Most Expensive Keywords, Ad Hacks & More Top Posts from June

Summer is finally here! June was sunny and warm for those of us in the northeast, and we finally got our fill of vitamin D. Though the month flew by, it was an exciting couple of weeks for us at WordStream! We completed a lot of cool projects that we shared with you. In case you missed it, here are our top ten posts from the month of June.

1. The 25 Most Expensive Keywords in AdWords – 2017 Edition!

Way, way back in 2011, when the world was young and fidget spinners weren’t yet a thing, there was lore floating around in the search marketing world that “mesothelioma” was the most expensive keyword to bid on in Google AdWords, costing upwards of $100 per click.

Our awesome content manager had an idea: What if we used data from our Free Keyword Tool to determine which keywords had the highest costs per click (or CPC’s) in Google AdWords?

The infographic we created based on that data is still one of our most popular pages ever. So we’ve completed a new, comprehensive analysis of keyword data for five different currencies in English-speaking countries (keep an eye out for the data for GBP, CAD, AUS, and ZAR coming soon!).

This time around, we determined the top 25 most expensive keywords (meaning these niche markets are super-competitive) along with their average CPC – and six years later, the results are substantially different!

2. We Analyzed 612 of the Best Ads: Here Are 9 Things We Learned [DATA]

This project was definitely one of the most exciting analyses we’ve done this year! It was a huge group effort to answer some pressing questions: What are the actual WORDS that go into really great, super-high-CTR ads in AdWords? What about stuff like numbers and punctuation marks? What are the best CTA’s? Are the best ads in Google AdWords positive or negative? Are they keyword-stuffed or more creative?

In this article, Allen Finn covers nine, often surprising things we learned by running text analyses on some of the best ads in AdWords from the past year.

3. How to Use Emotional Images for High-Converting Landing Pages Every Time

While each step in the process to acquiring new customers takes nuance and optimization, a lot of marketers leave their landing pages by the wayside. But that can be the most pivotal moment in your quest to gain a customer! And the all-important main image is hugely important. This post maps out the exact steps you need to take to choose a high-converting image every single time you plan a landing page.

4. Case Study: How AdWords Life Events Targeting Lifts Brand Interest 175%

If you advertise with Google, you’ve probably heard of their obsession with micro-moments; the times when consumers are researching and considering a purchase. In line with this focus, Google has gifted advertisers with Consumer Patterns and Life Events which enables marketers to target more relevant audience segments.

This is huge. And this post goes into the improvement accounts had after implementing it.

5. How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost? Plus 8 Tips for Saving Money

Though Facebook has generally been the gold standard of social advertising, Instagram is slowly catching up. In fact, Instagram posts get 10 times more engagement than Facebook posts! So how much does it actually cost to advertise on Instagram? What kind of CPMs should you expect? Is it worth it? This post answers all those important questions and more.

6. 7 Things Nobody Tells You About Working Remotely

Telecommuting – one of the fancier terms for working remotely – seems to be the perfect arrangement for workers in dozens of industries. Companies that encourage and support remote work often report higher levels of employee retention and engagement, reduced turnover, higher employee satisfaction, increased productivity and autonomy, and lots of other benefits.

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks to telecommuting – people just don’t tend to be as vocal about them. Here are seven things Dan Shewan wished somebody had told him before he took the plunge and became a full-time telecommuter.

7. ‘Purchases on Google’ Enters Open Beta

Last month, Google announced tons of big changes and new AdWords features at their annual event in San Francisco. At the beginning of June, they rolled out the ability to purchase products directly on the SERP! And as always, our own Mark Irvine has everything you need to know about it in this comprehensive post.

8. 7 Time Management Shortcuts for Marketers Who Can’t Write

We’ve all been there, sitting in front of a blank document when ten brilliant headlines are due by the end of the day. Sometimes it can feel impossible to be a successful marketer in a world where content has been crowned king. In this post, Brad Smith makes the bold claim that “writer’s block is a myth.” And goes through seven writing time hacks to get the results you need.

9. 10 Highly Effective B2B Link Building Tactics

There are a lot of ways to get backlinks, and some require more work than others. This article breaks down the tactics into three separate categories according to how much effort they’ll entail: outreach, submission, and exchange.

10. Video SEO: 9 Ways to Optimize Your Video for Search

It’s true that video SEO is not the same as regular SEO. Video SEO has also changed significantly in the last few years, which is why Margot da Cunha enlisted Wistia’s video SEO expert, Phil Nottingham, to share his advice in this post.

