80/20 Rule Applies to Keywords

The 20% that get the business...

[tfanelli]

I have just done an analysis of the data for the last year. I am tracking sales per keyword and I am amazed of how many keywords generate traffic but no sales. My keyword list was almost 200 and I have since weeded out over 150 terms that havent produced one sale in a whole year. Im mentioning this because of the importance of tracking ROI per keyword.

[seth_wilde]

You can even take it a step further and track ROI by query string. Works great for building negative match lists when using broad match.

[roitracker]

I was just chatting with a client about this!

20% of keywords generate 80% of the sales.
80% of purchases are for 20% of the products.
20% of cutomers generate 80% of the business.

[WebStart]

Not exactly on topic with this reply, but close -- somewhere, about 4 years ago I found a statistic that said the overall coversion ratio from clicks to sale was 1.3%. 100 clicks = 1.3 sales, seems awful low. Did I misread, mis-interpret, or maybe I am doing the math wrong.

Anyone know what the standard is these days? Because if one is paying for 100 clicks at say $.50 per click, that's $50. Best have a whale of sale to pay for that. Of course I don't pay for all my clicks, but I know some competitors who must be, or paying for most of them.

[WebStart]

Sorry folks, found the answer here in webmaster world at this post:

is 1out of 500 conv. to sale on ah-ha, kanoodle a safe assumption?

Seems 1.3 or 1.5% might be a reasonable expectation. Still seems awful low.

[eWhisper]

Conversion ratio depends a lot on industry as well. The higher priced the item, the lower the conversion %.

Most ecommerce sites get around 1-2% conversion rates. However, just because you fall into that category doesn't mean you should be satisfied with it. There are many ways to increase conversion rate, and some sites get 3-6% conversions on a lot of traffic.

Webwork, I think you forgot to include the url of the post you're referring to.

[WebStart]

Sorry, here is the url:

[webmasterworld.com...]

What is reported there is stictly one person's experience, but it is close to the stat I saw months ago re 1.3% conversion ratio. But good point, re the more expensive the items sold, the lower the conversion ratio (as a general rule).