The Best Keywords

Many customers ask us about the best keywords to use. What they are really asking is what market they should enter.

It is true that the chances of success in some markets are radically different than other markets. It is also true that we have data on thousands of keywords and theoretically have a list of the top performing markets.

I say “theoretically” because the answer turns out to be a little more complex than you might think. First, I’ll deliver the promised goods though. Here are the ten most profitable keywords we track for our customers:

internet business
stock
ppc advertising
advertising
investing
web advertising
website advertising
pay per click
internet advertising
shopping

I guess you can see why we are in this business. We are obviously in the most profitable market of all on the Internet… advertising.

That shouldn’t come as any surprise really. Look at the top sites on the Internet… Google, Facebook and Yahoo. What business are they in? You might say “search” or “social media”, but think about what they actually sell. They sell advertising.

Only two other keywords show up in the top ten: stock and shopping. Shopping also shouldn’t be a surprise. Amazon, Walmart and Target all do thriving business on the Internet and are in the top 100 sites. As soon as you say “shopping”, you know that money is being spent on something. The “something” in this case is… everything… anything.

The “stock” keyword might be a surprise. Certainly everyone knows that investing and specifically investing in stocks is a popular market with a lot of money changing hands. It might be a surprise that it shows up in the top ten list, but probably not a huge surprise.

So, why did I say that it was a complicated topic?

This is where an ad agency (like TestiVar) shows it’s true worth. Here is one segment of the entire list of markets:

Yahoo search engine in Miami Florida:

stock
shopping
internet business
internet
internet search
online advertising
miami real estate

Three were left off the list because they could be detrimental to one of our clients if published. But you can see that the list is radically different. Stock and shopping are on top. Miami Real Estate becomes a player.

That is one of the things we do when we take over your account as an ad agency. The 10% that we earn pays for landing page optimization, ad creation, keyword research, bid management and all those other things you would normally imagine. It also pays for our research into specific advertising paths and geographies.

Maybe your campaigns will only be successful in Colorado City, Colorado, Los Angeles, California and Miami Florida. We find that out using the data we already have from other successful companies. We don’t waste your money advertising on search engines or in geographies where your market won’t be received very well.

That list of successful keywords radically changes every time we segment the list of possible advertising paths and geographies more. Your market is on the top ten in one of those lists. If it isn’t, then we will tell you so BEFORE you waste money trying to find out.

That is the way we do business at TestiVar!