Competition in the ad world is fierce. You’ve got a lot of people competing for a few keywords, but knowing the right ways to search for these keywords can make all the difference in your campaign! If you’re finding yourself constantly outbid on Google Adwords for popular search terms and keywords long tail could be the answer!

Long tail keywords are exactly what they sound like. They are longer strands of popular keywords seeking to get you a bit of the pie, and a little bit less of the premium price tag. Let’s look at an example! Let’s say you’re advertising a clothing company with a limited budget. You fill in some great sounding general keywords like “pants” or “shirts and the search volume is tremendous! Great you say! However, when you start bidding you soon realize it will cost you several dollars per click to bid on these keywords. Which definitely does not fit in your budget. : (

The problem with general words like “clothing” or “hats is that are too broad. This makes them very expensive, and not very effective in conversion anyway. Converting these search terms into a long tail keyword will be much better for your website for a couple reasons.

1.) These words will most likely be significantly cheaper than than your general words were. The competition will be smaller, and you’ll be able to get a bid in edge wise so to speak!

2.) They will be more targeted to your product. This means better click through rates, and conversions for you! People who are searching for a term like “hats” may be window shopping. They may not even be shopping at all! The term is so broad that there is no real defining purpose for it, and it can pop up anywhere.

These people may be looking to sell hats on ebay, buy hats wholesale, learn about different kinds of hats. They may click on your ad, but they are much less likely to purchase something than a quality targeted user is. Let’s say you want to bid on some words related to t shirts.

The word “t shirts” has 24,900,000 global monthly searches, and stiff competition to go with it to boot! Well, let’s say you’re selling a specific brand of t-shirt. You could enter some phrases such as..

“buy billabong t shirt”

“buy custom t shirts”

“where to buy funny t shirts”

“where to find original t shirts”

“where to buy zoo york tees”

Or in other words, phrases that people would be searching for. Somebody typing “buy billabong t shirts” is more likely looking to purchase one than somebody just searching for “t shirts”. If your landing page, and other key words match this makes your ad much more relevant to users searching for that keyword string. So, Google is more inclined to want to show your ad. Since that person will be more likely to click on something that helps them. You and Google both will be more likely to make money off of it.

This also helps out your click through rate, which will make your bids cheaper due. Because of the way Ad Words figures things you’ll get a better deal if your click through rate is higher than a competing ad, because your ad is more likely to bring in money. Google only gets paid when people click so that’s what they care about.

Of, course. These key word strings will take research. Some of them will have higher search volume than others will. Some may not be worth your time if there’s only a few searches a month. You can use Google’s Key Word Tool to estimate about how many searches your keyword will have, and find some similar words that may be better.

Originally posted 2010-06-23 22:14:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter