Newbie Local PPC Questions - Whats The Point of Targeting Broad Keywords?
- SEO |
I'm in various local niches and for most of my life have avoided PPC.
I personally think the ROI I get with SEO I could NEVER get with PPC.
But I'm going to mention 1 site as an example because I'm in the process of setting up my first PPC campaign. I don't under WHY or IF I should target broad keywords at all.
"mylocalwebsite.com" ranks #1 for the most competitive, local keywords in its industry.
Basically keywords like "service + state". For local businesses, it doesn't get much broader than that, and we rank #1 for 5 keywords like this. They are the highest searched keywords in this 1 niche. So we get a good amount of traffic from those keywords.
On the other hand, our most QUALIFIED traffic comes from our geotargeted keywords. Although the site has lots of geotargeted pages (ie. "service + town + state") our best traffic usually comes from geotargeted youtube videos which links directly to our homepage.
I attribute this to the fact that our long tail pages on the site, aren't as well designed as our homepage. And our youtube videos, are done fairly well. They qualify traffic well, and do a great job selling.
So this is my question. I have set up a PPC campaign, and I've used all our broad keywords (that our site ranks for) as negative keywords. Because with PPC, those keywords cost between $17-$30 click... which is outrageous.
And I'm targeting about 30 long tail, geotargeted keywords. All exact match. Because the CPC is wayyy cheaper, and that traffic converts great (at least with our YT videos it does).
The PROBLEM is, I'm reading online, that you need to make a separate geotargeted landing page... for each keyword you target.... and I don't understand why. WHY can't I just send all this long tail traffic to my homepage? Its not google who is saying this needs to be done, but a lot of tutorials I've been watching from marketers.
I do have lots of long tail pages, but I don't want to set up a separate campaign for each page. I would essentially have to redesign each page so it looked a lot better, like our homepage.
So I have 2 questions -
1) Why do people target these broad, expensive keywords at all? I see a lot of my competitors going for these $30 / click keywords and it blows my mind how they manage to make a profit at all. With our website #1 for these keywords, it can take about 10-20 clicks just to set up a few leads and sell a job. So if you do the math, our competitors are probably spending about $300-$600 just to sell a job, when with SEO, it only costs us $19 on avg to sell a job.
2) Do I really need to set up separate geotargeted landing pages? What does this ultimately do? Does it reduce your CPC or something? Since these types of keywords are only like 25 cents a click.... I don't honestly give a shit about saving a few pennies. It wouldn't be worth the effort of doctoring up all my geotargeted pages.
Is there something I'm missing here?
My PPC plan like I said is to IGNORE all our broad keywords, and target ONLY long tail keywords, or variations of our broad keywords that are dirt cheap. Then send all that long tail PPC traffic to our home page which ranks organically for our broad keywords.
We already get a lot of cheap traffic from organic rankings on with google, google local and youtube. I just wanna add a few extra cheap calls with PPC.
Can some PPC experts chime in and let me know if I'm making any mistakes?
The way I see it, these keywords are cheaper, its more qualified traffic, so it makes NO SENSE to bid on broad keywords at all.
-SB
I personally think the ROI I get with SEO I could NEVER get with PPC.
But I'm going to mention 1 site as an example because I'm in the process of setting up my first PPC campaign. I don't under WHY or IF I should target broad keywords at all.
"mylocalwebsite.com" ranks #1 for the most competitive, local keywords in its industry.
Basically keywords like "service + state". For local businesses, it doesn't get much broader than that, and we rank #1 for 5 keywords like this. They are the highest searched keywords in this 1 niche. So we get a good amount of traffic from those keywords.
On the other hand, our most QUALIFIED traffic comes from our geotargeted keywords. Although the site has lots of geotargeted pages (ie. "service + town + state") our best traffic usually comes from geotargeted youtube videos which links directly to our homepage.
I attribute this to the fact that our long tail pages on the site, aren't as well designed as our homepage. And our youtube videos, are done fairly well. They qualify traffic well, and do a great job selling.
So this is my question. I have set up a PPC campaign, and I've used all our broad keywords (that our site ranks for) as negative keywords. Because with PPC, those keywords cost between $17-$30 click... which is outrageous.
And I'm targeting about 30 long tail, geotargeted keywords. All exact match. Because the CPC is wayyy cheaper, and that traffic converts great (at least with our YT videos it does).
The PROBLEM is, I'm reading online, that you need to make a separate geotargeted landing page... for each keyword you target.... and I don't understand why. WHY can't I just send all this long tail traffic to my homepage? Its not google who is saying this needs to be done, but a lot of tutorials I've been watching from marketers.
I do have lots of long tail pages, but I don't want to set up a separate campaign for each page. I would essentially have to redesign each page so it looked a lot better, like our homepage.
So I have 2 questions -
1) Why do people target these broad, expensive keywords at all? I see a lot of my competitors going for these $30 / click keywords and it blows my mind how they manage to make a profit at all. With our website #1 for these keywords, it can take about 10-20 clicks just to set up a few leads and sell a job. So if you do the math, our competitors are probably spending about $300-$600 just to sell a job, when with SEO, it only costs us $19 on avg to sell a job.
2) Do I really need to set up separate geotargeted landing pages? What does this ultimately do? Does it reduce your CPC or something? Since these types of keywords are only like 25 cents a click.... I don't honestly give a shit about saving a few pennies. It wouldn't be worth the effort of doctoring up all my geotargeted pages.
Is there something I'm missing here?
My PPC plan like I said is to IGNORE all our broad keywords, and target ONLY long tail keywords, or variations of our broad keywords that are dirt cheap. Then send all that long tail PPC traffic to our home page which ranks organically for our broad keywords.
We already get a lot of cheap traffic from organic rankings on with google, google local and youtube. I just wanna add a few extra cheap calls with PPC.
Can some PPC experts chime in and let me know if I'm making any mistakes?
The way I see it, these keywords are cheaper, its more qualified traffic, so it makes NO SENSE to bid on broad keywords at all.
-SB
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