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How Content Can Succeed By Making Enemies – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Getting readers on board with your ideas isn’t the only way to achieve content success. Sometimes, stirring up a little controversy and earning a few rivals can work incredibly well — but there’s certainly a right and a wrong way to do it. Rand details how to use the power of making enemies work to your advantage in today’s Whiteboard Friday.

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Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today, we’re going to chat about something a little interesting — how content can succeed by making enemies. I know you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute, I thought my job was to make friends with my content.” Yes, and one of the best ways to make close friends is to make enemies too.

So, in my opinion, I think that companies and businesses, programs, organizations of all kinds, efforts of all kinds tend to do really well when they get people on their side. So if I’m trying to create a movement or I’m trying to get people to believe in what I’m doing, I need to have positions, data, stories, and content that can bring people to my site. One of the best ways to do that is actually to think about it in opposition to something else, basically try and figure out how you can earn some enemies.

A few examples of content that makes enemies & allies

I’ll give you a few examples, because I think that will help add some context here. I did a little bit of research. My share data is from BuzzSumo, and my link data here is from Ahrefs. But for example, this piece called “There Are Now Twice as Many Solar Jobs as Coal Jobs in the US,” this is essentially just data-driven content, but it clearly makes friends and enemies. It makes enemies with sort of this classic, old-school Americana belief set around how important coal jobs are, and it creates, through the enemy that it builds around that, simply by sharing data, it also creates allies, people who are on the side of this story, who want to share it and amplify it and have it reach its potential and reach more people.

Same is true here. So this is a story called “Yoga Is a Good Alternative to Physical Therapy.” Clearly, it did extremely well, tens of thousands of shares and thousands of links, lots of ranking keywords for it. But it creates some enemies. Physical therapists are not going to be thrilled that this is the case. Despite the research behind it, this is frustrating for many of those folks. So you’ve created friends, allies, people who are yoga practitioners and yoga instructors. You’ve also created enemies, potentially those folks who don’t believe that this might be the case despite what the research might show.

Third one, “The 50 Most Powerful Public Relations Firms in America,” I think this was actually from The Observer. So they’re writing in the UK, but they managed to rank for lots and lots of keywords around “best PR firms” and all those sorts of things. They have thousands of shares, thousands of links. I mean 11,000 links, that’s darn impressive for a story of this nature. And they’ve created enemies. They’ve created enemies of all the people who are not in the 50 most powerful, who feel that they should be, and they’ve created allies of the people who are in there. They’ve also created some allies and enemies deeper inside the story, which you can check out.

“Replace Your Lawn with These Superior Alternatives,” well, guess what? You have now created some enemies in the lawn care world and in the lawn supply world and in the passionate communities, very passionate communities, especially here in the United States, around people who sort of believe that homes should have lawns and nothing else, grass lawns in this case. This piece didn’t do that well in terms of shares, but did phenomenally well in terms of links. This was on Lifehacker, and it ranks for all sorts of things, 11,000+ links.

Before you create, ask yourself: Who will help amplify this, and why?

So you can see that these might not be things that you naturally think of as earning enemies. But when you’re creating content, if you can go through this exercise, I have this rule, that I’ve talked about many times over the years, for content success, especially content amplification success. That is before you ever create something, before you brainstorm the idea, come up with the title, come up with the content, before you do that, ask yourself: Who will help amplify this and why? Why will they help?

One of the great things about framing things in terms of who are my allies, the people on my side, and who are the enemies I’m going to create is that the “who” becomes much more clear. The people who support your ideas, your ethics, or your position, your logic, your data and want to help amplify that, those are people who are potential amplifiers. The people, the detractors, the enemies that you’re going to build help you often to identify that group.

The “why” becomes much more clear too. The existence of that common enemy, the chance to show that you have support and beliefs in people, that’s a powerful catalyst for that amplification, for the behavior you’re attempting to drive in your community and your content consumers. I’ve found that thinking about it this way often gets content creators and SEOs in the right frame of mind to build stuff that can do really well.

Some dos and don’ts

Do… backup content with data

A few dos and don’ts if you’re pursuing this path of content generation and ideation. Do back up as much as you can with facts and data, not just opinion. That should be relatively obvious, but it can be dangerous in this kind of world, as you go down this path, to not do that.

Do… convey a world view

I do suggest that you try and convey a world view, not necessarily if you’re thinking on the political spectrum of like from all the way left to all the way right or those kinds of things. I think it’s okay to convey a world view around it, but I would urge you to provide multiple angles of appeal.

So if you’re saying, “Hey, you should replace your lawn with these superior alternatives,” don’t make it purely that it’s about conservation and ecological health. You can also make it about financial responsibility. You can also make it about the ease with which you can care for these lawns versus other ones. So now it becomes something that appeals across a broader range of the spectrum.

