Long tail keywords are the backbone of a scaled campaign. You can not scale a campaign to high levels without utilizing long tail keywords and still get a decent ROI. End of discussion.
Now that we have that out of the way, let me start to talk about how you can use long tail keyword to really start raking in the cash.
Using short, generic keywords like auto insurance will get you tons of traffic of course, but that traffic will not only be expensive, but it also is somewhat untargeted for your needs. Why do I say untargeted? A lot of times, people using short, generic seach terms are just tire kickers. They are not ready to buy at this stage. And since short, generic keywords are the easiest and first used by companies, they are more expensive and more competitive. So, let Geico and Progressive pay those high costs. They’ll be paying us soon enough when we generate leads at a cheaper rate then they can.
So, where do we start? First, you want to look at the advertiser landing page, their website and their competitors website. Read through them good and get a basic understanding of what it is they are selling and how they go about it, meaning what type of sales process do they use. Do they offer a consultation or is it a straight sale? Once you get a basic idea of the whole process, move on.
Put yourself in the shoes of a customer know that you know the product and why and how you would use it. Start coming up with keywords that are very descriptive. Don’t use “new shoes” but use “newest release mj shoes” or “top rated skateboarding shoes” or “buy new high arch sneakers”. This practice again will not get you a ton of traffic, but the secret is to build a HUGE list and generate tons of small traffic. Get people when they are most likely to take action with whatever your goal is, whether it be to whip out their credit card and buy new shoes or enter their personal information in to get a debt consolidation review.
If you want to generate a large listing of keywords, this is what I suggest. First, do the above manually and don’t use any keyword tools. Spend real time on this, not just a few minutes. Read everything about the company, niche and competitors and keep just pulling info. Then, use like KeywordTracker or some other keyword tool that you love and put each keyword in.
Now, when generating ads, you need to group your ads together tightly, and what I mean by that is only put about 10 to 15 of these into a single ad group. When you type each keyword in, set up a new ad group for that keyword and base your ad off of it. Each keyword will need a different ad and only related keywords will make sense in that ad group, so keep them together and that is it. A strong promotion should have at LEAST 50 ad groups, just to let you know, even if it needs to be broken into different campaigns.
After you have gathered all your main keywords for your ad groups, lets generate some more keywords. How is your spelling? If you are like me and most of the population, your typing, spelling or both suck, so it is likely that you will type the wrong word when searching. So, how about profiting off of that as well since most people will spell things wrong.
Go to the SEOBook Typo Generator and type in each of your main keywords that you used to set up ad groups. Check all the boxes on the tool and run it. Make an ad group for each of the results, even if it is more then the 10 to 15 I recommended before, and it will be a lot more. That is okay. Typos are rare and produce an even smaller amount of traffic, so large keyword ad groups are okay in this instance only.
Well, that is it about the long tail keywords. Remember though, when setting up for ad groups and writing ads, don’t just write one or two. You need to write at least 4 at first to get an idea of what ads are working the best. Also, you need to set up for own tracking as well, so use a system like Prosper202. I will write more details on this other stuff later, but for right now, I am just staying focused on the long tails.
As always, let me know if you have any questions either through the comments or you can email me at bryan@ahaze.com.
