High Cost-Per-Click Keywords

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September 25th, 2007 by Click Consult

Have you ever wondered what the most expensive pay-per-click keyword is? Could it be “mesothelioma”, the name of an obscure asbestos-related disease? American law firms are prepared to pay as much as $30 each time someone clicks on a sponsored links ad for mesothelioma. After all, it is an easy way to find sufferers who might be interested in launching a money-spinning compensation lawsuit.

Could “IVA” be the most costly keyword in the U.K.? IVA is an abbreviation for Individual Voluntary Arrangement and is nothing more complicated than a person offering their creditors a repayment proposal that would enable the creditors to recover more money than if they chose to petition for bankruptcy. For instance, on the August 20th 2007, a click on the keyword “IVAS” with an ‘OK’ quality score rating cost £33.88 to be in an average position of 9.3 on Google.co.uk.

“Mortgages” is also fairly expensive on Google’s U.K. search results. According to Google’s Traffic Estimator Tool, it takes an average cost per click (CPC) of £2.56 to £3.84 to be in position 1 to 3 for this keyword. Add two letters to this word – “Re” – and things become even more pricey. For the keyword “Remortgages”, it takes an average CPC of £9.71 to £14.57 to get your ads in positions 1 to 3. Add two words in front of “Remortgages” and your wallet will really feel the strain. For the keyword “Bad Credit Remortgages”, average cost per clicks for the top three ads are between £17.28 to £25.93. The exponential rise in cost for these mortgage keywords reflects the lucrative nature of the leads, which is why companies are willing to pay so much per click.

“Cheap” and “Buy Online” are modifiers that make many keywords more expensive. In the U.K., the keyword “New Car” has an average CPC of £1.35 to £2.00 for the top ad positions. In contrast, the keyword “Cheap New Car” costs £2.25 to £3.34 for the top three. This is because “cheap new car” or “buy a new car online” indicates stronger purchase intent than the keyword “new car” by itself. An internet user may type “new car” into Google because they are merely seeking information, and this would dilute the value of the click to car dealerships with an online presence.

The best way to make a campaign with high CPC keywords work is to segregate ad groups as much as possible and to create specific landing pages on your website. Although they relate to each other to some extent, a mortgages ad group, for example, should not contain remortgage and bad credit remortgages keywords. These keywords belong in two separate ad groups with distinct, bespoke ad text. In addition, the ad text should link to individual, tailor-made landing pages that are unique to each enquiry. A single, generic mortgage webpage should never encompass and capture all mortgages, remortgages and bad credit remortgages traffic.

On most of the major search engines, quality score is also essential to success. The longer you can build up quality score (i.e. through high CTRs and more ad group keywords in ad text and display URLs etc), the lower CPCs will be for expensive keywords. A relevant, well-structured campaign will be rewarded with a good quality score rating – and this can knock pounds off some of the keywords mentioned above.

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