How Long is Your Pay Per Click Keyword Tail?
With the increase in Pay Per Click (PPC) marketers, many top tier keywords have become saturated with competition. For those marketer’s whose budgets aren’t endless, they are left to wonder what they can do to get their piece of the PPC marketing pie. Simply put, many PPC marketers have turned to longer tailed keywords. Matt Bailey, founder of SiteLogic, stated that “when looking at sales generated by search terms, 18.6% of conversions were from top 10 keywords. Conversely, 81.2% of the conversions were from hundreds of other search terms outside of the top 10.” Let’s examine how long tailed keywords can help you build the foundation for a successful PPC campaign.
- One of the two most beneficial results of using long tailed keywords that I’ve come across is the ability to target highly specific traffic.
- When most visitors search for a keyword such as ‘credit cards’ on Google, they are most likely interested in a wide range of credit cards. This means that during their search they are likely to click on several PPC campaigns as well as organic listings for credit cards, before they determine which type of credit card meets their needs. Now as a PPC marketer, this can be costly. Not only are you paying top dollar for the keyword ‘credit cards,’ but your potential visitors are shopping around. The benefit of a longer tailed keyword such as ‘instant approval credit cards’ is that it allows you to target highly specific traffic which will increase your conversion rates. A visitor searching for ‘instant approval credit cards’ most likely knows exactly what type of credit card they are looking for, and are less likely to be shopping around when their search results appear.
- The second benefit of long tailed keywords (which many consider the most important effect) is the significantly lower Cost Per Click (CPC) for higher search positioning. As a result of expanding the length of your keyword, you have removed much of the competition allowing you to bid less yet achieve a better positioning in the search results.
Let’s dive further into the previous example using data from Yahoo’s Marketing Solutions platform. When I set up a campaign based around the keyword ‘credit cards,’ I’m shown that in order to receive the top positioning in the paid sponsors results, my average bid per click would need to be $7.01. Now, if I create a long tailed keyword such as ‘instant approval credit cards’ from my original keyword ‘credit cards,’ my average CPC to receive the top positioning decreases by almost half to $3.64. By expanding my keyword, I have lowered the CPC and decreased my competition for potential visitors. I’d like to take this one step further and discuss how the clicks will be affected by using this long tailed keyword instead of ‘credit cards.’ If I go back and use $3.64 for a bid on the keyword ‘credit cards,’ I’m estimated to be in the seventh position with 3,828 clicks for the month. Now I know that the same $3.64 bid on ‘instant approval credit cards’ will garner me the top position with an estimated 7,969 clicks for the month. So to recap, I was able to cut my bid cost in half and increase the quality of my clicks by using a longer tailed keyword.
There are several great tools available in helping you determine the best long tailed keywords for your top search terms.
- Google’s external Keyword Tool is a great place to start. This tool allows you to enter a keyword or phrase, and then brings back several long tailed keywords. These keywords also display the advertiser competition, along with the average search volume.
- Another keyword tool I would recommend is Wordtracker. This service provides extensive tools to dig deep into search terms to uncover great long tailed keywords. Unlike Google, which is free, Wordtracker does charge a fee for their service, but their Keyword Researcher tool alone is worth the membership fee.
In conclusion, by digging a little deeper into your top tier search terms, you will unearth some long tailed keywords that will open up a wealth of untapped markets for promotion. The key to remember is when using long tailed keywords you are not focused on the volume of clicks, but on the highly targeted quality of traffic that is generated from them.
