How many keywords are bringing you traffic?

[websitedesigner]

I would say there is pretty close to zero chance you would get a keyword for 6c that relates in any way to web design, online marketing, development, SEO, WordPress anything anywhere near that space.

In fact I think it would be a challenge to find any industry that is a proper money making area with reasonable competition that has this sort of CPC - particularly for terms that are actual commercial terms.

Adwords is so crowded these days it's crazy.

If you look at the keyword tool results for 'web design' for example there isn't really any keywords under $1 that would be relevant for a web design company looking for customers here. Same if you search for a plumber, same if you search for a builder, same if you search for a locksmith.

I'm not an Adwords expert I think it's crowded and overpriced, perhaps some Adwords experts might defend it but to me the numbers rarely add up. Here's an article I wrote on it a while ago, the real cost of adwords.

[RAds]

For one of my sites, webmaster tools reports 11,000 keywords, but a lot of them are very similar to each other (with a surprising number of variations of 'nipple', considering I only have one page of 1000s with a nipple on it I find this amusing). This site doesn't rank very well for very many of the 11,000, particularly the highest volume ones. The second highest volume search is a single word, but the site ranks around #30 for that word. Its rankings are rising slowly week by week and causing me progressively more issues with performance, particularly as most of the traffic comes at the same time of day.

My other sites are all in the 200-3000 keywords per month range. You really can't compare apples with apples just asking someone how many keywords bring them traffic.

[bridiej]

Originally Posted by websitedesigner

I'm not an Adwords expert I think it's crowded and overpriced, perhaps some Adwords experts might defend it but to me the numbers rarely add up. Here's an article I wrote on it a while ago, the real cost of adwords.

I agree, I've tried Adwords several times and all it's done is cost me money. Unfortunately there's nothing to stop competitors clicking your ads and using up your funds and until that is possible I'll not bother with it again.

[websitedesigner]

Originally Posted by Giraffian

For one of my sites, webmaster tools reports 11,000 keywords

I don't use webmaster tools a lot but there doesn't seem to be much of a relationship between the keywords presented in there and the ones presented in Analytics. My webmaster tools reports about 5 times the amount of keywords than Analytics does so I'm not sure why that is. I don't think the webmaster tools one would be correct, perhaps that's reporting how many keywords you have shown up on the page for as opposed to how many have brought you traffic.

Originally Posted by Giraffian

but a lot of them are very similar to each other (with a surprising number of variations of 'nipple',

Sounds like an interesting business.

Originally Posted by Giraffian

You really can't compare apples with apples just asking someone how many keywords bring them traffic.

Yeah the purpose of the post was really to get an idea of the impact that active blogging has on your traffic through it's side effect of long tail SEO. It would be interesting if some others look at the stats from before they started blogging and then after to see if there was a big increase like in my case.

[websitedesigner]

Originally Posted by bridiej

I agree, I've tried Adwords several times and all it's done is cost me money. Unfortunately there's nothing to stop competitors clicking your ads and using up your funds and until that is possible I'll not bother with it again.

Hi Bridie, this isn't really my issue with it. I think with any form of advertising you are going to be paying for people to see it who aren't in your target audience, Adwords less than most other forms I think. Sure the occasional competitor might click on the link but if someone does it multiple times Google will be onto that.

I've got 2 issues with it:

1. I haven't seen that many cases where you can demonstrate that the advertising is actually resulting in more profits than it's costing. I think this is probably the case for most advertising but there are non measurable benefits with other forms of advertising, not so much with adwords. If it's costing you more than you are making then it feels like a waste of money to me
2. It's so common now that it's become crazily overpriced - it's kind of like the modern yellow pages. So many businesses have signed up to me without any regard to whether of not it's bringing in more money than it's costing that it's hard to see any value there.

I'm sure there are others that would disagree but I just think spend a few years focusing on natural SEO, build up authority that way and you will get a better pay off in the long run (in most cases). There are opportunities to do what other businesses aren't doing when it comes to natural SEO - but not with Adwords.

[JohnW]

Originally Posted by websitedesigner

I don't use webmaster tools a lot but there doesn't seem to be much of a relationship between the keywords presented in there and the ones presented in Analytics. My webmaster tools reports about 5 times the amount of keywords than Analytics does so I'm not sure why that is.

Hi Dan,
Google Analytics and Webmasters Tools are reporting different things.

GA reports how many people clicked through to your pages from specific search phrase results.
GWT reports the number of impressions for your pages for the search phrases - how many times your pages were viewed in search results.

Reasons for a large discrepency include:
a. Your page ranks closer to # 10 than # 1 for the phrase in the search results list.
b. Your page title and description are not appealing to potential customers
c. Your page title description is being seen by irrelevant viewers

Regs,
JohnW

[spinninghill]

I also found ad words extremely expensive. 1 or 2 dollars cpc and 1-2% conversion. Michael

[Aidan]

AdWords is not usually the problem nor is the problem one of competitors clicking your ads, big G is Waay ahead on that. The problem is usually inappropriate setup and keyword use, usually combined with poor ability to convert the traffic!

I've had to point that out to users many times, unfortunately many folk think you can just point some Adwords visitors to a page and make money, fact is that is just a part of the process - you still need to convince those visitors that out of all the websites they have visited, yours is the best service to hand cash over to!

If you are not competing on service, price, guarantees and all the rest, with the other advertisers and showing some point of difference, you probably should not be advertising like them.

[websitedesigner]

Hi Aidan this is true. I see you guys everywhere with Adwords I'd love to know what kind of numbers you guys get in terms of spend and customer value / conversion % etc (I don't expect you to tell me ha). No doubt it's working well for you.

Stil I think you must place a pretty high value on a customer compared to the average small or solo business that needs to make their money back straight away?

[Aidan]

Hi Dan,

Yeah I can't get into specifics obviously but yes it works very well for us and is so 'control-able' it suits perfectly.

We do of course consider the average lifetime customer value not the initial purchase and I'm sure you would realise AdWords tends to generate calls as well as landing page conversions. There are some other factors which come into play too...