Study: What’s a Keyword Worth? The Most Expensive Keywords Across 10 In-Demand Industries and How to Leverage Them in Search

There are different ways to determine a keyword’s value. But there’s one metric that tells you its value in dollars upfront: cost per click (CPC).

What is CPC? To review, it’s the amount you pay a publisher each time a user clicks on your ad on their site or in search results. Search giant Google is the biggest, most popular publisher to date offering pay-per-click (PPC) advertising options. To compete in the PPC space, you’d want to look into existing CPC data. This way, you can choose the most profitable keywords to target and still have control over your campaign budget.

What is a good cost per click? Overall, the average cost per click is $2. But the figure can vary per industry. Some industries chart a higher CPC on average as they’re populated by expensive keywords. When a keyword costs more money per click, it implies that more people are using it in their search queries, fueling the demand among advertisers bidding for a spot in the search results.

So, is your industry highly competitive? To help you answer that, we compiled the 20 most expensive keywords and computed the average CPC across the top 10 industries we serve. Using our findings, you can:

• Know what your audience is searching for
• Tailor a PPC strategy to your audience, competitor, industry and budget
• Leverage high-CPC keywords in your organic search engine optimization (SEO) efforts

Top 10 Industries and Their Most Expensive Keywords

We looked at only the most expensive keywords in the top 10 industries where the bulk of our clients come from. In order, these are:

1. Medical
2. Home Services
3. Financial
4. Retail
5. Manufacturing
6. Real Estate
7. Education
8. Beauty
9. Food and Beverage (F&B)
10. Apparel

Then, working on the premise that keywords with a higher search volume probably have a higher CPC, our pay per click company used Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool to find terms with a search volume of 50 and above. Remember that search volume refers to the average number of searches for a specific keyword in a selected timeframe.

One of the questions we asked was: What is a good cost per click for each industry? So we narrowed each industry list down to 20 keywords with the highest CPC.

Our CPC averages showed Home Services to have the most expensive keyword set. On the opposite end, with the least pricey search terms, is Food and Beverage.

A closer look at each of Thrive’s top 10 industries then introduced us to additional keyword insights and information. Take a look at what we found:

1. Medical

With an average cost per click of $49.50, this industry ranked third among the most expensive on our list. Its 20 costliest search terms ranged from $30 to $195.

Keywords related to detox centers and alcoholism dominated the group. Surgery was another specialized service with several entries, specifically for:

• Oral surgery
• Wisdom tooth removal
• (Polycystic ovary syndrome) PCOS and bariatric surgery
• Lasik
• Ptosis (misspelled as “tosis”)

2. Home Services

For all home services, the average CPC was $84.25. Most of the search terms were related to repairs, with the more expensive ones catering to water damage/flooding – capped at $170. If you have a smaller budget for PPC advertising services, you can still go for a $70 flood repair keyword to gain an instant lift on Google Search.

Further, service providers in the following areas can amplify their paid and organic strategies to take advantage of high-volume, high-CPC keywords:

• Water damage/flooding
• Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) repairs
• Plumbing
• Foundation repairs

3. Financial

A good deal of the most expensive financial keywords was focused on financial planning and management. Business-to-business (B2B) companies have a lot of room to leverage these search terms, from the highest (“closing bank account” at $90) to the lowest (“financial advisor services” at $25). The average CPC for this industry was $48.50.

4. Retail

Reaching an average of $24.25, these retail industry keywords with steep rates pointed to the growing popularity of eCommerce. Search terms identifying products and services included:

• Home security
• Smoke shop
• Grocery store
• Plumbing security

The most expensive retail keyword was for home security services, tied at $45 with a brand mention.

You can also explore the few “near me” searches on the list. Your success depends on PPC and SEO working together to allocate your CPC digital marketing budget to bids and enhancing organic rankings.

5. Manufacturing

Based on our findings, the right PPC advertising services for high-CPC manufacturing keywords averaging $19.60 can go a long way for these types of manufacturers:

• Printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturers
• Supplements
• Pharmaceuticals
• Prototypes
• Electronics
• Medical devices

Placements for the cost/price of manufacturing are also up for grabs. But be prepared to spend a minimum of $11 and a maximum of $40 per click.

6. Real Estate

There are several angles to explore under this industry. Quite a few keywords were related to finding a realtor and purchasing a property. On the other hand, several searches involved how to sell a property without a realtor.

Making every dollar count should be your priority for these real estate keywords with an average cost per click of $33.65. As such, working with a pay per click company might be cost-effective. The best ones usually avoid costly mistakes and think out of the box, asking things like: What is CPC data good for besides paid campaigns, and what are some creative ways to capitalize? Truly, you need a touch of ingenuity to leverage an $80 keyword like “real estate agent joke.”

7. Education

More than half of online college/eLearning searches made up the list for Education. Averaging $62.50, these keywords don’t come cheap. You would want PPC and SEO working together as a team to dominate CPC digital marketing and organic search rankings. Better yet, tap a PPC advertising agency to align strategies with your business goals.

8. Beauty

It’s not much of a surprise to find makeup- and skincare-related keywords populating this set. Neither is the $23.30 CPC average for this lucrative industry. However, the wide gap between the cost of the top 1 and top 20 most expensive keywords – $130 vs. $12 – might be perplexing.

Tap the skills of a pay per click company if you want to know what is a good cost per click for your campaign.

9. Food and Beverage (F&B)

While $13.10 was the lowest average CPC among the lot, it’s still around six times higher than the overall average. To bolster your chances of standing out – without spending more – you can take advantage of this industry’s large concentration of “near me” searches.

For starters, you might want to seek the help of experts for conversion-driven results. A sharp SEO and PPC advertising agency can maximize local SEO keywords like “nearby food place,” F&B’s most expensive at $30, by combining CPC digital marketing and Google My Business (GMB) optimization. They can also identify blogging and landing page opportunities for least expensive keywords like “best food delivery service” and “top beverage companies” (tied at the bottom with two more keywords at $8).

10. Apparel

Averaging $15.85 per click, the keywords in this industry cost $7 to $25. There are plenty of opportunities to advertise to people searching for shoes, specifically running/training shoes and boots. But if you want to integrate long-term SEO practices, you’re in the right place. Go ahead and deploy long-tail question keywords in your blog posts, enhancing their value beyond PPC.

From Clicks to Conversions

From What is CPC? to What are the most expensive keywords across the top 10 industries we serve?, we hope we’ve given you an idea on how to approach your next PPC campaign.

As each industry’s keyword set has shown, there are also opportunities to incorporate them into your optimization plan. It’s a matter of PPC and SEO working together using core data like CPC. This strategic alignment harnesses the power of each channel, driving conversions at a sustainable rate.

Of course, you don’t have to start from scratch if you enlist the help of a PPC advertising agency. Even better, partner with Thrive, a digital marketing firm that provides PPC advertising services integrated with SEO, social media marketing, content writing and many others. We design data-driven strategies that impact your marketing, sales and bottom line.

Call us today to get started.

Methodology:

Using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool, we analyzed and collected the keywords with the highest CPC across 10 industries: Medical, Home Services, Financial, Retail, Manufacturing, Real Estate, Education, Beauty, Food and Beverage (F&B) and Apparel. The 10 industries we chose to review reflect Thrive’s client base – these are the industries our highest volume of clients operate in. The data was collected between June 10 and July 29, and we only considered keywords with a search volume of 50 or higher.