Terrible American Adwords Conversion - Excellent Canadian Conversion

Can't figure out why

[lgn1]

Over the years we have tuned our adwords account, and we are getting good click thru rates, and excellent conversions in the Canadian marketplace.

The US market has similiar demographics and cultural values, but with more competition, however the market is 9 times the size.

However, our US conversion rates are terrible; so much so I don't believe it is possible to be profitable, even with our highly tuned adwords campaign.

I'm grasping a straws, but I wonder if my site URL has anything to do with this.

Our Canadian site is called <widgets>-canada.com and our US site is called <widgets>-usa.com.

The two sites are identical; we just split them into a Canadian and US stream.

We have other niche market sites, and actually the American sites are doing better than the Canadian sites, but they dont have -usa in its name.

Would an American, be suspect from buying from a site that has -usa in its name?

I'm really at wits end why two indentical adwords optimized sites would show radically differnt adword results for a culturally similiar market, espeically when our pricing is competitive in both the Canadian and US markets.

[LucidSW]

I'm assuming you are targeting your Adwords separately to US and Canada. With 1/10 the population, there would be maybe 1/10 the number of ads. Not to mention that Canadian companies don't seem to know about as much or as enthusiastic about PPC than American companies. This despite us Canadians using the Internet more and supposedly more net savvy. I don't know about that, I think we use the Internet more for Facebook.

I don't think your site names is a factor.

Americans and Canadians ARE different. You assume they are. Almost any Canadian will tell you there are differences so that may be the reason.

It may just be because there is more competition and more choice in the US. I ran into the same situation a few years ago with a client. Canadian conversion rates were higher. The US campaign also had lower position for the same items which does affect your conversion rate.

[lgn1]

I did some more research, and I found a big difference between how Americans and Canadians search in my niche market.

50% of Canadian Customers will search on the money keyword phrase, and 50% will search on the long tail.

15& of American Customers will search on the money keyword phase, and 85% will search on the long tail.

Since I get my best performance on the shorter money keyword, this explains my drop in American conversions.

I will need to expand my long tail keywords that matches the specific products that I carry, to increase my conversion for Americans.

It appears that in my niche, Americans are less patient, knows exactly what they want, and are less likely to browse for alternate ideas than us Canadians.

[LucidSW]

There you go. I knew there'd be a difference. You should always use the longer, more specific keyword instead of the generic.