Most experienced pay per click advertisers know that long tail keywords offer high conversion rates for less money and as such they help to generate a much healthier return on investment at the end of every month.
Experienced pay per click advertisers know this about long tail keywords because they understand that people searching for “cheap hostel accommodation Cusco Peru” has been doing a lot more research than someone who types in “hostel Peru” and is therefore more likely to convert.
Therefore, it is abundantly clear that investing in long tail keywords is an effective step in the right direction for any pay per click advertiser. Long tail keywords should feature in every single pay per click management campaign in some way. The point of focus, however, is to work out how best to incorporate these keywords and how to manage them without letting your keyword lists and ad groups get way out of control.
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Common pay per click management mistakes pertaining to long tail keyword use
In general, the worst mistakes made by pay per click advertisers who try to incorporate long tail keywords into their pay per click campaigns stem from a naive perspective of what is practically possible and what is completely unmanageable.
Too many keyword combinations and too many ad groups will mean that you have too much to manage, which is the most common and worst mistake that most inexperience pay per click advertisers make when working with long tail keywords.
When we begin to think about all the many combinations of long tail keywords that might be entered into a Google search by internet users, it is easy to start compiling a list of keywords that never seems to come even close to reaching an end. This is what can make the management of long tail keyword campaigns dangerous for the inexperienced pay per click advertiser.
It is foolish and impossible to cover all combinations of long tail keywords. It is important to be selective and careful about the long tail keywords that you use and it is vital to learn from the experts how to select the right kind of long tail keywords from the infinite list at your disposal.
Imagine that you are in the shoe selling business and that you deliver to all locations in the US. It would be very ineffective to try to cover all US destination combinations with all shoe selling related keyword combinations. For example,
discount female leather shoes Manhattan
discount female leather shoes Chicago
discount female leather shoes Texas
discount female leather shoes San Francisco
discount female leather shoes Washington DC
It is clear where this list is going and this list only considers one kind of shoe sale keyword combination. What happens if you also sell shows for me and if you sell shoes that aren’t leather and if you sell shoes that are not on a discount? The long tail keyword combinations for US nationwide sales are endless and unmanageable.
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However, it is also important to remember that not all long tail keyword combinations are effective or necessary. It is a much better idea to remain objective and ruthless with your long tail keyword selections in order to work with the best combinations for your campaign instead of simply aiming to cover all possible combinations as a matter of course.
Do some research and testing to find out which long tail keywords are worth continuing to run and which are never really used by anyone to make them worthwhile running at all.
A simple step by step guide to the effective management of long tail keywords in pay per click campaigns
If you are interested in pursuing long tail keyword campaigns, follow the step by step guide below to ensure that you implement the various sections of your campaign with success.
1. Take things slow and piece by piece by choosing one very small and highly specific keyword stem that will be the starting point for all the long tail keywords you intend to test in your first round. For example, going back to the idea of shoe selling, you might want to begin with “buy shoes”.
2. For each long tail keyword that you create from this stem you should then develop a specific advertisement with highly optimized advertisement text.
3. Allow the advertisements to run for a month in order to collect the necessary data so that you can analyze which long tail keywords are working best for you.
4. If you want to use long tail keywords for targeting users geographically, match those high volume long tail keywords with different locations and run a second test for another month to see which areas of the US generate the largest volume of conversions for your business.
5. Repeat the entire process as many times as necessary to eventually build up a full campaign of long tail keywords that really drive highly-optimized, conversion-ready traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Final thoughts
The most important thing to remember when it comes to long tail keyword selection is that pay per click management is all about finding the best possible equilibrium. Quantity is not always the most important thing. It is not always about how many keywords you bid on but which keywords you choose to bid on and why; what you believe these keywords are going to do for you and your business.
