the problem of having all of your traffic intensive keywords suck up the budget, leaving the other keywords in your campaign inactive along with it. Many times people are missing out on conversions from the keywords that carry less volume of traffic. Many times these keywords convert at a higher percentage rate than the high traffic terms.