Same thing with something like solar jobs versus coal jobs. If you can get it to be economically focused and you can give it a capitalist bent, you can potentially appeal to multiple ends of the ideological spectrum with that world view.

Do… collect input from notable parties

Third, I would urge you to get inputs from notable folks before you create and publish this content, especially if the issue that you’re talking about is going to be culturally or socially or politically charged. Some of these fit into that. Yoga probably not so much, but potentially the solar jobs/coal jobs one, that might be something to run the actual content that you’ve created by some folks who are in the energy space so that they can help you along those lines, potentially the energy and the political space if you can.

Don’t… be provocative just to be provocative

Some don’ts. I do not urge you and I’m not suggesting that you should create provocative content purely to be provocative. Instead, I’m urging you to think about the content that you create and how you angle it using this framing of mind rather than saying, “Okay, what could we say that would really piss people off?” That’s not what I’m urging you to do. I’m urging you to say, “How can we take things that we already have, beliefs and positions, data, stories, whatever content and how do we angle them in such a way that we think about who are the enemies, who are the allies, how do we get that buy-in, how do we get that amplification?”

Don’t… choose indefensible positions

Second, I would not choose enemies or positions that you can’t defend against. So, for example, if you were considering a path that you think might get you into a world of litigious danger, you should probably stay away from that. Likewise, if your positions are relatively indefensible and you’ve talked to some folks in the field and done the dues and they’re like, “I don’t know about that,” you might not want to pursue it.

Don’t… give up on the first try

Third, do not give up if your first attempts in this sort of framing don’t work. You should expect that you will have to, just like any other form of content, practice, iterate, and do this multiple times before you have success.

Don’t… be unprofessional

Don’t be unprofessional when you do this type of content. It can be a little bit tempting when you’re framing things in terms of, “How do I make enemies out of this?” to get on the attack. That is not necessary. I think that actually content that builds enemies does so even better when it does it from a non-attack vector mode.

Don’t… sweat the Haterade

Don’t forget that if you’re getting some Haterade for the content you create, a lot of people when they start drinking the Haterade online, they run. They think, “Okay, we’ve done something wrong.” That’s actually not the case. In my experience, that means you’re doing something right. You’re building something special. People don’t tend to fight against and argue against ideas and people and organizations for no reason. They do so because they’re a threat.

If you’ve created a threat to your enemies, you have also generally created something special for your allies and the people on your side. That means you’re doing something right. In Moz’s early days, I can tell you, back when we were called SEOmoz, for years and years and years we got all sorts of hate, and it was actually a pretty good sign that we were doing something right, that we were building something special.

So I look forward to your comments. I’d love to see any examples of stuff that you have as well, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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35 Face-Melting Email Marketing Stats for 2017

Let’s face it: outside of denim shorts, Doc Martens, and home-sewn SLAYER patches, it doesn’t get more metal than email marketing. 

There are mounds of KPIs to track and optimize for. It’s expensive. There’s segmentation. Time of day. Design. You have to sacrifice goats. CTA placement. Need I go on?

(This is the part where you say, “No, man. That’s quite enough. Turn down that racket and get to the stats already.”)

 

To help guide your email strategy, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of useful email marketing statistics. Keep these in mind when you’re considering planning a new campaign or heading back to the drawing board with your existing email marketing funnel.

B2B Email Marketing Statistics

1. Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
2. 86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.
3. CTRs are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns.
4. 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.
5. Tuesday is the best day of the week to send email (according to 10 email marketing studies).

B2C Email Marketing Statistics

1. While 26% of SMBs polled use email marketing for sales, just 7% use email as a brand-building tool.
2. Only about 30% of US retail email list subscribers have actually made a purchase from the retailer whose email list they subscribed to.
3. Welcome emails are incredibly effective: on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them on a per email basis than other promotional emails.
4. 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention (the next closest channel? Social media, identified by just 44% of those same professionals).
5. 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email (versus direct mail, text, phone, or social media).

Email Marketing Device & Demographic Statistics

1. Men and women are equally likely to convert from an email opened on a desktop — but women are more likely to convert on a tablet, and men are more likely to convert on a phone.
2. 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.
3. The Apple iPhone leads email client market share with 31%, followed by Gmail at 22% as of May 2017 (calculations based on 1.29 billion opens).
4. When a prospect or customer who opens an email on a mobile device opens that same email again on another device, they are 65% more likely to click-through to your site/offering.
5. People SAY they prefer HTML emails, but plain-text emails actually get higher open rates.

