Do All Keywords Sell On Both Organic Search And Pay-per-click?

By Author: Chris Le Roy
Total Articles: 95
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We are constantly bombarded by the same generic internet marketing information day-by-day. Over the last 2 years very little has changed in the overall process of internet marketing but what internet marketers do not tell you is why some keywords sell and some do not. This is the whole reason why some websites make enormous amounts of money, while other similar sites make very little if any at all.

There is a science to keyword selection for both Organic Search and Pay-per-Click which means that you can find yourself in a situation where you have invested huge amounts of time in trying to Search Engine Optimise a website for certain keywords only to find they bring you no money at all or invest obscene amounts of money for Pay-per-Click only to find no sales and a huge bill at the end. Personally, my team and I have invested huge amounts of money in generic keywords to find that the conversion rate for the keyword is sitting at 0.1% where as more focused and targeted keywords would in fact bring greater reward and much greater conversion rate.

I know, we have all heard that statement before!

But there ...
... are keywords that should be avoided if you truly want sales over just building up a customer database.

My team and I have found that keywords that use the word Free, at no cost, complimentary, or on the house will in fact be poor sales converters and in most cases will not provide any substantial revenue. This is particularly true of those who use those keywords in Pay-Per-Click. In one test we undertook using Google Adwords we offered a FREE Tips Newsletter on using Free Microsoft Word to capture names to build a customer database. My team and I chose keywords that incorporate the keywords Free within the keyword and we spent 12 months working with the list and had over 10,000 names on the list only to find that we achieved no sales.

I should note that we employed a number of expert sales writers and email marketers to assist and try to engineer copy that would entice people to buy but the bottom line was that none of it was going to happen because certain keywords attracts certain types of clients.

We than ran a second test in parallel in which we changed the keywords to disavow the use of the word Free within the Keywords. This new list with a similar number of people in it had a greater conversion rate than that with the word Free. Actually the conversion rate was around 3-5%. Keep in mind one thing, we were still giving away a Free Daily Microsoft Word tips but the difference was that we were attracting two different types of people.

To finish off the test we then compared the two lists for duplicates and here is the truly interesting aspect to our test. There were no duplicates even though they came form totally different websites. What this told us was that we literally had two different market places within the Internet.

We have the Real buyers or the Free buyers. Real Buyers are simply people prepared to invest for getting the information they want and the Free Buyers who simply want everything for FREE. In the first list we created for Microsoft Word Tips we found that very often when we would put offers into our list, we would have people abuse us stating we shouldn't be selling anything, we should be giving it all to them for free. This one occurrence tells you very clearly the choice of keywords is so important.

When looking for Real Buyers through Pay-Per-Click or Organic Search you need to choose keywords that are product specific, name specific or teach a person something. For example, if you had a product such as a book that was a course on teaching dogs to obey commands the most successful keywords you could use would incorporate the words -

- learn
- teach
- course
- study
- taught
- skilled
- knowledge

Sample keywords you could use for your training course keywords would be -

- teach your dog tricks
- teach dog tricks
- learn how to train your dog
- study how to teach your dog

If you are selling specific products like a book for Bread Recipes for a bread machine then the keywords that would work the best for sales would be keywords like -

- Bread Recipes for Bread Machines
- 500 Bread Recipes for the Bread Machine
- Bread Machine Recipes Book

Whilst the number of hits you will find for each keyword may only be 20 to 30 hits per day, you can confirm this by using tools like Wordtracker, you will find that sales will be more effective than if you use keywords that say -

- Free Bread Recipes for Bread Machines
- Free Bread Machine Recipe Book
- Free Recipe Book for Bread machines

The bottom line is this, not all keywords sell simply because they attract a different type of customer. Some keywords will attract buyers prepared to buy and other keywords will attract people who have no intention of ever buying.

If you are having trouble selling online and you are doing everything that the Internet Marketing Gurus are telling you, then I would suggest you start to look further at your keywords because maybe you are attracting the wrong customer type. Often there is nothing wrong with your sales copy, nothing wrong with your sales process, nothing wrong with your website, quite often and simply you have chosen the wrong customer for your business by attracting the wrong customer through the keywords you have chosen.