I often get emails from people that contain questions similar to this one:
What is best to create a site around, a product or service? To better clarify,
would it be better to research a product such as sunglasses (and for a minute,
lets say they are a big deal) or a service like vinyl siding installers?
That’s a great question and one that I’ve given a lot of thought to.
We want to choose the right type of keywords because we want to do well. There’s no point in choosing a keyword (or set of keywords) that won’t be profitable.
So how do we determine the profitability of a keyword before we decide to use it?
I personally use one primary method to determine this – I look at what advertisers are willing to pay to buy searchers from Google.
This isn’t a method that most people use, but it’s REALLY useful. The commercial intent of searchers is baked into the CPC and if you start buying traffic from Google, you’ll agree with me.
Imagine that you’re an advertiser who is willing to buy 1,000 visitors per month from Google at $3 each. Total bill: $3,000 per month. Why would you be willing to spend that kind of money? Because you think that you can make more than $3,000 from that traffic.
To decide whether a keyword is valuable, all you have to do is look at the searches and the CPCs, with the Adwords Keyword Tool. It’s pretty hard to argue against the numbers.
If one keyword has a$1 CPC and 1,000 searches per month, it’s going to be a lot better than a keyword that has $0.50 CPC and 1,000 searches per month. The higher CPC of the first keyword shows that there is more commercial intent. In other words, advertisers are able to make more profit from that keyword.
Getting organic traffic doesn’t change the commercial intent of the people who search for the keywords and this is a great indicator for whether a keyword or set of keywords will be profitable.
To answer the question from the beginning of this article, all you would have to do is look at them both with the Adwords tool. You should easily be able to identify which one has more potential to make profits.
Great point Court, that clarified the same thing I was wondering about as well.
You say “google keyword research isn’t a method that most people use”. What are the methods that most people use? Just curious. I thought the keyword tool was pretty much standard for all informed internet marketers.
It’s not about the keyword tool. It’s about how you use it. Before I encountered C&M’s material, I never used CPC as a guide to commercial intent. Like many others who went through the typical training materials of the time (still popular now), I only looked at the number of searches and competition (usually the number of Google results for the keyword in double-quotes).
I’d say that makes a lot of sense. Very simple but I guess most people don’t think of it. If a lot advertisers are paying a lot for the traffic then it’s most likely a good keyword.
Court-
The advice you gave me 18 months ago on my flagship site sent my business into the stratosphere. I am finally getting time to read again and so I am back! I read the eBook. Great at gluing all the pieces together from scraps I had learned before.
Quick question….After finding keywords I want to research using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, you mentioned going into Google and using the SEOBook plugin for Firefox (which I installed).
Are you putting quotes around the potential keyword in Google or not? I found one keyword that was possible with the quotes (several PR2 and one PR3), but the non-quote search has a couple PR4 and one PR6.
I already manage to have studied the first 2 videos quite well and i have my list of 45 green keywords. But when i check their PR value (all 0-3) i also checked the traffic value and some of them have 0 or very little value, and others have tons.
Now i dont know which keywords to use on my website building. i am stuck
All very good points. I use the Google Keyword Research fairly often to determine the most relevant keywords. It has really helped. I’ve found keywords that I hadn’t thought of that had a very high CPC. Thanks!
i also using Google adword Tools for best keyword for my blog
thanks for sharing
I agree that high value ads and good search numbers are a good indication of value in a niche but it is important to look at competition too as the highest value clicks often attract the greatest competition.
You have to be realistic about what you will be able to achieve and how successful you will be at getting a good position in the search engine results.