Spam & Segmentation Statistics

1. 49% of digital marketers indicate that the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) has had no discernable impact on their company’s email marketing program.
2. The average number of legitimate business emails received each day has remained static since 2015, but the number of spam emails that bypass security filters (spam that actually hits your inbox) has risen from 12 emails per day in 2015 to 16 emails per day in 2017. 
3. Nonprofits lose about $15k/year in donations due to spam filters blocking fundraising campaign emails from prospects’ inboxes.
4. Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns.
5. Click-throughs are 100.95% higher in segmented email campaigns than non-segmented campaigns.

Email Marketing Volume Statistics

 

1. The number of email users worldwide is forecasted to rise to 2.9 billion by 2019.
2. The number of email users in the US is projected to grow to 244.5 million by the end of 2017, and 254.7 million by 2020.
3. Nearly 105 billion emails are sent each day; this number is expected to reach 246 billion before 2020.
4. The use of emoji in email marketing messages increased 775% from 2015 to 2016.
5. The percentage of emails containing GIFs rose from 5.4% in 2015 to 10.3% in 2016.

General Email Marketing Statistics

1. 49% of businesses use some form of email automation.
2. Pet and animal services has the highest email open rate — people love their pets!
3. In the UK, every one pound spent on email marketing has an ROI of 38 pounds; in the US, it’s $44.
4. According to the DMA, the four most important email marketing metrics (as identified by advertisers) are: CTR, Conversion rate, Open rate, and ROI.
5. Checking email is a complementary activity. People do it while watching TV (69 percent), in bed (57 percent), and on vacation (79 percent). Bonus points if you’re looking at that JCrew Gmail ad while doing all three!
6. Using the word “Donate” in your subject line can reduce open rate by 50% or more.
7. The average email opt-in rate across all verticals is 1.95%.
8. The average open rate for businesses in the Daily Deals industry is 15% – the cross-industry average? 20%.
9. 28% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails more than once per week.
10. A study of 1 billion emails revealed that video emails see CTRs 96% higher than non-video emails.

Is our list missing any valuable kernels of email-marketing wisdom? Let us know!

About the Author

Allen Finn is a content marketing specialist and the reigning fantasy football champion at WordStream. He enjoys couth menswear, dank eats, and the dulcet tones of the Wu-Tang Clan. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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MozCon: Why You Should Attend & How to Get the Most Out of It

Posted by ronell-smith

MozCon 2013 (left to right): Greg Gifford, Nathan Bylof, Nathan Hammer, Susan Wenograd, and myself

I remember my first MozCon like it was yesterday.

It’s the place where I would hear the quote that would forever change the arc of my career.

“The world is freaking complicated, so let me start with everything I don’t know,” said Google’s Avinash Kaushik, during the Q&A, after speaking at MozCon 2013. “Nine hundred years from now, I will fix what’s broken today. …Get good at what you do.”

Though I didn’t know it at the the time, those were words I needed to hear, and that would lead me to make some career decisions I desperately needed to make. Decisions I never would have made if I hadn’t chosen to attend MozCon, the Super Bowl of marketing events (in my opinion).

Walking into the large (gigantic) room for the first time felt like being on the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland. I hurriedly raced to the front to find a seat so I could take in all of the action.

Once settled in, I sat back and enjoyed the music as lights danced along the walls.

Who wouldn’t want to be here? I thought.

Once the show started and Rand walked out, I was immediately sold: The decision to attend MozCon was the right one. By the end of the show, I would be saying it was one of the best career decisions I could have made.

But I almost missed it.

How and why MozCon?

I discovered MozCon like most of you: while reading the Moz blog, which I had been perusing since 2010, when I started building a website for an online, members-only newsletter.

One of my friends, an executive at a large company, had recently shared with me that online marketing was blistering hot.

“If you’re focusing your energy anywhere else, Ronell, you’re making a mistake,” he said. “We just hired a digital marketing manager, and we’re paying her more than $90,000.”

Those words served as an imprimatur for me to eagerly study and read SEO blogs and set up Twitter lists to follow prominent SEO authors.

Learning SEO was far less fun than applying it to the website I was in the process of helping to build.

In the years that followed, I continued reading the blog while making steps to meet members of the community, both locally and online.

One of the first people I met in the Moz SEO community was Greg Gifford, who agreed to meet me for lunch after I reached out to him via DM on Twitter.

He mentioned MozCon, which at the time wasn’t on my radar. (As a bonus, he said if I attended, he’d introduce me to Ruth Burr, who I’d been following on Twitter, and was a hyooge fan of.)

I started doing some investigating, wondering if it was an event I should invest in.

