What Industry Is the Most Expensive to Advertise Using Google Pay Per Click?

What Industry Is the Most Expensive to Advertise Using Google Pay Per Click?

Google is a multibillion dollar company with products and services offered in a wide range of industries from advertising, marketing and search engines, to hardware, software, internet, even a $38 million wind farm in North Dakota, USA. With everything that Google has ties to, it is interesting to find that almost 97 percent of Google’s annual revenue comes from their advertising platform. That is over $30 billion per year. This goes to show that keywords are big business even for the company that practically invented their widespread use for advertising.

Does this mean that we are paying too much for our keywords, or that the effectiveness of keyword marketing has not worn off and is only growing stronger for those who use them properly? In a report issued by Wordstream, they listed the top 20 most expensive PPC segments and it is a very interesting list indeed. It includes industries from utilities and insurance, to medical, finance and the legal trade.

So which industries made the list and which ones are the most expensive to advertise in using your PPC campaign? Let’s take a look:

Here is our list of the most expensive keyword groups in terms of their estimated overall revenue. Research included looking at more than 10,000 of the most expensive keywords and how frequently those specific keywords or keyword strings associated with an industry appeared.

1. Insurance: 24 percent / $54.91 top CPC

The insurance industry is highly competitive and with more and more people buying insurance online, this industry has grown to double the size of the next entry on this list.

2. Loans: 12.8 percent / $44.28 top CPC

The loan industry is big, so it is no wonder this keyword has ranked so highly on our list. It is such a profitable keyword segment that even Google has gotten into the financial lead generation sector competing with financial industry leaders.

3. Mortgages: 9 percent / $47.12 top CPC

Like loans, mortgages are big business in today’s financial world and that has earned this keyword over $47 per click.

4. Attorneys: 3.6 percent / $47.07 top CPC

Notice the steep decline from the top 3 spots to number 4. For grammatical reasons, the word attorneys is searched more frequently than the term lawyers, even though they are often interchangeable.

5. Credit: 3.2 percent / $36.06 top CPC

Another financial industry keyword, the term credit includes a wide range of related searches including credit cards, line of credit and bad credit.

6. Lawyers: 3 percent / $42.51 top CPC

With the keyword attorneys taking the number 4 spot, lawyers isn’t far behind. In fact, the term lawyers is searched more in America than in other parts of the world where attorney is used more frequently. This is especially important for marketers looking to increase clicks in the UK.

7. Donate: 2.5 percent / $42.02 top CPC

Used primarily for donating high value items to non-profits, the term donate is marginally less expensive that lawyers, but still higher than many others that you would think would have surpassed it.

8. Degree: 2.2 percent / $40.61 top CPC

Online education is a multi-billion dollar a year industry and it includes both traditional and non-traditional institutions. Students turn to the internet to learn more about course offerings, universities and tuition.

9. Hosting: 2.2 percent / $31.91 top CPC

Web hosting is another high-priced keyword that can really pay off big. Satisfied customers tend to keep their hosting plans for much longer than any other service offered online.

10. Claim: 1.4 percent / $45.51 top CPC

Another legal industry keyword, claim usually refer to legal claims for personal injury.

11. Conference call: 0.9 percent / $42.05 top CPC

This is a surprise entry and one that many of us don’t realise how often it is used. That is, until we have to pay the CPC on it.

12. Trading: 0.8 percent / $33.19 top CPC

Corresponding to stocks and commodities, trading is a financial sector keyword that still commands a high dollar price.

13. Software: 0.8 percent / $35.29 top CPC

The price may seem wrong on this one, but it is actually directed at enterprise software sales rather than end user sales.

14. Recovery: 0.7 percent / $42.03 top CPC

Data recovery is an immediate-need service that many businesses can’t do without. It is a highly searched term making PPC ads more effective for this industry.

15. Transfer: 0.6 percent / $29.86 top CPC

When pertaining to credit card transfers from one company to another, the search term transfer is one of the financial industry’s more expensive terms for PPC marketing.

16. Gas/electric: 0.6 percent / $54.62 top CPC

Everyone uses gas or electricity, sometimes both. The utilities sector sees a higher rate of usage for these terms as more and more people are searching for rate comparisons to save money on their utilities.

17. Classes: 0.5 percent / $35.04 top CPC

Again, online education is a large, and still growing, sector that sees hundreds of thousands of searches every day.

18. Rehab: 0.5 percent / $33.59 top CPC

Together with the search term, treatment, rehab relates to the health industry, particularly alcohol, drug and addiction treatments. The cost of rehab at a professional facility can run in the tens of thousands of dollars.

19. Treatment: 0.4 percent / $37.18 top CPC

Just as rehab is a popular, and valuable, search term, treatment ranks just as high but costs more. The difference being that the term treatment can also correspond to medical searches including cancer treatment.

20. Cord blood: 0.4 percent / $27.80 top CPC

Cord blood banking is a large and expensive industry with the cost of banking cord blood ranging in the thousands of dollars. It’s large per-item price and the large amount of competitors can drive prices higher in a PPC campaign.

With so many different search terms in the top 20, we see that many of them relate to only a handful of specific industries. This should provide some insight into the PPC pricing structure of various keywords and how they can affect your campaign’s budget and CPC.

Companies like Search South offer a wide range of PPC and SEO services for today’s small to medium and enterprise level businesses. If you want to grow your business and are considering using a PPC campaign, contact Search South and let one of their experts answer your questions and provide a no-obligation consultation today.

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Vanessa Simms

Vanessa writes on a range of subjects for the Search South blog, but has a strong focus on her core interest area of Google AdWords management best practices.