Recently I was emailed a question from a someone in the auto parts industry. They had recently redone their website and had a few questions for me regarding various strategies they were considering with regards to promoting their website.
They sent me three strategies they had outlined :
- Buy specific keywords for autos : such as 350, 307, etc and send the traffic to their website called daves-used-autoparts.com (name changed)
- Instead of buying keywords: We want to create several websites such as usedchevyautoparts.com , usedfordautoparts.com, then optimize them for natural search engine traffic and wait for natural traffic.
- A combination of the strategy 1 and 2 – both buying and optimizing smaller websites for search engine traffic and buying appropriate keywords to drive traffic
Furthermore they had a few questions about how much does it cost to buy 150 keywords for specific autopart names.
My reply would be option number 3.
Daves Used Auto Parts ( again the name has been changed ) although not the direct manufacturers of the autoparts are nonetheless in control of their own product. Daves Used Auto Parts set their own prices and profit margins and when a sale is made on their website – they know or they should know how much profit is made.
Knowing how much profit you make from a specific sale is very important when buying pay per click traffic because ALL pay per click prices are set by your market and your competitors. Pay per click prices start at 1 cent per click ( The lowest I have seen personally has been 2 cents) and then just keep going up. The highest I have personally seen in my own campaigns has been $3 per click.
Returning to the point that you must know your profit margins because you want to buy all the traffic that you can provided that it is profitable. Normally buying very specific keywords such as “305” , “307 engine”, “used small block chevy 350” is always a good idea but again you need to know your profit margins because undoubtedly you will have competitor bidding against you.
Daves Used Auto Parts might be able to buy traffic for keywords such as “used chevy parts” and if they are able to buy them cheaply then they maybe able to make a profit of buying this keyword. Repeating myself again – you have to know the value of your webtraffic (tracked by actually sales on the Internet) to know whether buying more generic keywords will offer a good return on your investement.
Normally more generic traffic equals more traffic but less sales – however it might be profitable if you can get the traffic cheaply enough.
So the answer to how much does it cost to buy 150 keywords is that it depends on the market. Obviously there are lots of startegies that you can do to make traffic buying profitable (thats a new subject I could address later) but generally the overall price range is set by your competitors and your specific market.
To address the strategy of creating several smaller websites usedchevyautoparts.com , usedfordautoparts.com, etc and then optimizing them for search engine traffic as opposed to sending them all to a generic sounding daves-used-autoparts.com.
From a traffic buying point of view, it is always better to have a more specific sounding URL such as usedchevyautoparts.com as opposed to a more generic dave used autoparts. Users are more inclined to click on an ad that they feel is specific and relevant.
Having an ad that has a high clickthrough is VERY important to google and your ads can become disabled and bid prices go up if your ad is not clicked on often enough. Google makes more money when you click more which they like and also they think that your ad is more relevant and not spam if your ad receives more clicks.
From a search engine optimization point of view having a topic specific domain name is helpful as most links to your website will contain the keyword that you want to optimize your website for.
In summary, buy all the profitable traffic you can – more specific keywords are normally more profitable but you need to test out and track profit margins. Finally creating smaller more topically related websites can improve both your search rankings and pay per click campaigns.
