The next time you are trying to come up with a topic or idea for your site, it’s always good to consider all of your options while also looking at what some of the most profitable keywords and niches in the industry are.
A great way to do this is by looking at Google and their search results, more specifically the advertisers that are coming up for each of these results and how much they are paying for their premium placements.
The majority of us already know that Google makes nearly all of their money from advertisers who appear in their search results. There are free listings (organic) and then there are paid listings. The paid listings will always appear at the top of the page and sometimes they will cover most of the screen before you even start to scroll down the page.
Below you will see a screenshot for “advertising” results in Google. As you can see, the whole screen is dominated by paid placement and results in a lot of money being made for Google. Over $30 billion dollars per year to be exact!
However, this isn’t what’s important for this article. Instead we will be focusing on what the top keywords are and how much advertisers are paying to rank for their specific keywords in these premium locations.
The more competition and profitable a niche is, usually the more it would cost to buy advertising for generic keywords like “mortgage”, “insurance” and “credit”.
Through the infographic and detailed report from WordStream, we can see that the following keywords are the most competitive and expensive to rank for.
- Insurance – $54.91
- Loans – $44.28
- Mortgage – $47.12
- Attorney – $47.07
- Credit – $36.06
- Lawyer – $42.51
- Donate – $42.02
- Degree – $40.61
- Hosting – $31.91
- Claim – $45.51
Now, why is this important?
Simply because the same principles that factor in on how much an advertiser might pay to rank at the top of the search results for a specific keyword, can also tell you lucrative that same niche or industry would be — especially if you were going to run Google Adsense or VigLink on your site. Even without placement of Adsense on your site, promoting any affiliate programs within any of these top keywords would also be a high value target, with some programs paying more than $100+ per referred sign up.
We’ve listed the top ten most expensive keywords, but you can view the full list and data below.
Before jumping into your next new site idea and just hoping to choose a profitable niche, be sure to consider the different options you have and also look at how competitive the keyword is within Google. If you search for a keyword on Google and there aren’t many advertisers appearing in the search results, you will likely find that it’s a tough niche or market to monetize.