Okay, so if you have a service business, what types of keywords should you be running in your Google Ads campaign?
The Link to: The Service Business Keyword Spreadsheet (will open in a new window).
Hi, I’m Mike Mancini with PPCVideoTraining.com. I get a lot of questions about what types of keywords should I start with in a Google Ads campaign, and I get them a lot because I work with a ton of service businesses.
We do a lot of lead generation for these companies and when I talk about lead generation I’m talking about people signing up for deals, filling out forms, but most of all it’s usually calling the company. So the company can find out exactly what they want, when they need it done by and give them a quote or set up an appointment, whatever it might be.
Because a lot of these companies are like, I just need to get these people on the phone. We can sell them. We have a really good close rate. That’s what we want for our leads.
When we build a lot of these campaigns, and obviously with these videos and people reach out to us and a lot of the times they ask us, well, how many keywords should we have? What types of keywords? So on and so forth.
Well, I’m going to tell you what some of the most profitable keywords are for service-type businesses.
So depending on where you’re located at, what type of business you have and what your budget is, that is going to have a lot to do with setting your account up correctly and making sure that you are getting the most out of it that you can.
So let’s touch on those three things really quickly. Where you’re located.
Cost Depends On Your Exact Location
Depending on the exact location that you’re advertising in… if you’re advertising in a really affluent area the cost is going to be much more expensive for you regardless what type of business that you have.
If you are a plumber and you are in the richest part of the area or the richest neighborhood or you’re concentrating on the richest zip codes, there’s going to be a lot more competition specifically because that’s a more affluent area.
More of the service businesses around that area also know that’s where some money is and they’re also advertising there as well.
So your cost is right there just off the top is going up. Good example would be we have a … We work with a chiropractor in one of those areas. And we work with a chiropractor eight miles away in a much smaller area.
The same ad, I actually tested this out. The same ad pointing to a landing page that was very similar, obviously different for the companies and the cost was three times more in the affluent area so that’s something to keep in mind.
Keep An Eye On Your Keywords
Number two is the number of keywords in your campaign. If you have a massive budget or you’ve got a lot of money that you can work with, you can afford to have more keywords.
With that said, there needs to be a limit somewhere. We recently started working with a company that came to us and they said, “You know what. We’re just got getting what we need out of our other … out of our ads campaign anymore.
We’d like you guys to take it over.” When we started going through it. We found there were 26,500 keywords that was spending $3000 a month.
I can’t even begin to tell you how long it took us just to weed through them all but once we really weeded out the ones that had no impressions or no clicks, it went much faster and I’m telling you the majority of them had no traffic at all.
In fact, out of 26,500 keywords, all but about 350 keywords were just duds. So keep an eye on your keywords. You obviously don’t need to have every keyword under the sun.
The great thing about Google’s new system is when we enter in a keyword.
Let’s say we enter in plumber and I put in Chanhassan, Minnesota. If somebody around this area is looking for a plumber and they type in “plumber near me” chances are Google’s going to show my ad.
And if they do they tell us that in the keyword section. So, if you’re in a campaign and you go to keywords and you click on search terms.
These will actually show you the search terms that were used to bring up your ads or to look for you. So that’s a great place to start if you already have a campaign that’s up and running.
You can take a look in there and find out what people have been looking for. How they’ve been finding you.
If you start seeing a bunch of impressions that means a lot of people are probably typing that in. It might be a good keyword to add to your campaign.
But we don’t have to have every keyword under the sun. It used to be if you did not have that keyword then Google would not show your add. This has changed because of this system.
So you don’t need to have 26,500 keywords most of which are crap, what you really need to have are 10, 20, 30 outstanding just awesome keywords that really convert a lot of your traffic.
Mind Your Budget
And the last thing to touch on is your budget. If you have a budget of $100 a month, that averages out to about $3.30 a day on average for that entire month.
So if you’re in an area where the clicks are running $3.50, you might only get one click a day. That is going to take you quite a while to figure out what keywords are really pumping for you.
If you’ve got 50 or 100 keywords. If you’ve got 10 keywords, 10 really good keywords it’s not going to take you as long to figure out which ones are working really well for you and then hopefully you can get some business off of those and turn those back into profit and put some more money into your campaigns.
The majority of businesses that I’ve worked with in the service industry are pretty much minimum $100 per service. Some are $200, some get $300.
We’ve got flooring companies we work with and they can profit thousands and thousands of dollars, same thing with roofers off of literally one sale, but let’s just use $100 price point.
If you’re going out and you make $100 profit off your service for each individual call then you probably need to keep your number of keywords quite low. At least to start out with if you only have a $100 a month budget.
If you’ve got $200 or $300 that you can play with then you can probably increase your keywords a little bit from there.
