When Should You Give Up on a Keyword?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

I'm something of a slow learner, so your advice is appreciated.

When should you give up on trying to get a keyword to rank?

For example, one particular one-word keyword (well say it's "widgets")I have been trying to rank for over the last several years has always been #60 or worse. Lately, i don't think I am in the top 100.

I know I will never rank #1 for it. But a few products that have a three-word-phrase that includes widgets rank #1 (but they are low traffic keywords so not a whole lot of dollars being made there).

So I would like to change the title and content of the widgets page to focus more on "buy widgets" or "buy widgets online" or something like that.

My fear is that the products that are three words or more and include the word widgets might suffer, since they are linked directly form the widgets page (which I would be changing).

Any thoughts? (And unfortunately, I always get my butt handed to me if I try to use adwords to bid on the "widgets" keyword - I am terrible at adwords.)

Thanks in advice.

[shazam]

Are you sure you want to rank for this keyword?

I tend to do things backwards. I like to throw away a fair chunk of change right off the bat on a bunch of Adwords campaigns. The intention is not really so much to make a profit, but rather to weed out the thousands of non-converting keywords and tweak my landers/funnel for high conversion rates. I can then concentrate my efforts on keywords that I know will work in the coming years and I may end up with a profitable campaign depending on my margins.

From my experience, the one or two word wonders that everyone thinks they want to rank for don't convert so well. In my opinion, chasing after the wrong keywords is the most common mistake people make. Search volume and 'common sense' are no match for actual data.

Once you know 100% for sure that a group of keywords are worth the time and money, then never give up unless it's a geographical or other type of keyword where google has pushed even the top organic results way down below the fold. In that case, a top 5 ranking may not result in much traffic and is thus not worth the investment.

[walkman]

I agree with shazam. I lost "mydomain name" to a major corporation that truly isn't relevant but then I doubt it made a difference. I'm #2 (if we don't count ads and images) but it's a generic two-word search so people might browse but not make me any money. I'd take a +5 across the board instead :)

On the other hand, I always tried to avoid targeting keywords, too many risks with Google since it's hard to be natural on single keywords.

[tedster]

The biggest problem with "search volume" on those juicy 1-word terms is that the numbers don't represent actual "click volume."

I've seen studies that show up to 47% of some 1-word searches result in no click at all - just a query revision. And even for those clicks you do get, as walkman alluded to, they might not make you any real money that's worth the trouble.

Most of the clients I work with know what a hawk I am about chasing those wrong-headed, short keywords. It's a bad mindset most of the time - the time to give up on those keywords is often before you even start.

[Planet13]

Wow! Thanks for the input everyone.

@ shazam

I like to throw away a fair chunk of change right off the bat on a bunch of Adwords campaigns. The intention is not really so much to make a profit, but rather to weed out the thousands of non-converting keywords and tweak my landers/funnel for high conversion rates.

I wish I could do that, but cash flow is very tight right now. Is there another option?

@ tedster:

Most of the clients I work with know what a hawk I am about chasing those wrong-headed, short keywords. It's a bad mindset most of the time - the time to give up on those keywords is often before you even start.

I can understand that.

My main concern though is if I start to change the title of the page and some of the common phrases on it, how will it affect the longtial searches that DO rank #1 or #2 and do generate revenue.

For instance, the main category page (which doesn't rank) is widgets.html

it links directly to these pages which all rank well and have a fairly high conversion rate:

Brand X Widgest
Brand Y Widgets
Tasmanian Widgets

Any idea what sorts of changes I can make to the category page widgets.html without tanking the rankings of the product pages that are linked from it?

Would it be pushing it too far to change the widgets.html category page to buy-widgets.html (with the proper 301 redirect in place), along with the title and H1 tags?

[walkman]

Planet13, with Panda no one knows so I wouldn't mess with it for now since it's generating revenue. Wait and see would be my advice. At least until things are clear and we see a pattern

[tangor]

Making sure that any user who does access your pages via "widget" gets a value experience will go far. It might not be the keyword that's at fault, it might be the user experience after they arrive.

I think this is the largest part of the infrequently run Panda: user value/experience. And if you are in a competitive niche for widgets of the same or similar, your site experience will have to be superb---not just "unique/original"---to rise to the top.