Adding the word builders to a search triples the click price and removes most of the people looking.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per booked job looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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One word added, three times the price, and 26,620 fewer people a month to show it to.
The pattern runs through the whole trade. Deck builders is $10.33 and decking is $2.39. Pergola builders is $8.79 with 480 searches a month and pergola is $2.89 with 27,100. Carport is $2.04 with 14,800. Every carpenter in the city bids on the version with builders in it, because that is how the trade describes itself, and almost nobody bids on the word the customer actually types.
Average cost per click across Australia, from Google Keyword Planner. What your account pays will differ with location, competition and quality score. The gap between these rows is the argument, not the exact figures.
The top three rows are the words the trade uses about itself. They are expensive because every carpenter bids on them, and they have surprisingly little volume behind them. Pergola builders gets 480 searches a month across the country at $8.79 a click.
The bottom four are the words customers use. They are cheaper and vastly larger, and yes, some of that traffic is people pricing kits and looking at designs. At a quarter of the price you can afford to sort through it, provided the page gives them a reason to stop looking.
Three numbers, and only the last one decides anything. It is the same chain our Brisbane digital marketing agency works through in every industry, only the dollar figures change.
We work it right to left. What a job is worth sets what a lead can cost, which sets what a click is worth bidding.
Cost per click is the easiest number to improve and the least useful one. Bid on cheaper searches and it drops immediately, whether or not those searches ever turn into work. That is why we will sometimes tell you to pay more per click rather than less.
Google Ads is the fastest of the three and the only one you pay for by the click. Here is what the other two do, and where the expensive clicks eventually stop.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per structure with completed projects instead of a gallery, a Google Business Profile built properly, and a review process after every job. Slow to arrive, and the thing that eventually stops you paying for the expensive versions of these words at all.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by structure, not one campaign called Carpentry, so decks never compete with carports for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for carpentry courses, carpenter wages, apprenticeships, timber prices, kits, and the very large number of people looking at design ideas. Call tracking, because these jobs are quoted on site.
THE ONE MOST CARPENTERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the natural home for this trade. A finished deck is one of the most persuasive photographs in construction, and people plan outdoor projects for a long time before they search for anybody to build one.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A carpenter building decks and one doing carports as a fixed price product cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the paid clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads is where finished work does the selling. We will tell you if one is not worth running.
Not a strategy document. These are the three campaigns we would build first for a Brisbane carpenter, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “pergola”
27,100 searches a month at $2.89 a click, against 480 at $8.79 for the version with builders on the end. Plenty of those people are looking at pictures, which is why the page matters more than the ad. Give them three sizes, a price for each and a photograph of one you built, and a good share of them stop browsing.
Built around “carport”
$2.04 a click on 14,800 searches, and the most product like thing a carpenter builds. Single, double, attached, freestanding, with a price for each. It converts on the page rather than in a meeting, which is what makes a two dollar click worth having.
Built around the searches we exclude
Carpentry courses, carpenter wages, apprenticeships, timber prices, decking board prices, flat pack kits, and the large number of people collecting design ideas for a project two years away. On broad match you buy all of it.
Send us access to your Google Ads account and we will come back with what it is wasting, which searches are costing you the most for the least, and what we would change first. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep it either way.
Two clicks can cost the same and be worth completely different amounts. That gap, not the click price, is what decides whether an account works.
Two dollars for the click and 14,800 searches a month. A carport is the closest thing in carpentry to a product: a handful of sizes, a handful of configurations, and a number next to each. Published prices do the qualifying, so the cheap click arrives already sorted.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Nearly nine dollars for the click, and 480 searches a month nationally for every carpenter in the country to fight over. Pergola builders is what the trade calls itself. It is not what the customer types, and the price gap is what happens when everybody bids on the same small pool.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Three things come up in nearly every Google Ads account we audit for a carpenter.
Deck builders, pergola builders, carpenter near me. Every account we open is built on the words the trade uses about itself, which are the words with the least volume and the most competition. It feels correct and it is the most expensive habit in this vertical.
Pergola at $2.89, carport at $2.04, decking at $2.39. A quarter of the price, many times the volume, and the same job at the end of it. The trade off is a broader audience, which is a page problem rather than a bidding problem.
Cheap broad searches only work if the page does the sorting. Most carpentry websites answer every price question with a contact form, which means the two dollar click bounces and the account concludes the cheap words do not work.
Sizes, configurations and a number next to each. It filters the browsers out before they call you, and it is the entire reason a broad cheap search can outperform an expensive specific one in this trade.
Decks and pergolas are quoted on site, and a carpenter who drives to every enquiry from a cheap broad search will conclude very quickly that cheap clicks are worthless. The click was not the problem. The absence of anything filtering it was.
Price ranges on the page, minimum job size in the ad, and a service radius held to what you would really travel. Fewer calls, and a far better hit rate on the ones you take.
We start with what a job is worth and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A carport and a full timber deck cannot carry the same cost per click, and neither can a job you can price on a page against one you quote on site. We work out your job value by structure and how much of it can be priced without a visit, because that decides which searches are affordable.
Decks, pergolas, carports, renovation carpentry and commercial each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the cheap high volume products are not funding the expensive trade language searches.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because these words attract an enormous volume of design ideas, timber prices and kit searches. Then monthly reporting on cost per booked job by structure, not clicks and impressions.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you will not put a price on anything, the cheap half of this chart is closed to you and the expensive half is a very small pool. And if you are booked out for the season, this buys you quotes you cannot honour from people who will remember you did not call back.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Because that is how the trade describes itself, so every carpenter bids on it. Pergola builders gets 480 searches a month nationally and costs $8.79. Pergola gets 27,100 and costs $2.89. You are paying a premium to compete in the smallest pool available, against the people most like you.
Partly, and that is the honest answer. Some of the 27,100 people searching pergola are looking at pictures. At a quarter of the price you can afford to sort through them, but only if your page does the sorting. If every price question is answered with a contact form, the cheap clicks will bounce and you will conclude they do not work.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
Because it is the most product like thing a carpenter builds. A handful of sizes and configurations, a price against each, 14,800 searches a month and a $2.04 click. It converts on the page instead of in a meeting, which is exactly what makes a cheap broad search worth buying.
Less than most trades on this hub, because the useful clicks here are cheap. The constraint is usually how many site visits you can do, not how many clicks you can afford. We would rather run the priced products properly than fund the expensive trade language searches.
Low on the cheap searches and largely beside the point. What matters is how many of those enquiries you drive out to and how many turn into work. We report cost per booked job by structure, with the quoting visits counted as the cost they are.
Three places, in this order. The whole budget on trade language searches with almost no volume behind them. Design ideas, timber prices and kit searches. And site visits for enquiries that a price on the page would have filtered out before the phone rang.
Add the customer versions of your keywords and put prices on the pages behind them. In nearly every carpentry account we audit the entire budget sits on the versions with builders in the name, which is the smallest and dearest corner of the market.
Yes, and it is the whole strategy here rather than a nice to have. A carport page with three sizes and three prices converts a two dollar click. A Services page cannot, and without it the cheap searches genuinely do not work, which is why most carpenters have decided they do not.
We look at what it is wasting, how much sits on trade language keywords, whether anything on the site carries a price, and what your cost per booked job looks like by structure once site visits are counted. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
