PPC keywords and locations help

[YNWA]

Hi.

I have a client who is looking to target locations. In their PPC campaigns they have generic keywords such as web design but the campaigns are location based so Surrey, Kent etc...

Would they be better to target UK wide but use localised keywords such as Web design surrey?

Also in your view, is the Display Network worth it for a small business competing against cheaper/bigger services/companies?

Any views be great.

Thanks

[Linda-Vassily]

I am not location-specific in my PPC so I cannot speak from experience but if I had that question I would probably set up two campaigns, one UK-wide with localized keywords and the other region-specific with the more general keywords, let them run a while, and see which one performs better.

[bricegump]

As for your local PPC question I would say the answer is both. *My disclaimer here is that we are not in the same vertical and our customers actually have to go to the store at the end of the day, so what works for me might not work for you. But in my experience:

It sounds like your could be showing up for people who are just interested in learning web design who live in Surrey and you could be missing out on impressions from people who live near by (but outside of your targeted area) and are interested in finding web design services based in Surrey.

With our local campaigns we see customers searching for all kinds of keywords so we target both general keywords within our location and geotargeted keywords. Keywords that have a geomodifier tend to convert better, but general keywords have so much more volume that they get more conversions while the conversion rate is much lower.

I'd test it and see what you find. I always try to start small and scale up rather then throw out a bunch of broad match and scale down later. So if I were in your shoes I would test a larger target location with more long tail geomodified keywords while maintaining the local campaigns for modified broad (always +modified +broad, not broad, assuming you're using AdWords) generic keywords and keep checking the data to see what you find. The search terms report could be your best friend for a while.

As for display: we (again this a local based brick and mortar business, so it could be different than yours I don't know) saw very low conversions using the display network in our vertical and decided to end advertising on the display network. However we have awesome cost per conversion numbers using the display network for remarketing to non-converters on our site, so that we use a lot.

Hope that helps!

[Laurean]

I don't know how it works over in the UK, but here in the States, I can run a PPC campaign with a generalized keyword "web design" and only target specific zip codes, cities or county (through Google PPC), and even more granular based on hobbies (in FB).

So, yes, I would do the generalized, and then if you can, spread it around the several different geo areas that you can target.

Good luck!

[JasmineA]

Bricegump & Laurean both have great insight to provide on location targeting. It's best to test different types of geo targeting & whole location targeting. There will be people who are not opted in to accept cookies and will still be searching.

So terms like "web design Surrey" are good to target the whole nation, then "web design" is a better term to focus in on at the more geo-specific level in a separate campaign. Of course, head terms like "web design" are still a bit vague and you will likely see a quality score decrease, but I'm sure you were just suggesting it as an example

Display network is absolutely worth it for small businesses! My first job was a lead gen position at a small business and display worked better for us than search (we were advertising on medical terms). I would arm yourself with some persona research first so you know what areas to target and set up very specific banner ads to preemptively engage those viewers. However, I have seen the GDN prices rising recently, so be cautious with your budgets.