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Adwords ROI: use very specific phrases instead of words
Haven't updated in a long time. But I've decided to get better about this site. Here's the first one in a series about how to manage your website(s).
When I'm not working on Feed.Us, I create travel blogs for Caribbean locations, like this one. And in conjunction, I've been a regular user of Adwords.
Recently I had a question from a customer about Adwords keyword pricing. I thought I'd share a tip that will help you save money and increase your ROI.
The idea: use very specific phrases instead of keywords.
Google sets a minimal price on every click on every ad. It's like $.04 on any ad. The price increases when there are multiple advertisers on that same "keyword".
Google also uses a quality score to increase pricing. This is to keep out advertising viagra on "Britney Spears". Google has a tendency to slap this on whenever they feel like it. We advertised a Packers website on the keyword "Brett Favre retirement" and Google made the price $.50 (per click) even though no one was advertising on that keyword.
The goal is to have the most clicks at the lowest price. You want to be one of the first 3 ads, preferibly the first. Also, you want to use keywords that increase transactions. How do you do all of this for pennies? Very specific phrases.
It's more effective to use a very specific phrase than one keyword. The problem is that it's more of a pain. It's a pain to manage a bunch of ads and keywords. But you'll also have to direct those ads to very specific pages on your website. You'll also have to manage many more ads to get the same traffic. But that traffic will buy more from you.
Example... Say you're Orbitz. You can put on ad on "cheap flights" or you can place thousands of ads on "cheap flight to [location]" and then have hundreds of locations (chicago, new orleans, paris etc). You can also domisspellings of cities. These ads should use a related URL on your website. If I was Orbitz, I'd direct the visitor to a page using that city information.
It's a pain, but your ROI will be much greater. I've got keyword phrases that routinely have 10-15% click-thru-rates and that result in transactions 50% of the time. I've figured out that I can turn $.05 into $.50, routinely.
I hope this helps!