Also, during this same period, I was getting my content strategy sea legs and had reached out to Jon Colman, who was nice enough to mentor me. He also recommended that I attend MozCon, not the least because content strategy and UX superstar Karen McGrane was speaking.

I was officially sold.

That night, I put a plan into action:

• Signed up for Moz Pro to get the MozCon discount
• Bought a ticket to the show
• Purchased airline and hotel tickets through Priceline

Then I used to following weeks to devise a plan to help me get everything I could out of the show.

The conference of all conferences

Honestly, I didn’t expect to be blow away by MozCon.

For seven of the 10 previous years, I edited a magazine that helped finance a trade show that hosted tens of thousands of people, from all over the world.

Nothing could top that, I thought. I was wrong.

The show, the lights, the people — and the single-track focus — blew me away. Right away.

I remember Richard Baxter was the first speaker up that first morning.

By the time he was done sharing strategies for effective outreach, I was thinking, “I’ve already recouped my expense. I don’t plan to ever miss this show again.”

And I haven’t.

So important did MozCon become to me after that first show, that I began to plan summer travel around it.

How could one event become that important?

Five key reasons:

• Content
• People & relationships
• Personal & career development

I’ll explore each in detail since I think they each help make my point about the value of MozCon. (Also, if you haven’t read it already, check out Rand’s post, The Case For & Against Attending Marketing Conferences, which also touches on the value of these events.)

#1 – Content

You expect me to say the content you’ll be privy to at MozCon is the best you’ll hear anywhere.

Yeah, but…

The show hand-picks only the best speakers. But these same speakers present elsewhere, too, right?

What I mean by “content” is that the information you glean holistically from the show can help marketers from all areas of the business better do their work.

For example, when I came to my first MozCon, I had a handful of clients who’d reached out to me for PR, media relations, branding, and content work.

But I was starting to get calls and emails for this thing called “content marketing,” of which I was only vaguely familiar.

The information I learned from the speakers (and the informal conversations between speakers and after the show), made it possible for me to take on content marketing clients and, six months later, head content marketing for one of the most successful digital strategy agencies in Dallas/Fort Worth.

There really is something for everyone at MozCon.

#2 – People & relationships

Most of the folks I talk to on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis are folks I met at one of the last four MozCons.

For example, I met Susan E. Wenograd at MozCon 2013, where we shared a seat next to one another for the entire event. She’s been one of my closest friends ever since.

MozCon 2015: I’m chastising Damon Gochneaur for trying to sell me some links — I’m kidding, Google.

The folks seated beside you or roaming the halls during the event are some of the sharpest and most accomplished you’ll meet anywhere.

They are also some of the most helpful and genuine.

I felt this during my first event; I learned the truth of this sentiment in the weeks, months, and years that have followed.

Whether you’re as green as I was, or an advanced T-shaped marketer with a decade of experience behind you, the event will be fun, exciting, and full of new tips, tactics, and strategies you can immediately put to use.

#3 – Personal & career development

I know most people make decisions about attending events based on the cost and the known value — that is, based on previous similar events, how much they are likely to earn, either in a new job, new work, or additional responsibilities.

That’s the wrong way to look at MozCon, or any event.

Let’s keep it real for a moment: No matter who you are, where you work, what you do, or how much you enjoy your work, you’re are ALWAYS in the process of getting fired or (hopefully) changing jobs.

You should (must) be attending events to keep yourself relevant, visible, and on top of your game, whether that’s in paid media, content, social media, SEO, email marketing, etc.

That’s why the “Is it worth it?” argument is not beneficial at all.

I cannot tell you how many times, over the last four years, when I’ve been stuck on a content strategy, SEO or web design issue and been able to reach out to someone I would never have met were it not for MozCon.

For example, every time I share the benefits of Paid Social with a local business owner, I feel I should cut Kane Jamison (met at MozCon 2014) a check.

So, go to MozCon, not because you can see the tangible benefits (you cannot know those); go to MozCon because your career and your personal development will be nourished by it far beyond any financial reward.

Now you know how I feel and what I’ve gleaned from MozCon, you’re probably saying, “Yeah, but how can I be certain to get the most out of the event?”

I’m glad you asked.

How you can get the most out of MozCon

First, start following and interacting with Twitter and Facebook groups to find folks attending MozCon.

Dive in and ask questions, answer questions, or set up a get-together during the event.

Next, during the event, follow the #mozcon Twitter hashtag, making note of folks who are tweeting info from the event. Pay close attention to not simply the info, but also what they are gleaning and how they plan to use the event for their work.

If you find a few folks sharing info germane to your work or experiences, it wouldn’t hurt to retweet them and, maybe later during the show, send a group text asking to get together during the pub crawl or maybe join up for breakfast.

