One of the first web properties I ever built received over 60,000 unique visitors per month from organic search alone.
Guess how much that site brought in every month.
- $10,000?
- $25,000?
- $40,000?
How about $400?
Yes, that’s four hundred dollars.
Why didn’t the site make any money? Well, when I chose keywords for that site, I focused on search volume…and completely ignored commercial intent.
Which meant that my almost 100% of my traffic came from purely informational keywords. As you’ll learn in this chapter, stemming from informational searches are typically hard to convert into paying customers.
But there’s good news…
Fortunately — with a little bit of research — you can easily find keywords that actual buyers use to search.
And when you get your site in front of those people, turning them into leads and sales is a breeze.
Without further ado, let me show you how to find high-converting keywords for your business.
Getting Objective Information on Commercial Intent
Here’s the deal:
The Four Keyword Classes usually reflect buyer intent really well.
Usually.
After all, there’s nothing worse than ranking #1 for a keyword…only to find that you can only generate a penny or two of revenue per visitor.
Here are two quick techniques you can tap into to get objective information on how valuable traffic coming from a keyword actually is.
Adwords Suggested Bid used to be known as “Average CPC” (CPC=Cost Per Click). They quietly changed the term but kept the dollar amounts exactly the same…which leads me to believe the Suggested Bid is simply the average CPC with a new name.
Regardless, the Suggested Bid is one of the few ways that you can see real world data about commercial intent. You KNOW that if an Adwords advertiser is paying $5 per click then that traffic must be really valuable.
And if you rank for that keyword in organic search, you’ll have no issues converting that traffic into email signups, affiliate commissions and paying customers.
Here’s how to do it:
1
First, login to your Google Adwords account and head to the Keyword Planner:
2
Click on “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas”
3
Enter a single keyword (or list of keywords) into the field and click “Get Ideas”:
4
Click on the “Keyword ideas” tab.
5
Check out the Adwords suggested bid.
Just look at the HUGE difference between the keywords in the list above.
The keyword “web hosting” is a Product Keyword that boasts a Suggested Bid of $24.75.
On the other hand, “what is web hosting” is an Information Keyword. Because people searching for “what is web hosting” are very early in the buying cycle, advertisers are only willing to pay $8.58 per click for that traffic.
As I said, the Four Keyword Classes are a helpful set of guidelines, but nothing beats seeing what the market is willing to pay for clicks. In my experience Suggested Bid is the single most accurate gauge of commercial intent.
Adwords Competition is a nice complement to the Suggested Bid. Competition is simply how many advertisers bid on that particular keyword in Adwords.
As you might expect, the more people that bid on a keyword, the more lucrative that keyword is.
You can check the competition by looking at this column in the Google Keyword Planner:
There are only 3 levels of competition (Low, Medium and High), so the metric isn’t very precise. But it’s just another piece of real world data to use when figuring out commercial intent.
You can also check Adwords competition by searching for your keyword in Google and seeing how many Adwords ads show up on the page:
If you see a ton of Ads above the fold and on the sidebar, you know that you’re looking at a highly-coveted keyword. In other words, it’s a keyword you probably want to target in your SEO campaigns.
