The real cost of buying Google keywords

Have you ever asked yourself – how much money does search keyword in your business area cost? This cost is important if you sign up with AdSense to start earning money from your blog/website… Also if you want to purchase ads to lead people to your site… In these cases the cost of keyword determine how much you earn or spend.

Well – I’ve checked it for my area – web-design, web-marketing, business-blogs, search engine marketing related. Here are some results that might be interesting also for you.

Background – how it works
Google AdWords mechanics of selling keywords makes it difficult to get simple cost number. Majority of keywords can be bought for as low as couple of cents and at the same time for couple of dollars. When you order keyword you set maximum cost you want to pay per click. This cost is used to determine your ad rank (how high your ad will appear on the list of paid ads). You don’t pay the max cost but rather lowest possible cost to achieve this rank. Max cost is not the only factor to determine rank – also ad quality is used there (click through of your ad and quality of destination page).

Results
Here below are 10 keywords best matching subjects of blogs, search engine marketing, we design and web marketing. First table shows the list of prices that will allow you to get the top rank for the keyword. Paying this money will give you top spot:

keyword	cost
business blogs	$4.80
search engine marketing	$9.86
web-design	$6.63
web-marketing	$6.08
web site design	$11.79
web page design	$5.62
web designing	$3.41
web design software	$3.27
web designs	$3.99
web marketing	$6.08

Table below shows keyword and minimum pricing that should allow you to get into one of the top 3 position. This will not give you top traffic but at least decent one.

keyword	cost
business blogs	$0.5
search engine marketing	$1.7
web-design	$0.7
web-marketing	$1.1
web site design	$1.1
web page design	$1.1
web designing	$0.2
web design software	$1.1
web designs	$0.2
web marketing	$1.1

Keywords related to blogs are quite cheap (50c to get into top 3), followed by web design ($0.7 to $1.1 for top3) and web marketing ($1-$1.5). Most expensive is search engine marketing ($1.5).

The most expensive are keywords with specific geographical info – “florida web design”, “web design boston” or “oregon web design”.

Web 2.0 case
During the cheks I’ve also looked at popularity of keywords related to web 2.0. I got some surprises there – I invite you to my post on web 2.0 keywords.

You can play around with the keyword analytics checking it for your industry and space. Google has tool open for public that does just that. Google documentation for AdWords is pretty good and helps to start as well. All your comments welcome!

Now that you know how much keywords cost – you can check my post with calculation – How much money can you earn with Google AdSense?