Using Geo-Targeting To Slash Your Pay Per Click Costs

Have you considered geo-targeting your PPC advertising keywords? You can save considerably on your costs per click just by adding  local area place names. For example, if you were selling and delivering pizza to the Wynnewood (PA) area, you have a number of options. You could target ‘pizza delivery’, ‘Pennsylvania pizza delivery’, ‘Philadelphia pizza delivery’, or ‘Wynnewood pizza delivery’. Targeting ‘pizza delivery’ is out of the question – there are over 90 million pages to contend with.

You may, however,  be surprised to see what sort of results you received if you explored each of the geographical options. Pennsylvania pizza delivery returned almost 5 million pages in Google search results. The average cost per click was $2.86. Let’s narrow it down a bit and search Philadelphia pizza delivery – that’s a bit closer to home. That reduced the search results to 367,000. Even better, the cost per click came down to $1.44.

That’s still almost 10% of the cost of a delivered pizza. Let’s get even closer to our geographical area and see what Wynnewood pizza delivery returns – 32,000. That is certainly easier to compete with than the 367,000 for Philadelphia. Cost per click – just $0.05. That represents a huge drop in cost-per-click numbers and you are now targeting people in your direct marketing area.

Now here’s something that may surprise you. If someone accesses a search engine from Wynnewood and searches for a pizza delivery service (without mentioning their location), the search results will most likely include a local map with the top seven local businesses listed. If you’re not targeting that geographical term, you could miss out.

So there is a moral there. Number one – be sure to claim your business through Google Places (Google local search), and secondly, be sure to include terms that relate to your geographical service area.  Cap it off by using those same geographic terms in your PPC marketing and you will see significant increases in your organic search placement for searches that count; that is, local search, and a significant cut in your costs per click. In fact, the costs can be so low that you can afford to geo target several areas. At $0.05 per click, you can geo target 10 areas and still save compared to using broader geographical terms.

If your business is a local business, then include geo-targeted keywords in all your online activities – particularly your local internet marketing.