Then, once the show is over, continue to follow folks on social media, in addition to reading (and leaving comments on) their blogs, sending them “Great meeting you. Let’s stay in touch” emails, and looking for other opportunities to stay in their orbit, including meeting up at future events.

Many of the folks I initially met at MozCon have become friends I see throughout the year at other events.

But, wait!

I mentioned nothing about how to get the most out of the event itself.

Well, I have a different philosophy than most folks: Instead of writing copious notes and trying to capture every word from each speaker, I think of and jot down a theme for each talk while the speaker is still presenting. Along with that theme, I’ll include some notes that encapsulate the main nuggets of the talk and that will help me remember it later.

For example, Dr. Pete’s 2016 talk, You Can’t Type a Concept: Why Keywords Still Matter, spurred me to redouble my focus (and my learning with regard to content and SEO) on search intent, on-page SEO, and knowing the audience’s needs as well as possible.

Then, once the show is over, I create a theme to encapsulate the entire event by asking myself three questions:

1. What did I learn that I can apply right away?
2. What can I create and share that’ll make me more valuable to teammates, clients or prospective clients?
3. How does this information make me better at [X]?

For the 2013 show, my answers were…

1. I don’t need to know everything about SEO to begin to take on SEO-related work, which I was initially reluctant to do.
2. Content that highlights my in-depth knowledge of the types of content that resonates with audiences I’d researched/was familiar with.
3. It makes me more aware of how how search, social, and content fit together.

After hearing Avinash’s quote, I had the theme in my head, for me and for the handful of brands I was consulting at the time: “You won’t win by running the competition’s race; make them chase you.”

MozCon 2013: Avinash Kaushik of Google

This meant I helped them think beyond content, social media, and SEO, and instead had them focus on creating the best content experience possible, which would help them more easily accomplish their goals.

I’ve repeated the process each year since, including in 2016, when I doubled-down on Featured Snippets after seeing Taking the Top Spot: How to Earn More Featured Snippets, by Rob Bucci.

You can do the same.

It all begins with attending the show and being willing to step outside your comfort zone.

What say you?

Are you MozCon bound?

Count me in!

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The Most Expensive Keywords in the UK

In the coming weeks, in celebration of our revamped Free Keyword Tool (currently in beta), we’ll be releasing new infographics that reveal the most expensive keywords in five different currencies. Yesterday we saw the most expensive keywords for the U.S. dollar, and today we’re looking at the top 25 highest-CPC keywords in terms of the British pound.

We were fascinated to see how different the results were in the different currencies! I know our friends across the pond are dying to see what our study turned up, so without further ado, here they are, the 25 costliest keywords in the United Kingdom:

There is certainly some overlap in this dataset and the U.S. version – as is probably the case all around the world, finance-related keywords are among the priciest. You gotta spend money to make money, as they say!

Note: Spending money in casinos is not statistically the best way to make money. It is, however, very popular in Britain.

Bit of harmless fun

According to my buddy Dan Shewan, who grew up in England:

Culturally, Brits are much more relaxed about gambling than Americans. You guys may have Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but generally speaking, gambling is a cultural taboo in many parts of America. Not so in the U.K., where we’ll “have a flutter” on almost anything – the UEFA Champions League Final, disastrous snap elections, “dead pools” of celebrity death predictions, you name it.

My countrymen’s appetite for wagers of questionable taste notwithstanding, it doesn’t surprise me that the most expensive keywords in this list are focused on gambling and online casinos. Online gambling is an obscenely profitable industry in Great Britain. Between April 2015 and March 2016, online gambling contributed $5.7 billion (£4.5 billion) to the British economy alone, so it makes sense that the competition for and costs of these keywords is so high. It’s also very interesting to see that three of the four keywords in the Casino category are branded terms.

Here are a few more pockets of keywords that are especially pricy in the U.K. but didn’t turn up on the U.S. or other lists:

Real Estate

Says Dan:

The U.K. has been experiencing a severe housing crisis for several years. Home ownership is completely out of reach for many people (especially those poor Millennials), and public concern about the nation’s housing crisis is the highest it’s been in my lifetime.

What’s most interesting to me about this keyword data is the specific terms that we see above. The keyword “equity release” is included in the Finance category, but equity release refers to a British financial instrument that allows homeowners over the age of 55 to access the equity they have tied up in their property either as a lump-sum payment or via a series of installments in the form of a secured loan. After years of failed government austerity policies, it’s a little sad – but not at all surprising – to see more people searching for ways to access this equity as inflation has outpaced wage growth.

