Keyword Marketing
This is the first in a three-part series on the types of keywords you should be targeting. Section two will follow tomorrow, and the final installment will be published on Monday, so stay tuned! Special thanks to Virginia Nussey, Lisa Barone, and Adam Viener for editorial contributions.
By strategically targeting keywords of varying competition levels you will see more and better qualified streams of traffic.
At a high level, search engine keywords will fit into three core traffic profiles:
- “Head” – Popular, highly competitive, and broad keywords. These are typically one or two term keywords, such as “search marketing.”
- Mid-Tier or “Torso” – These are basically what they sound like: slightly longer keywords that drive mid-level traffic volume and are roughly mid-level competition.
- “Long Tail” – These are the longer, less popular keywords.
The long tail, in aggregate, actually drives more traffic and conversions than head keywords (again, in aggregate). The problem with the long tail is that despite the fact that it drives a lot of traffic, it’s both difficult to manage, and nearly impossible to create a predictive model around. Let’s take a quick look at some interesting long tail stats:
- 56 percent of buyers who search use queries of three or more words, while only 7 percent use one word or an acronym
- 20-25% of all Google search queries are unique
- What Google describes as long tail advertisers make up half their revenue
- Searchers are using longer queries
- Site’s Information Architecture
- Interlinking
- Content Creation & On-Page SEO
The Heads or Tails? Series:
- Part One: Heads or Tails? - How to Profit From Long Tail Keywords that Don’t Exist
- Part Two: Informing the Tail - Mid-Level & Long Tail Information Architecture
- Part Three: Building Links & Creating Content for Mid-Tail & Longtail Phrases
Looking for Long Tail Keywords?
Try our Long Tail Keyword Tool or Long Tail Keyword Generator to get tons of traffic-driving long tail keyword opportunites.
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Thursday April 09, 2009
Denny Shimkoski (not verified) Said:
Where do those statistics come from? Thanks, Denny Shimkoski BYTEBRITE Web Development Services
Thursday April 09, 2009
Anonymous Said:
Didn't realize those bullet points were links!
Ain't it always the way?
Thursday April 09, 2009
Anonymous Said:
Google claims due to a resource constraints, they won't allow many very long tail KWs to be served, and thus render them inactive based on a history of having never before been typed. There is a threshold, which they won't reveal, that needs to be met before they will activate these keywords.
Resources be damned, so essentially Google is preventing long tail phrases from showing - why? Really it is because there will be no competition on them, and that makes less money for them. So they force long phrases to map top medium tail words, where there is more competition. But of course, whereas you would have gotten a 50% CTR and an amazing QS, not you get lower all around due to competition on the SERP.
I've taken 3 concepts (mens + color + apparel item) and concatenated in all configurations, but many end up inactive due to no history. "Green mans pants" for instance. Instead traffic goes to my "mans pants" phrase-match keyword, and eventually that phrase get's overloaded and can't handle everything.
Damn thresholds.
Thursday April 09, 2009
Tom Demers Said:
This is a great point. Our tool does a lot with long tail and generates a really comprehensive keyword list (one of our big features) so we've definitely seen this a lot.
Are you bidding MORE aggresively on tail terms than broader terms? Google will enter your two keywords into an auction and choose based not just on Quality Score but also on bid (the same way they would calculate ad rank if you were bidding against someone else).
An alternative means of dealing with this is to exact match mans pants. The problem here is obviously that you miss out on a lot of variations you might not know about, SO what you might consider doing is something like this:
Bit crude obviously but the point is that if you can massage match types and bids enough some times you can effectively manipulate things and gain some control. Brad Geddes had a great post recently that I think is interesting and related on why your broad match keywords aren't really the ones converting.
Tom
Friday February 05, 2010
Keyword strategy ( Section 1) - Page 2 - WebProWorld (not verified) Said:
[...] by inertia An unusual strategy. Do you find this works for you? Have a look at this Matt: Heads or Tails? - How to Profit From Long Tail Keywords that Don?t Exist | WordStream __________________ "Being an expert isn't telling other people what you know. It's [...]
Friday August 27, 2010
How To Choose Keywords (not verified) Said:
My friend and I were just talking about this. When she built her website she focused on long-tail keywords. While she'd getting those few searches who are typing those phrases in, she's going to play around with it and see if she can't target a more general audience with simpler keywords. It will be interesting to see what happens financially.
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