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What are the best ways to identify keywords with low competition and by extension low CPC rates?
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- Scott Albro,
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6 Answers
Scott - I use the following approaches:
- use Google Adwords tool
- start monitoring the results each week with the reports Google Adwords can generate for you. This will tell you which keywords are returning the best CPC rates. You have to experiment a bit with your bidding to get the right balance.
- use other cool tools like SpyFu and WebWHO. SpyFu gives you a pretty good idea of not only the keywords your competition is bidding after but also compares their budgets to yours. A good way to ask your senior managers to give you more budget if you see your competition is out-spending you ;-)
WebWHO is a product we developed ourselves. It goes one step further by asking "should we be bidding for keywords not being used by other businesses?" Google Adwords cannot distinguish non-business visitors from business visitors. So if a keyword like "focus" is being clicked on 100 times a day, the tool tells you how many of these clicks are being clicked on by businesses and non-businesses. So if a keyword has high competition, you might not care if it is being clicked on mostly by non-business tyre-kickers who will never buy your B2B products.
I hope this helps - Richard
Let the Google matching algorithm do the work for you. No one is better than Google for finding new auctions for you to enter. This will save you a lot of time on the research end but you need to make up for it by meticulously combing your search query reports to avoid bleeders and, hopefully, to uncover long tail gems that your competitors aren't pursuing.
Keep in mind - if the auction for a keyword isn't fully developed and the traffic is low, Google just won't show your ads. So while you aren't necessarily going to find greenfield opportunities, you'll find a fair number of auctions where your competitors are still being broad-matched to their head terms while you should leverage exact match to target the specific query in question. This will enable total alignment between query, copy and LP and put you at a distinct competitive advantage.
Sean provides a great answer to your question, Scott, but I'd question your strategy here. Are cheapest clicks really your goal? Your competition is paying for more expensive keywords, and they aren't entirely stupid.
Suppose you have two keywords to choose from:
Keyword A:
0.2% CTR
Quality score 3
$.20 CPC
0.2% conversion rate
Keyword B:
2.0% CTR
Quality score 7
$2.00 CPC
3% conversion rate
Keyword B costs ten times more per click, but $66 per lead/sale, compared to $100 per lead/sale for keyword A. Keyword B also provides some residual effect in the account quality score, and will gain a higher impression share.
Finding cheap clicks is a fun game and you might get lucky, but finding the right keywords and optimizing for conversions will yield better results.
Using the free Google Adwords Keyword tool is of course my first choice: https://adwords.google.com/
What I also do is put together some long-tail keyword phrases that I would like to target. Then, I search for them and look at the paid Google ads. If I see my competitors in there, it means that they are targeting the same phrases. This is useful intelligence.
While I agree with Bob that GA Keyword tool is the industry standard, sometimes you just have to go beyond that. That's where I'd move to WordStream's keyword niche finder for those low competition keywords that are still meaningful to your business. It'll save you a few back and forth on the SERP pages for those longer tail keywords.
While I agree with Bob that GA Keyword tool is the industry standard, sometimes you just have to go beyond that. That's where I'd move to WordStream's keyword niche finder for those low competition keywords that are still meaningful to your business. It'll save you a few back and forth on the SERP pages for those longer tail keywords.
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