OK so I started a campaign using only cheap, low-competition keywords related to the niche I am promoting (somewhere around $0.05 per click). Obviously these keywords dont get the most searches. I find that the keywords I am using get somewhere from less than 10 searches per month up to about 4,000-5,000 per month. I know that I will need to use many, many of these keywords since I am getting such low traffic. I am up to about 10,000 as of now (and adding more daily) and I am getting a maximum of 1-2 clicks a day if I get any at all. Has anybody used these keywords with success? Is this even worth it? I dont mind putting in effort and seeing my tasks through completion however I wonder if my efforts are all in vain... Thank you all in advance...
I think it depends on what they're doing on your site..If you notice that these low cost terms are generating alot of site abandonments, maybe it's not effective...or maybe they're converting well. It depends on what the data from your analytics yields. Lots of times I've bidding on low cost, low volume terms and done well. It's important to note that 3 or 4 word phrases can sometimes provide the best conversion rates compared to the 1-2 word terms..they are typically highly qualified clicks, and and can be the most cost efficient drivers. The goal, as you say, is to identify a bunch of these terms so you can scale your campaign..easier said than done.
Yes it is possible to be successful in that sort of strategy. But you should be very patient and pay a lot of attention to the results (or lack of results). But some keywords are forgotten by a lot of people (like misspellings) but they have great conversion rate.
overall I have 12,000 keywords over spread out over 6 ad groups.... this is how i got the keywords... i took the list of suggested keywords offered in the affiliate section of the product im promoting.... i typed each keyword into the new beta keyword tool offered by adwords, each time I get about 400-800 results listing related keywords (broad, exact, and phrase). I then sorted the keywords in ascending order according to Earnings Per Click. I check off all the keywords that are less than 10 cents per click and add them to my campaign.....
Oh i forgot to add.. i am getting 1 or 2 clicks OVERALL per day with all of the keywords if I am lucky. Although right now about 2,000 keywords arent working because I am trying to sort out a problem with adwords support regarding the last ad group i put up....
I have found it much better to have fewer, more targeted keywords than thousands of cheap no-traffic keywords. If you are attempting to build any repeat traffic and someday stop PPC advertising you are better off targeting. If you figure up how much time is involved in chasing and tracking all those keywords you will be a lot better off spending that time building long term traffic.
Thanks Don. That thought has crossed my mind lately and it is something that I am considering. Ive spent alot of time putting in these keywords, and although I did not expect immediate results... I wondered if there was a better way..... Do you have any tips/resources on putting together these long-tail keywords? Thanks again.
Test, sort out, test, sort out... That's the key! If you bid on a targeted but very competitive keywords you will be paying $2 to $10 per click & you dont want to go bankrupt. Use one of the great keyword tools out there to build a massive HIGH targeted LONG tail keywords then test them, TRACK them & WEED out the ones that dont give you any clicks. Be patient, test, dont give up & YOU WIN period!! Cheers â–ºRic
1 or 2 clicks a day is a very low rate for the amount of keywords you have. Out of interest, what is your overall Click Through Rate on all the keywords? If the 10000 keywords you have running get just 1 impression a day on average (hugely conservative estimate), your CTR is 0.01 or 0.02%, which is very poor. There are big problems with this: 1) Obviously, the way you have got your keywords means the vast majority are likely to be irrelevant to you. Spending $0.05 on a 0.01% chance of converting is far worse than spending $1 on a 1% chance of converting, assuming your conversion gets you any significant amount of money. 2) All those poor quality keywords will have terrible CTR and Quality Scores. Those keywords which actually are relevant will have far worse Quality Scores than they should, since a significant component of Quality Score is the CTR of all keywords in the ad group. Sorry to be negative, but I would recommend completely revising your strategy.
Alex is right. You need to revise your strategy. A lot of people have/are doing this, choosing keywords just because they are cheap but they are not relevant which is the key. I have a book that might help.
alex and lucid ... thank you...i appreciate the candid feedback... im a bit confused though. In my example, I am promoting a dog training product. So ive been using keywords like "how to keep your dog from digging", "how to stop puppies from biting", "teaching your dog to come".... They seem relevant to me and still I get nothing... and another thing... adwords tell me that these kind of keywords are estimated at $0.05 per click... but then when I put them in my campaign, it shows that they are now bidding for $1.00
Google's keyword tool is an estimate only based on what all advertisers have historically done with the keyword. Many factors involved. Your results will vary because your factors are different, main one being your ads. Google can't know how well your ad does until you actually run it. I never think that I will pay five cents on such keywords, always more. On the other hand, I can easily beat higher estimates by half on keywords estimated to cost $$. I hope you're not putting all these keywords in the same group with the same ad.
Thats it... I shut down the campaign and re-doing my strategy... I was getting nowhere.... lesson learned...
I agree with Stu Lee , I had to re-think the strategy and currently I have 5% conversion rates being the smallest and 25% conversion rates being the highest.