Nothing is really more frustrating to me then when I get campaigns that were brought to me than when I get campaigns brought to me that were built by other agencies and a client has maybe a hundred dollar a month budget and they got 500 keywords in the campaign.
And the keywords are running $3 to $5 a click. They’re doing their client a huge disservice because it is going to take months or years to get enough statistics to find out which of those keywords are working the best.
Their daily budget could be used up in one single click. So therefore they might only be getting 30 total clicks a month but you’re trying to spread that over 500 keywords.
You need to keep a good hold on your keywords. You are just taking too much of your budget, spreading it around to too many keywords and you’re never going to get the statistics you need to make the right changes for that campaign.
You will get those stats. It’s just going to take you forever.
The biggest idea about Google AdWords and optimization is you want to figure out what is working the best, the quickest, that way you take all of your money and you put it right to what’s working. 20% of your keywords will drive you 80% of your business.
The quicker you can find out that 20% of those keywords, the better off you’re going to be. All right, so what you’re really waiting for though is what types of keywords convert best for service businesses?
The first one is you have to start with the obvious. You have to tell people who you really are. For instance, a plumber, floor refinishing, electrician. Keep it extremely simple.
There are a lot of people now that understand Google’s giving them what they want. They will go right to Google and just type in “plumber.” They know that Google is going to serve them up plumbers in their area.
So they will keep it simple but what you don’t want to do is mess up your match type. What that means is you don’t want to make it an exact match keyword, which puts the brackets around the keyword.
You want to make sure if someone types in the word “plumber” and nothing else that your ad is going to show up. If you just go in and type “plumber” and you don’t have the brackets or the quotes around it.
The brackets make it an exact match meaning that person has to type in just that word and only that word.
If you type in the quotes around the keyword, that’s called, “phrase match.” What will happen is if somebody types in “ABC plumber, XYZ plumber or Joe the Plumber” because you have the quotes around there.
It’s saying, you know what this keyword is in that search. We’re going to show the ad. You don’t want to do that. And if you just put it in there, is what’s called the broad match, meaning there’s no quotes, there’s no brackets around it.
You’re saying if there’s any search that’s done. That somebody uses the word “plumber” or a modification of it. So plumbing, plumber, plumbing contractor, ABC Plumbing Company.
There are a million different ways. Your ads are going to blow through your budget in about two seconds.
Make Your Number 1 Keyword Obvious
So number one keyword make it be obvious. Plumber, plumbing company, plumbing contractor, plumber near me. It used to be that we would type in plumber and then the zip code.
Over the last few years times have changed a big and people instead of typing in plumber and the zip code, they’re typing in “plumber near me” or just “plumber.”
So what I would do is probably still add those zip codes because they’re still people that still do type those in. Once again, make sure especially if you’re on a limited budget, make sure these are all exact match.
So you have the brackets around the phrase. So if it’s “plumber near me” you’ve got a bracket around the whole thing. Somebody has to type in exactly that.
Now, I know this might sound very simplified but I’ve also spent millions and millions and millions of dollars from service companies and I know what’s driving them the most traffic across different types of service companies all over the country.
Bid On Your Brand Name
So after you be obvious and tell people exactly what you are. And the next area I would stick with is always, always, always bid on your brand name. So your company name. And people will say, “Well, why would I want to do?” My company already comes up number one in the organic search results every time.
That might be true. However, there will be instances where that will not come up because the search engine algorithm changes almost every day and all of a sudden your website might be number one and the next day when you’re not looking at it.
It might drop off the planet. But a couple of days later it might be back. That’s always fluctuating. No matter what it is. It’s always moving up and down.
At least this way, number one you take that out of it completely and you will always be up there.
Number two, it’s cheap. It’s really, really cheap to bid on your brand name. Okay?
And if somebody mistypes your brand name or your business name in but you’ve been doing this for a while, chances are Google’s going to show your ad anyway so it makes it much easier to find.
But when you’re paying 12, 15, 20 cents a click. Maybe you’re paying $2 a conversion. If you’ve got a service business, it’s completely worth it.
The conversion rates on service businesses are extremely high and the cost per conversion is extremely low. And we’re talking pennies on the dollar versus what you’re going to pay for your other leads.
Send Your Visitor To A Landing Page
Next reason, when it comes to branding is send visitor to a landing page versus the front page of your website. If somebody looks for you and you come up in the organic results chances are they’re going right to the front page.
But if you’re a plumber and someone is looking for you chances are they need plumbing services, take them to a landing page and show them your offer.
Show them, hey, we’re emergency plumbing service. We can be out there right away. Whatever it might be. You have a much better chance of landing that conversion.
The other reason, domination. You can almost dominate the entire page of results if you own the local search, if you own the ads at the top.
If you own, if your website’s coming up first and organic. You’re actually putting yourself out there as a brand. As a company, it’s a legitimacy test. Oh wow, they’re all over the place they’re obviously know what they’re doing. That’s another reason.
