Holzr
Elite Member
- Sep 4, 2016
- 2,236
- 2,666
I see a lot of people talking about search volume, asking what is the lowest monthly search volume they should go after etc....
However, it's important to look past the monthly search volume and instead focus on monthly revenue potential.
What do I mean?
Work out how much money a keyword could bring you at position 1 on the SERP.
How can we do this?
Here's the calculation (explanation below) in full.
Monthly Search Volume * 0.3 * 0.4 * 0.05 * (Product Price * Commision rate, e.g. $100 x 6% = 100 x 0.06 = $6)
Ranking number one will usually result in you ranking for a lot of keywords. In which case, monthly search volume is going to be considerably higher. In fact, for the keyword, I use below (best juicer) the top ranking page ranks for 2,316 keywords which bring in ~ 8,199 traffic. In which case would give a value of the page to $737.91 (compared to $378 from the calculations in the example below).
The CTR will depend on how well you've optimized your content.
The conversion rate will depend on your content quality, product recommendation, cost of the product, product reviews, product type (is it an essential product, are their alternatives, can you put off buying it etc.
Lastly, you have no idea what items people will purchase. Sometimes they'll buy something completely irrelevant to what your promoting, other times they'll buy your product and perhaps accessories and heaps more which will increase your $ earnt.
Here is the calculation in a shorter form
Monthly Search Volume * 0.006 * (Product Price * Commision rate)
Example
Let's say I'm targeting the keyword Best Juicer (unless you have a high budget and experience in SEO I don't recommend you target this keyword as it's going to be competitive). The term, according to Ahrefs (my prefered keyword research tool), gets searched 14,000 times a month.
I'm going to give it a $100 product price to make things quick and easy to work out. Juicers are in the Kitchen department which gives us a 4.5% commission rate, giving us $4.50 every time somebody purchases the juicer through our link.
Our estimated monthly revenue is as follows:
14,000 * 0.006 * $4.50 = $378
Now, let's say you're in the lead gen. game. you want to sell DUI leads for $50 a lead targeting the term Miami DUI Lawyer which gets 1,300 monthly searches. We can calculate the value of ranking number one for this keyword...
I'm going to assume 1/5 visits turns into a qualified lead. (0.2 or 20%)
1,300 * 0.3 * 0.2 * 50 = $3,900
Now, again I don't suggest targeting the above keyword unless you have a seriously big budget and are a master of SEO. There's a strong correlation between keyword value and competition in the SEO game.
Perhaps you ranked for Nashville DUI lawyer with only 150 monthly searches. Most people would likely filter this out automatically through their chosen tool or just ignore it because of the low volume. How much could this keyword bring in?
150 * 0.3 * 0.2 * 50 = $450
Not bad for a term with only 150 monthly searches...
Conclusion
I have to admit I used to set filters on minimum search volume. However, nowadays I'll usually set it to 10 and manually exclude one I don't feel will bring in sufficient revenue to be worth my time.
Calculating the revenue potential of keywords will help you gain an edge over most marketers as you'll be able to find and go after profitable keywords that might be overlooked by others who are filtering based on monthly searches.
Say you have a product that sells for $1,000 and you'll make $50 from each sale you'll earn the following per month:
If you rank number one for a product which will bring you $0.45 in commission you're going to need a lot of sales to make any decent money. 10,000 monthly searches are only going to net you $27 a month. Not bad if you can scale to having 100 of these articles but chances are you'll spend a lot of money trying to get there and your ROI will be terrible.
However, it's important to look past the monthly search volume and instead focus on monthly revenue potential.
What do I mean?
Work out how much money a keyword could bring you at position 1 on the SERP.
How can we do this?
Here's the calculation (explanation below) in full.
Monthly Search Volume * 0.3 * 0.4 * 0.05 * (Product Price * Commision rate, e.g. $100 x 6% = 100 x 0.06 = $6)
- Monthly Search Volume: The figure is shown on your prefered keyword research tool
- * 0.3 * 0.4 * 0.05: 30% CTR for position 1, 40% CTR to Amazon, 5% Conversion rate
- Product Price * Commission rate: This is the commission ($) you'll earn for every sale
Ranking number one will usually result in you ranking for a lot of keywords. In which case, monthly search volume is going to be considerably higher. In fact, for the keyword, I use below (best juicer) the top ranking page ranks for 2,316 keywords which bring in ~ 8,199 traffic. In which case would give a value of the page to $737.91 (compared to $378 from the calculations in the example below).
The CTR will depend on how well you've optimized your content.
The conversion rate will depend on your content quality, product recommendation, cost of the product, product reviews, product type (is it an essential product, are their alternatives, can you put off buying it etc.
Lastly, you have no idea what items people will purchase. Sometimes they'll buy something completely irrelevant to what your promoting, other times they'll buy your product and perhaps accessories and heaps more which will increase your $ earnt.
Here is the calculation in a shorter form
Monthly Search Volume * 0.006 * (Product Price * Commision rate)
Example
Let's say I'm targeting the keyword Best Juicer (unless you have a high budget and experience in SEO I don't recommend you target this keyword as it's going to be competitive). The term, according to Ahrefs (my prefered keyword research tool), gets searched 14,000 times a month.
I'm going to give it a $100 product price to make things quick and easy to work out. Juicers are in the Kitchen department which gives us a 4.5% commission rate, giving us $4.50 every time somebody purchases the juicer through our link.
Our estimated monthly revenue is as follows:
14,000 * 0.006 * $4.50 = $378
Now, let's say you're in the lead gen. game. you want to sell DUI leads for $50 a lead targeting the term Miami DUI Lawyer which gets 1,300 monthly searches. We can calculate the value of ranking number one for this keyword...
I'm going to assume 1/5 visits turns into a qualified lead. (0.2 or 20%)
1,300 * 0.3 * 0.2 * 50 = $3,900
Now, again I don't suggest targeting the above keyword unless you have a seriously big budget and are a master of SEO. There's a strong correlation between keyword value and competition in the SEO game.
Perhaps you ranked for Nashville DUI lawyer with only 150 monthly searches. Most people would likely filter this out automatically through their chosen tool or just ignore it because of the low volume. How much could this keyword bring in?
150 * 0.3 * 0.2 * 50 = $450
Not bad for a term with only 150 monthly searches...
Conclusion
I have to admit I used to set filters on minimum search volume. However, nowadays I'll usually set it to 10 and manually exclude one I don't feel will bring in sufficient revenue to be worth my time.
Calculating the revenue potential of keywords will help you gain an edge over most marketers as you'll be able to find and go after profitable keywords that might be overlooked by others who are filtering based on monthly searches.
Say you have a product that sells for $1,000 and you'll make $50 from each sale you'll earn the following per month:
- 50 monthly searches: $15
- 250 monthly searches: $75
- 500 monthly searches: $150
- 1,000 monthly searches: $300
If you rank number one for a product which will bring you $0.45 in commission you're going to need a lot of sales to make any decent money. 10,000 monthly searches are only going to net you $27 a month. Not bad if you can scale to having 100 of these articles but chances are you'll spend a lot of money trying to get there and your ROI will be terrible.
