If you are in the loans sector of the finance industry, the opportunities to promote your business on search engines are huge. The vast number of phrases and search volumes makes it hard for marketers to keep track. In the Loans sector alone there are huge numbers of people searching for all types of loans in various sectors.
To help loans sector marketers, ClickThrough have recently released a detailed Loans Sector Keywords Research Report. The report contains search engine key phrase analysis on 25 key types of loans including; secured loans, unsecured loans, homeowner loans, personal loans – as well as more niche areas such as payday loans, bridging loans and tenant loans.
This report helps marketers understand the opportunities and challenges in search engine marketing. The research is based on search behavior and data on search engines from July 2006 and contains; Search Phrase, No. of Searches, Bid Prices for 1st/3rd/5th Place and Number of Competitors Bidding on the Yahoo Uk search engine in the 31 days of July 06.
For example, the table below shows the top 10 searches in July 06 for searches related to loans.
| Search Phrase |
No. Searches
|
1st Place | 2nd Place | 3rd Place |
Competing
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| home loan |
1,518,056
|
£1.89
|
£1.71
|
£1.64
|
40+
|
| loan |
977,732
|
£5.00
|
£4.98
|
£4.94
|
40+
|
| secured loan |
866,268
|
£4.09
|
£4.03
|
£4.01
|
40+
|
| car loan |
492,617
|
£2.00
|
£1.86
|
£1.72
|
40+
|
| motor loan |
395,153
|
£1.90
|
£1.63
|
£1.42
|
40+
|
| home equity loan |
332,452
|
£2.30
|
£1.56
|
£1.40
|
40+
|
| unsecured loan |
236,800
|
£3.04
|
£3.02
|
£3.01
|
40+
|
| personal loan |
119,908
|
£3.54
|
£3.52
|
£3.52
|
40+
|
| bad credit loan |
67,742
|
£2.93
|
£2.85
|
£2.73
|
40+
|
| homeowner loan |
66,630
|
£5.72
|
£5.21
|
£5.09
|
40+
|
Market share comparisons – The number of searches for each phrase give an insight into the comparable number of searches of each search phrase type. For example, in July 06 ‘Secured Loans’ had 866,000 searches which is more than 3 times more than ‘Unsecured Loans’ with 236,000 searches.
Competitive Landscape – The number of competitors bidding on each search phrase highlights how competitive each search phrase in the loans sector is.
Opportunities in Niche Areas – The less number of competitors for a search phrase means lower cost per clicks. Throughout the report you will find many phrases with good search counts, less competitors with lower cost per clicks which could be a potential opportunity.
Potential Return On Investment – In some cases it’s likely that phrases with higher cost per clicks offer higher sales returns or better conversion to sales ratios because competitors are willing to pay more for them. For example, the phrase ‘homeowner loan’ has a cost per click of £5.72 (1st Place) compared to ‘Motor Loan’ £1.90 (1st Place).
ClickThrough Marketing (www.clickthrough-marketing.com) has developed a workshop masterclass in online recruitment marketing and search engine optimisation.
ClickThrough is a commercial organisation offering SEO, Pay Per Click & Online PR services. Its latest event has been specifically prepared to provide marketeers in the Recruitment sector with the tools & knowledge needed to develop an effective online marketing strategy.
The event is a free web-based masterclass, presented by Phil Robinson, Founder of ClickThrough and is accessible from anywhere providing you have a PC and phone line.
Upon registration, all attendees will receive a 26 page eBook containing analysis on the top 5000 search phrases being used on Google & Yahoo
Phil Robinson, Founder of ClickThrough, states, “There are huge numbers of people searching for jobs, vacancies and new careers, as well as companies searching for recruitment & employment services to help them with their own staffing needs. This event and eBook has been developed for marketing executives at recruitment agencies, and to help demonstrate best practices in online marketing & search engine optimisation strategies”
Robinson continues, “If you would like to learn about the steps to successful SEO, improving Pay Per Click effectiveness and how to get more website conversions, then this workshop is for you.”
To register for this event online go to
http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/webinars.php
Investing in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is expensive and time-consuming and is not suitable for every company or business sector. To determine whether your company should invest in SEO, there are a number of things you should consider to make sure it will be a sound investment.
This article will help you ensure you do not fall into the trap of being sold SEO services when the return on investment case is not clear.
Are there enough searches being done on relevant phrases to justify investment in SEO?
The justification for SEO depends on several factors including; how broad your products/services are, and the size of target market using search engines to locate your type of product/service.
For example, a software company with a broad product range, selling globally would naturally have much greater potential Return on Investment from SEO than an office cleaning business that operates within a small local area.
If you invested in an expensive SEO campaign and achieved some great first page rankings for relevant search phrases, at first you might be happy – but if these phrases are not being search for sufficiently to drive enough visitors to your site, then you will gain little benefit.
Let’s assume you have an Office Cleaning Company and have some good first page rankings for the search term ‘commercial cleaning services’. This term on Overture UK generated only 38 searches in December 2005, (and assuming Overture UK accounts for approximately 30-40% of UK searches) you could estimate that the total number of people in the UK using ‘commercial cleaning service’ is approx 100.
Therefore, with excellent first page rankings on this search term, at best you might expect 5-10% of these 100 to click-through to your site. So on average, you might get between 5-10 new visitors to your site resulting from this search term – and is this enough to justify an expensive SEO program? Probably not!
Is your site of a high enough standard to convert traffic to enquiries or sales?
Investing thousands of pounds in SEO to drive potential customer to your site is pointless unless this traffic converts to a desired action on your web site. If you website converts 0.4% of visitors to an enquiry, then from 1000 visitors you will get 4 enquiries. Compare this to a quality site that looks good and has been built with conversion systems in mind and converts 5% of visitors – and you’ve got an extra 50 enquiries. As a result the case for SEO varies drastically just by having a quality site geared up to convert its visitors.
The difference between conversion rates of sites on the web are huge and can vary from 0% up to 20%. A good SEO company should have experience of conversion enhancement strategies and should include this as part of their SEO proposal.
Conversion enhancement strategies can include copywriting tactics, advanced conversion reporting, call to action tactics and site usability. If an SEO company can improve your sites conversion rate, as well driving relevant traffic, this is a powerful and winning combination.
Related Articles:
Copywriting: 6 Tips to Converting Traffic
Calls to Actions – 5 Quick Tips
What positions do you currently have on natural search engine rankings?
This seems pretty obvious but an overlooked point. Before investing in SEO, you should run a detailed positions report showing rankings for ALL phrases relevant to your business (that have high search counts!). This will allow you to benchmark where you are currently, and make decisions on the potential improvement that could be made.
Other important questions to be asked as part of your checklist should be;
How much competition is there for natural rankings on your relevant search phrases?
What results can you expect to achieve from SEO?
What is the average value from resulting enquiries or actual sales generated from your web site?
You can find more articles like this at www.clickthrough-marketing.com.
