I have a lot of keywords which get very few clicks, but collectively add up to a reasonable amount. Every once in a while one of these keywords brings in a sale, and a ROI of over 1000% - but overall many of them have a negative effect.
How long do you keep your keywords before ditching them? Do you have set click limit, of say 30 clicks? Do you never ditch them, but just lower the CPC?
Regards,
Tim
I like to take a look at keywords about every other month, but i also do go in a couple times per week and pause some keywords that get high impressions but fewer clicks. I've noticed that the majority of my conversions originate from long-tail key phrases rather than the popular keywords with high impressions and a higher CPC.
Let me take you through my process, hopefully it will help.
1. I look at the keyword for the week, then month, then year. After a year I have enough data to delete keywords that may only get a couple clicks a month. Still, there are thousands of keywords that have spent very little and have either made a ROI of 1000% with 1 sale or haven't made any money.
2. I separate these keywords into their ad groups and see what the total loss is for these <$-5.00 keywords. I then compare this number to the Ad Groups overall performance. I look at the list of keywords that have made money for that group and look for trends. If I see that the ad group doesn't do very well and there are lots of >$-5.00 keywords I will delete them. I will make exceptions if there are keywords that have a low CPC and are closely related to good performing high CPC keywords. If the group does well I usually don't even bother with a comparison.
For Example - lets use Space Travel instead of widgets
I have an Ad Group for Space Travel with 5,000 keywords. 3,000 of those words are not very active and get 0 to 3 clicks a month. After a year I am able to delete about 100 of those keywords. There are still 2,900 keywords that are each spending ~$2,500 a year. The Ad Group as a whole spends about $5,000 and makes about $6,000. If I could eliminate that ~2,500 I could have a ROAS of about $2.00.
List of <$1.00 keywords include:
San Francisco Space Travel - CPC .80
Sacramento Space Travel- CPC .90
San Diego Space Travel- CPC .90
Space Traveling Kids - CPC .05
My Star Performing Keywords include:
California Space Travel - CPC 1.00
Space Travel Children - CPC 2.00
I will delete the cities because it is covered with California Space travel even though California is more expensive. I will leave Space Traveling Kids because it is so much cheaper than Space Travel Children.
I don't have a click limit. I like to see about 100 clicks, but thats just a nice big round number. I look more at cost. (I'm making up numbers here) My company earns $75 per conversion and our product cost $50. So I will delete the keyword at about $20. If it cost more than $25 to make a conversion than I'm still losing money.-- I'll look at this on an ad group level too.
There are exceptions. I found that space lovers require a lot more clicks to convert than my other air travel products. I can go months without selling any space lovers, but when they do sell it is $1,500 in revenue. So I will give the keywords in that ad group more time.
