Demo on a key word research for 'Pubs in Colombo' and the benefits of PPC for 'Brewery by O!'

As we have been talking continously about SEO and how important is the role of 'key words' in it, let us see how we really go about doing a key word research for an industry in Srilanka. Don't know if 'Pubs' is really an industry but for the moment let's assume so. I also hope that this won't be offending anyone, because I didn't want to pick a typical industry and here I go with a more 'interesting' one.

Enough bragging!!! Let me go back and talk a little more about keywords here. We all know it is important to optimize your websites for the right keywords. In my previous blog I mentioned that we can use several key word identification tools, the most popular one being Google Adwords Campaigns, for this endeavor  And there are mechanisms to identify which keywords drive traffic to your competitors sites too. The important thing is not to rely completely on these tools and we should also talk to some people in real time and get to know what they really type into the box when they are searching for, in my case 'pubs' in Srilanka

With that said I also think that gone are the days where we typed 'restaurant' into Google if we need to go to a great place for dinner facing the beach located essentially in Colombo. We would ideally type something like 'Premium restaurant in Colombo facing the beach' or something longer and pray for some results. That is how targeted we want our information to be. The day our companies realize that and optimize their sites for such key words, the world would be a better place I guess. So in a nutshell, longer and better targeted keywords will turn into conversions or customers than extremely general ones. It's all a matter of 'playing your game wisely'. Ok now let's get this done.

First thing to do is to type into the box what you think others are looking for and check out the results. Ideally I need to find out what search results would be if I type 'pubs in colombo' and as 'Brewery by O!' is a  popular pub among youth, I believe I will find it in the search results. Please surprise me!!!!! Here we go...

So this is how it looks like. Nothing close to what I hoped for. Let's see what Google Adwords say as evidence to what people actually type, when they search for 'Pubs in Colombo'. This is how I got started after visiting Tools & Analysis tab under Google Adwords.

Add caption

When we enter relevant data, the resulting keywords look like this.

And the selected keywords as the appropriateness would be:

This is a basic key word research for the phrase 'pubs in colombo'. We can further create different ad campaigns for different ad groups (Eg: Pubs with Food, Cheap pubs, etc...) and write effective ad copies that would drive maximum traffic to your site. That is a long process that should be dealt with very carefully to establish a successful PPC campaign. 

The above result shows that the competition is very low for keywords for the phrase 'pubs in colombo', which makes it easy for pubs to rank their sites at the top using SEO or PPC. As we've been going on talking about SEO lately, let's see what PPC is all about. It is about paying the search engine, every time a customer clicks on your advertisement. Surprisingly we didn't see any ads popping up when we search for 'Pubs in Colombo'. May be it's because of the service nature of it, but who says a pub can't do PPC!!!!!! Let's give it a try. Who knows if it'll turn your pub to a cash cow.

To deviate from the topic a bit, even though I've picked pubs as my topic, I'm not much of  a drinker. But it won't stop you from admiring interesting things around you. So being a female and increasingly interested about studying the 'pub culture' in Srilanka, one of my current favorites is Brewery by O! .And now I'll explain why the O! bar should turn to PPC.

• The simple reason is it has ample popularity right now, but doesn't seem to use enough SEM. The above identified keywords does not even show proper SEO results. So as SEO needs real hard work the best option is to do PPC and get to the top faster. While kicking off PPC, O! bar can start there SEO efforts too and both will complement each other, ultimately driving more customers to the bar.
•  The advertisements will be highly targeted. The person who will be directed to the ad by O! bar will be a person who typed 'pubs in colombo' to the box and not just any person. Because of this targeted nature, the O! bar has a higher chance of turning the clicks into customers.
• The financial control will be handled by O! bar completely, as they can specify the monthly budgets and also the amount per click they are prepared to pay.
• Full editing control can be done by O!, where as they can create eye catching ad copies and titles to make sure the customers click on the ads and finally visit the place.
• Can improve the reach by customizing keywords. As mostly the earning youth visits the O! bar regularly, they can optimize for keywords as 'relatively cheap pub in colombo with good food' or 'pubs in colombo for working crowd'. These kind of key words will direct small volume, but high valued traffic for the site.

Brewery by O! can benefit endlessly by hitting on this unexplored gold mine and reap loads of benefits if done right. A good place to start would be www.google.com/adwords/onlineclassroom .

To wrap it up, the important thing to remember in PPC is that you have to pay for the clicks, so the amount you pay has to be justified by the additional revenue you get by doing PPC. So the way we do it should give meaning to our investment.

All the best.