Keyword Domains for PPC

[klkirby]

I have a client who wants to buy a lot of long domains with keywords in them, for example, thesandiegopetstore.com (this is fictional) and then set up a PPC landing page for each. They think that when someone types in "san diego pet store" that their domain will be listed high and then they will get a lot of traffic.

My concern is that they will own a lot of domains for their company and I thought Google is getting pretty adamant about companies not having a lot of domains, and I thought that keyword domains are not as effective as they used to be -- that branding is more important now.

Also, I think the domains they've picked target very competitive keywords and that perhaps they will get a lot unqualified traffic and will still have to pay for the clicks.

What do you think?

What is the best way to set up PPC landing pages?

[SEOclient12]

If the keywords they are targeting are very competitive then they will have to buy bidding high to appear where they want to anyway.

I think it would be very naive to think that the quality score would be impacted to such an extent by the keywords being in the domain names (other factors such as website authority and ad longevity have a much more important role imo).

Let's say that they appear in the top 6 for the keywords (through a combination of quality score and presumably high/unsustainable/aggressive bidding). If the content on their websites isn't good enough then the consumer is going to click through and leave. With an aggressive bidding strategy in place to achieve these high positions, it would most probably increase unqualified traffic, increase CPC and CPA, decrease CTS and result in an unprofitable ROI model.

In order to get the most out of PPC/landing pages imo the adverts need to be live for a while at a lower average position. Through work on the website and other initiatives to increase page authority and relevance to the ad, you could hopefully over time see your av.position increase without increasing costs. Then at this point I would find some sort of trade-off between how much money you're paying and what you're getting in return to find the most optimal average position.

Obviously there are a variety of other tactics for efficient bidding etc, but this is the basic approach I would take.

With regards to being penalised by Google; if you think there's a possibility of it happening, don't risk it.

[klkirby]

Thank you for your detailed response.

I'm still wondering if buying these keyword domains and using them for PPC landing pages would be more effective than using the company's website domain, which is already well-established and trusted but doesn't have keywords in it?

Which types of domains work better for PPC landing pages?

Does SEOmoz have an experience or knowledge in this area?

I was hoping to hear from mozzers on whether hosting PPC  landing pages on keyword domains is more effective than hosting the PPC landing pages on the main trusted domain.

Does anyone anyone at SEOmoz know?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Karen,

SEOclient12 had some really good points, so let me just add my own 2 cents.

To boil down the question to it's fundamentals, you're asking if a keyword rich domain is better for PPC campaigns is more effective than directing the ads towards a non-keyword rich domain.

The easy solution is simply to amend the Display URL to include keywords. If you have the space, you can generally put whatever keywords here you want, including Dynamic Keyword Insertion. This has the usual effect of increasing your CTR, which in turn raises your quality score and lowers your cost per click.

(if you aren't familiar with Keyword Insertion, it's a great technique worth checking out)

This is the preferred solution and generally a lot easier than setting up unique domains for each ad. That's not to say that a unique, keyword rich domain won't help your conversion rate, but my suspicion is the benefit, if any, may not be worth the trouble.

Also, if you do set up multiple domains, be careful about linking them together (or make sure to keep them out of Google's index) as too many linking domains may be interpreted as a network.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!