I ran across this interesting data on the SearchEngineWatch blog. This post discusses data based on 2 million visitors. They ranked the number of words that are used in search phrases.
Here’s how the top five breakdown:
- Two-word phrases — 28.38 percent
- Three-word phrases — 27.15 percent
- Four-word phrases — 16.42 percent
- One-word phrase — 13.48 percent
- Five-word phrases — 8.03 percent
The percentages begin to drop off significantly after five-word phrases. So, when you’re conducting keyword research for your pay per click campaigns, you can use these figures as another means of prioritizing the keywords and phrases that are most likely to be searched on by potential visitors.
For instance, it is usually a good idea to focus on two or three-word phrases because those phrases are searched on the most and they tend to provide more qualified visitors. One-word phrases, on the other hand, are typically searched on a lesser amount and tend to send less qualified traffic to your website.
In some niches, though, you can still be very successful with one-word phrases. With one of our clients, for instance, we use a one-word phrase that provides a significant amount of qualified traffic that converts very well. However, it took a little while to get the keyword to outstanding profitability by constantly testing new ad copy and adding negative keyword phrases to better focus the traffic.