The “we buy any house” and “selling my house quickly” keywords are also very revealing. After years of rising house prices and skyrocketing rents, Britain’s housing market is finally beginning to stagnate, which could account for the popularity of these search terms. There’s a strong urgency to both these keywords; for property buyers hoping to turn a quick profit and capitalize on sellers’ desperation, and for beleaguered homeowners eager to minimize depreciation and cut their losses through a quick sale.

He also tells me “real estate” is a “very American phrase” that Brits don’t use! Sorry about that…

Examples of expensive keywords related to property include “we buy any house” (this is the name of a property company in the UK) and “estate agents Edinburgh.”

Elderly Care

Variations on “live-in care” almost broke the top 10. We didn’t see this specific set of keywords in the data set for any of the other currencies we looked at.

Vehicle Tracking

This is a GPS technology that allows you to track the location of a car – as one Amazon bestseller in the category puts it, “Whether it’s your child coming home from school, a suspicious spouse, a teenage driver, or valuable company assets,” vehicle tracking “keeps you up to date in real time.” Good news for you paranoid types!

Coffee!

Feeling strongly about coffee or the Oxford comma is no substitute for a personality trait (I can’t believe how often these are mentioned in Twitter bios or online dating profiles) but let it be known: I like coffee, and so do citizens of the United Kingdom.

Keywords like “coffee machine rental” and “commercial coffee machines” made the list of highest CPC keywords, so we can be sure that U.K. businesses are doing their part to keep workers productive.

What keywords on the list stood out to you?

About the data

Here’s how we got the list: We pulled all the data collected from anonymous AdWords Performance Grader reports across all industries between June 1, 2016 and June 12, 2017, then looked at the top 1000 most expensive keywords seen during that time period and categorized them by core intent.

For example, we lumped the keywords “bail bonds” and “bail bonds los angeles” into a single category since the core intent is the same. Likewise, keywords involving different types of lawyers (such as “malpractice lawyer” and “injury lawyer”) or insurance were grouped together. We used a similar methodology last time so as to avoid featuring too many specific long-tail or local keywords that wouldn’t have broad applicability to a large number of businesses. We separated distinct services (pest control vs. termites) as much as possible.

We also filtered out keywords with less than 100 clicks from our data set. We only looked at advertisers bidding in USD, GBP, AUD, CAD, and ZAR, and analyzed different currencies separately. We also eliminated non-English ads and duplicates (where both the keyword and the CPC were exactly the same) from that set. The results you’re reading about in this article are in GBP.

Shout out to everyone who helped compile, analyze, and illustrate the data: our data analyst Josh Brackett, our web team leader Meg Lister, and our designer Kate Lindsay.

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The 25 Most Expensive Keywords in AdWords – 2017 Edition!

Way, way back in 2011, when the world was young and fidget spinners weren’t yet a thing, there was lore floating around in the search marketing world that “mesothelioma” was the most expensive keyword to bid on in Google AdWords, costing upwards of $100 per click. But was it true?

I had a little idea: What if we used data from our Free Keyword Tool to determine which keywords had the highest costs per click (or CPC’s) in Google AdWords?

The infographic we created based on that data is still one of our most popular and most linked to pages ever, but people often ask us for updated data.

Those people, and curious people everywhere, are in luck! We’ve completed a new, comprehensive analysis of keyword data for five different currencies in English-speaking countries (keep an eye out for the data for GBP, CAD, AUS, and ZAR over the course of this week). This time around, we determined the top 25 most expensive keywords (meaning these niche markets are super-competitive) along with their average CPC – and six years later, the results are substantially different!

Ready to see what the most expensive keywords are in 2017? Here we go:

About the data

Here’s how we got the list: We pulled all the data collected from anonymous AdWords Performance Grader reports across all industries between June 1, 2016 and June 12, 2017, then looked at the top 1000 most expensive keywords seen during that time period and categorized them by core intent.

For example, we lumped the keywords “bail bonds” and “bail bonds los angeles” into a single category since the core intent is the same. Likewise, keywords involving different types of lawyers (such as “malpractice lawyer” and “injury lawyer”) or insurance were grouped together. We used a similar methodology last time so as to avoid featuring too many specific long-tail or local keywords that wouldn’t have broad applicability to a large number of businesses. We separated distinct services (pest control vs. termites) as much as possible.

We also filtered out keywords with less than 100 clicks from our data set. We only looked at advertisers bidding in USD, AUD, CAD, and ZAR, and analyzed different currencies separately. We also eliminated non-English ads and duplicates (where both the keyword and the CPC were exactly the same) from that set. The results you’re reading about in this article are in USD.

