AdWords Keyword Estimates – Don’t Be Put Off By The AdWords Keyword Tool

Most people’s exposure to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool cost data comes when they are looking at a new venture or when their existing SEO rankings get threatened so they turn to PPC to keep their revenues rolling. Often they’ll look at the keywords they wish to buy only to find that the estimates are quite high for each click, most will be dissuaded and go back to redouble their efforts on SEO or move to another product or service.

In reality for well set up and run campaigns the Google AdWords Keyword Tool Bid Estimates will be a figure that you just won’t end up paying in the long term, you may end up paying it for a while in the short term until the account gets some traction and history and you quality scores and click through ratios stabilise.

Here are some examples of Estimated v Real CPC’s we have running at the moment in some accounts :

Text Check Car on exact shows in the keyword tool at £1.00 we have it running it at £0.45 with a QS of 7/10 and a CTR of 4.35%
Car Check By Text on exact shows at £0.87 – we have it running at £0.52 with a QS of 10 and CTR of 6.67%
Hpi Checks on phrase is showing at £1.54 – we have it running at £0.46 a click with at QS of 6/10 and a CTR of 3.27%

Proceeds Of Crime on phrase match shows in the keyword tool at £1.17 yet this account is running at £2.03 a click with a QS of 3/10 and a CTR of 0.34%
Vat Fraud on phrase is showing at £3.62, yet they were running at £1.76 per click with a QS of 3/10 and a CTR of 0.23%
*We just took over this account so the keyword targeting and very low 0.34% and 0.23% CTR’s will be heavily focussed up over the coming weeks!

iPhone 5 Insurance on exact match is showing at £1.47 in the keyword tool, we have it running at £1.46 with a QS of  10/10 and CTR of 7.58% (seems very tight of google at these account CTR and QS figures!)
Blackberry Insurance on phrase match is showing at £1.38 – we have it running at £0.65p with a 10/10 QS and a CTR of 7.61%

From the examples above you can see that the  for most of the keyword they run at far less than the estimated CPC in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, the only real anomaly where we feel injustice here is the iPhone 5 Insurance, it quotes £1.47 yet with a a QS of 10/10 and a CTR of 7.58% it give us clicks at £1.46, a 1p ‘discount’ for those great stats.

The Forensic accountancy  account is a recently aquired one which needs some attention, the keywords are a little vague and they are suffering from low QS and CTR’s and need sorting out, the CPC of the first example is penalised as a result, it’s substantially higher but not as high as I’d expect for a QS of 3 with that low a CTR, the other has even worse figures but is just half the estimated bid cost.

It pays to test on PPC before just giving up when seeing what estimated click costs Google gives you, if you aren’t sure how to access the Google AdWord Keyword Tool then here’s how :

You need to log into a google account to get keyword cost data, so login to one then :

Go to : The Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Type the keyword(s) in the first text box in main screen (mix it up a little, don’t just pick the main industry term that everyone bids on!)
Tick broad, phrase and exact in the left hand column
Back under the main text boxes tick “only show ideas closely related to my search terms”
Select countries/language options in next menu
Click search
Click the columns button (to the right above your search results) and select  “Approximate CPC” and click apply
Your search may default to the “adwords group ideas” tab, just click back on the keyword ideas tab next to it and you’ll see the search volumes and CPC’s

Main Tabs/buttons highlighted below :

If you have a current site and you’d like to see real world data then just go create an adgroup, set a low daily budget, wait for it to go live and do a click yourself and see what cost per click Google gives you, it’ll be a more accurate result than the keyword tool and for the sake of 15 minutes waiting you’ll know for sure if a keyword or sector is worth looking at.