Hey guys, If you are trying to compete in a very competitive niche, what is the best way for picking keywords for your CPC campaign? Most of the "good" keywords with hundreds of thousands of searches per month are going for $12-$30/click (according to Google's Keyword Tool). I've tried to get some that the keyword tool estimates at $0.05/click, but then it tells me that i'm below the first page bid of $2.75. What's the deal? All the keywords I chose have a QS of 6 or >. Do you guys look for low competition? low estimated cpc? low search volume?
Google shows most keywords are 6/10 or better. I just want to know some techniques to use to get cheap traffic. I don't need 10,000 hits an hour at this point. Just looking for some cheap CPC traffic that I can use to build up my traffic slowly
If you want cheaper keywords in a competitive niche, then you need to look at longtails. But remember that the thing about longtail keywords/phrases is that they get searched for rarely individually, so you need A LOT of them to build up volumes of traffic. Even so, expecting 5 cents a click is just too low to be realistic, if the top keywords are over $10, and the ones you're trying to use are nearly $3 for the first page. Some niches just are that expensive.
For competitive markets use magda's suggestions of longtail keywords. But in all honesty longtail keywords will convert much easier than generic three word searches. The reason being it becomes more of a precise want or interest. If that make sense best of luck. Over $10.00 cpc is way to high btw, for any market its just money down the drain.
Ok - what is the best way to find longtail keywords? Google doesnt suggest a lot and I CANNOT find keywords that will allow me to get on the first page for any less that $1.50/click
Put yourself in your customers shoes. What would you search for if you where looking for your product? -- How would you like to be found? ex.) say you want to go on a diet you would probally start searching like this diets do diets work what is the best diet lose 10 pounds in two weeks does the ___ diet work losing weight tips how many calories should i eat how to count calories gyms in my area etc. although i have no idea if those will work for you but they are considered longtail. They will not bring a lot of traffic but the traffic that they do bring will be very targeted and worth more towards effectiveness.
I'm finding some weird occurances. Even though google is telling me that my ads aren't showing because they are below the first page's bid, a few are in fact showing up...weird?
Ok - this is freaking me out...i'm looking for cheap, longtail keywords. Meanwhile all of the sudden, google analytics says i've received 7 paid visits from adwords. However, adwords shows that NONE of my ads are showing and i've had 0 impressions and 0 clicks. Yet adwords billing is showing 12 clicks for $2.95 and CJ is showing 8 clicks...what gives? Are they all just not updating at the same time? EDIT: If I look at history it shows 5k impressions on content networks with 12 clicks "yesterday"...just none on search Oh and 7,500 impressions and 17 clicks "today" even though its only 1:08am CST here
Adwords reporting isn't in real time If you have a site that's been up for a while, you can use hittail to extarct long tails that you can be searched for in organic search - it pulls out those longtails you get found for just once so you can look at them and decide on their relevance and if you want to make use of them.
this 'guy' is a woman, but thanks for your completely useless contribution to the thread Now you've got your 25 posts, you can stop posting rubbish.
Ok - I'm confused. I paid for 32 clicks on Google PPC. However, analytics is only showing 9 visits from PPC...
They are probably just now updating at the same time. I think analytics only updates once a day, and adwords updates throughout the day.
Well, i'm sure analytics updates periodically throughout the day because I can usually see results pretty quick (within an hour or so) and adwords does pretty quickly as well. I just don't know why they aren't lining up. If I paid for 32 clicks I want to see at least 32 visits to my site :-/
So how in the world do you guys compete when keywords are all $2-$18 per click? I don't have the kind of budge to let 50 people click at $5 per click and make $0 commission. p.s. Long-tail keywords are hard to find (still expensive) and the ones I have aren't working
In addition to the above, i DID find keywords that said the first page bid was $0.20, but I can put things up to $1.00 and it still shows them on the 4th page. What in the world?