Hundred Dollar SEO

In PPC Competition Part 1 we covered how to eyeball the level of competition for ad space. In PPC Competition Part 2 we covered how to assess how much your competitors are bidding on your pay per click phrases, and potential hidden competitors. In this installment we will look at another of the tools that Google provides and put all of our findings together.

Here is what the AdWords Keyword Tool reports as the exact match search volume and competition for July:

Remember from part two that “vespa” ranged from 18-32 cents for top3 positions and “vespa scooter” ranged from 31-50 cents. According to Google’s tool there is a similar amount of competition for the two phrases. This may seem surprising at first, but take a moment and consider the type of product that we are discussing. A large fairly expensive item that is likely expensive to transport. So this is likely the result of geo-targeting — and we did see some evidence of it during the initial search. If you are looking to do a localized campaign you know from the first search that there is not much space competition for the keyword, so it is likely a good word to target. However if you are doing a national campaign you are in need for further research.

If you need to find out the amount of advertiser competition that you will find running a national campaign in a highly localized business vertical you need to do several dozen searches using your intended keyword in conjunction with major metropolitan areas to see how the landscape changes. You can expect that you will find bulk bidders pushed out in the particularly competitive markets.

In spite of Google’s surprising reports on advertiser competition I would still classify “vespa” as a soft term that can be taken advantage of in the near future.

Tags:   Google · pay per click · SEONo Comments

Related Posts