The next reason is and Google did this study a few years ago back in 2011.
And essentially what they did was they made a study where they put ads up for a company and then they basically measured people that clicked the ads and people that clicked the organic and what it showed was that 89% of the traffic generated by the search ads was not replaced by people clicking the organic listings.
So what’s happening is people are seeing the ads, yes, they’re clicking them and if you say, “Well, if they don’t click the ads, they’ll go down further and they’ll see my listing in the organic results and they’ll click there.”
This study showed that 89% of the people that clicked the ad did not go down and click the search results once the ad was pulled. You are literally talking about more and cheaper traffic.
Another reason is make it harder for your competitors. There’s a lot of competitors out there that are probably bidding on your brand name. And it’s totally legal.
As long as they don’t use your business name in their ad or in their copy or talk crap about you. It’s legal to do and you can do this to other people.
However, a lot of the times now bidding on competitor’s brand names, you might just get a lot of calls for people that are pissed at them because a service person didn’t show up or if you’ve got salespeople on staff you can bid on their brand names and if they call you can try to sell them.
That can go either way. With that said, what you’re doing is if there’s competitors bidding on your brand name. You’re taking away more of those spots.
You’re going to come up higher because it is your brand name. You’re going to get the clicks that are cheaper and you’re taking that spot away from your competitors.
Okay, but enough about the brand names. Let’s get to some more service keywords. Some other keywords are what you do, where you do it.
If you’re a plumber in Minneapolis, type in “Minneapolis plumber” as a keyword. If you service 10 areas around you, type in “plumber” and the area. Type in “plumber” and the zip code for those areas that you service.
You can also use plumbing contractor, floor refinishing or dentist or whatever it might be.
Take those easy keywords that you did in step one. The obvious ones and add your location.
Next, expand on your topic a little bit so if you’re a roofing company and you’ve already gone through and you’ve got roofing, you’ve got roofer, you’ve got roofer Minneapolis.
Now, go to residential roofing, residential roofing company, residential roofing contractor, commercial roofing, commercial roofing company, commercial roofing contractor and you see what I’m talking about there?
Every one of these you should be splitting up into your own ad groups.
You should not be putting “roofing company Minneapolis” with “commercial roofer Udina. Two totally different sets of keywords. You want to put your keyword sort them into your ad groups and make them very tightly knit.
So you’ve got maybe commercial roofing, residential roofing. You’ve got commercial roofing company, residential roofing company. You get the idea.
I might have an ad group of words that I keep a pretty tight leash on meaning I’m not going to, if I’m going to see that it’s wasting a ton of money, I’m probably going to stop them really quickly.
So, these keywords might be something like the best roofing company or the top roofing company or best rated roofing company in the Twin Cities.
What ends up happening is I see a lot of those keywords where people might be looking for the right company, however, they tend to be a lot of price shoppers.
So I kind of keep those and I put them over in another ad group and like I said, I keep a pretty tight leash on it. If I see they’re spending a lot and not converting, then I’ll pause them pretty quick.
Another one would be to expand on your services. So for instance, I will use a pest control company.
We have a lot of pest control companies that we work with and they might work with and so in Minneapolis in the springtime, ants come out.
So we have a couple of campaigns talking literally just about ant pest removal, like ant control, ant removal, ant control companies near me, ant exterminators, ant control companies in my area, whatever it might be.
So break down your business by services. If you do automobile repair, start looking at break jobs or if you really want to stick with your higher ticket items, transmission repair. Then you might want to do break repair.
Maybe you do alternator repair. You might want to break those down and we’ve done this with auto repair companies where we segment them by the service that they’re offering and what will end up happening is you want to start out with your higher ticket items like transmission repair is a great one.
It is a little bit more expensive to advertise on.
However, it is one that you will get your greatest return on. Now, as I go through all this, the one thing you need to remember is keep your keywords to a manageable number.
You’re going to test all these. But these are all keywords the ones I’m giving you are all keywords that we’ve used that have worked very, very well.
But you need to keep a tight lease on them and you do that with the match types. You use either exact match or phrase match-type keywords.
So I don’t want to keep you any longer. Really appreciate you sticking with me as long as you did. I told you I’d tell you how to get a list.
Down below here in the description area you’ll find a link to the keyword list for service-type businesses. Take it and put it to good use. But once again make sure you keep a very tight leash on those keywords.
And if you want to hear more about possibly how many keywords you should be using in your Google Ads campaigns over here on the right hand side.
I believe you’re looking at, you should see another video about how many keywords you should be using in your Google Ads.
Thanks so much for watching our video. If you enjoyed it, please like and subscribe to our channel or share it with someone who might find it interesting or if you know someone who is in need of Google Ad services please let us know, we’d love to help. Thanks so much for watching.
LINK to Our Keyword List for Service Businesses
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