In review, I stopped counting after a while.

Primary phrases for conversions included the following:

2 word conversions without geo modifiers. Many of these are the results of ads run on a geo basis with geo phrases as part of the ad that responds to a typically 2 word business phrase.

3-7 word phrases with a variation on the 2 word industry phrase and some geo description.

The conversion data mirrored traffic in this sense.

The most popular phrase is a 2 word industry phrase.

The first word of the 2 word phrase generally has 4 versions.

The 2nd word has about 12-15 alternatives including singulars and plurals.

Of the 2nd word the 2 most popular for traffic showed the most for conversions. When I say 2, I should say 4 as they each had singular and plural versions.

Of the geo modidified terms, they were split fairly evenly over 3 main jurisdictions including 2 states and a city.

Of interest, there were enough conversions of town names and city names that it really justifies itself for keyword expansion within the content of the site. Besides the state and major city names I had ample conversions for individual town and county names with a variation on the 2 word business term.

There was no overwhelming dominance of any terms, and in fact conversions were fairly consistent with prevalence of terms for traffic.

I hate being specific on the web. I’ve had competitors find some of my stuff.

Regardless, I’ve always had significant traffic on the most critical industry keywords without geo modifiers.

The site has ranked real well for the industry terms at Yahoo for years and pretty well in G and MSN. In fact it is #1 at Y now and has been for most of the time at Y.

Now I also run ppc ads in G for the industry term. The ads are titled with the industry term and the relevant geo description.

Those generate lots of hits and lots of conversions.

In fact, I didn’t hard count the conversion data. It is too long….too divergent, and too representative of the long tail.

I did note though, that there are lots of conversions on 2 word phrases without geo modifiers. Those are coming from organic traffic and ppc ads.

There are lots of versions of 3-7 word phrases, in which there is a geo modifier and a variation of the 2 word industry phrase.

Over time I’ve identified some phrases that convert dramatically worse than I would of thought, and have found that the best conversions come off variations of phrases that are closest to the core words and the 2 best keyword pairs for the industry.

Dave

I found one other thing recently that is very interesting… despite the myriad of words that searchers use I was able to find a single form of the word that was present in over 90% of conversions by email.

What’s more interesting is how I found it…

I was using MSN’s keyword tool, which I like, and was going through the results after entering a generic search term. And the results were a mish mash of every form of the word until… the term was searched with a geo-modifier… once the geo-modifier was present, one word was used nearly exclusively. When I went back and checked the analytics I found that word in either singular or plural in nearly every conversion.

I have since paused other terms that were costing me money and not generating calls until I have time to think of a strategy.

The take away from this for me at least is that when I am beginning to strategize what my most important keyphrases are that I will use a keyword tool and see if i can spot a pattern when the term is accompanied by a geo modifier, I don’t care what town or city is searched, only whether a pattern is present.