Shout out to everyone who helped compile, analyze, and illustrate the data: our data analyst Josh Brackett, our web team leader Meg Lister, and our designer Kate Lindsay.

What are the most expensive keywords in AdWords?

The top 25 most expensive keywords in AdWords are as follows:

 

Top 25 Most Expensive Keywords

Keyword	Average CPC
Business Services	$58.64
Bail Bonds	$58.48
Casino	$55.48
Lawyer	$54.86
Asset Management	$49.86
Insurance	$48.41
Cash Services & Payday Loans	$48.18
Cleanup & Restoration Services	$47.61
Degree	$47.36
Medical Coding Services	$46.84
Rehab	$46.14
Psychic	$43.78
Timeshare	$42.13
HVAC	$41.24
Business Software	$41.12
Medical Needs	$40.73
Loans	$40.69
Plumber	$39.19
Termites	$38.88
Pest Control	$38.84
Mortgages	$36.76
Online Gambling	$32.84
Banking	$31.43
Hair Transplant	$31.37
Google AdWords	$30.06

 

 

What makes these keywords so expensive?

Generally, AdWords keyword costs get driven up in particular niches for one of the following reasons:

People have a bad problem they really need to fix now

When people are desperate for help, they’re willing to spend more on services or products to get that problem solved. That means the companies doing the advertising can charge more for those services, and they can often achieve strong ROI on their ad spend even with high costs per click.

These spaces are also highly competitive, because people don’t necessarily spend a long time deciding where they’re going to shop – they want help NOW! For example, one of the top keywords in the “medical services” category is “emergency room near me.” If the advertiser is in the right place at the right time, they can profit big. (Not that I think private companies should be profiting off people who need emergency care…)

Examples of keywords related to urgent problems include:

• “Bail bonds” at #2
• “Lawyer” at #4
• “Cash services & payday loans” at #7
• “Rehab” at #11
• “Plumber” at #18
• “Termites” at #19
• “Pest control” at #20

High-priced items or services

Last time around, insurance-related keywords were at the very top of the list. According to our data, insurance is no longer king of the hill. That’s good news for marketers trying to drive leads in the insurance industry, right? (Sort of – they’re still almost $50 per click on average. And there are outliers, like “malpractice insurance,” that can cost over $300 per click!)

Now, the most expensive keywords are in the category “business services” – stuff like “data room” and “network security monitoring” – most likely because these services tend to be costly. Companies offering business services are willing to bid more per keyword because there’s so much to gain when a prospect does convert, whether it’s a single big purchase or a service with a high customer lifetime value.

Our last infographic showed that finance-related keywords (like loans keywords and mortgage keywords) are some of the most costly. You can see similar trends this year – see “asset management” at #5 ($49.86 per click) and “banking” at #23.

Law keywords are still way up there, and on average keywords related to legal services are even more expensive ($54.86 per click compared to $42.51 in 2011). This is part of why marketing for law firms can be a challenge.

Fulfilling your hopes and dreams (and addictions)

People will pay a lot to have their dreams come true. For some, those dreams are about getting an education. Y’all love learning and “degree” remains a very expensive keyword (too bad for those of you marketing in the higher education industry).

Once you get a degree, you can get a higher-paying job, and then reward yourself with a big vacation. Travel-related keywords like “Hilton timeshare reviews” make an appearance this year at #13 on the list.

But people clicking on ads haven’t kicked all their bad habits – “casino” is way up there at #3 ($55.48 per click) and “online gambling” makes an appearance too, at #22. Who needs a Vegas vacation when the fun’s right there in your laptop?

You’re also talking to psychics and getting hair transplants. #questionablechoices

The 25th most expensive keyword in Google AdWords is … Google AdWords?

We weren’t expecting this one.

Sometimes people google “google,” and sometimes people bid on “google adwords” in Google AdWords. (OK, we admit it. You’re looking at some of those people right now.)

Want to know what keywords are popular (and how much they’ll cost) in YOUR industry?

We can help with that!

Our newly revamped Free Keyword Tool has a cool feature that lets you filter your results by industry. For example, let’s say you want to find keywords related to cars, but you’re in the finance industry and you’re only interested in terms that are relevant to your business. Type in “cars” and select “Finance & Banking” as your industry, and you’ll see results like this:

Your results include terms like “new car lease” and “new car incentives.” However, if you chose “Arts & Entertainment” as your industry, you’d see results like “cars film” and “pixar cars”:

This can really help you to zero in on only the keywords that are going to help you build out your search marketing campaigns, filtering out irrelevant terms so you don’t have to weed through them yourself. You can filter your results by 24 different industries.

Check it out yourself.

What about those top 25 keywords – were you surprised?

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