Avoid the Single Theme - Use Analytics to Find ‘Long Tail’ Keywords
Filed under: Analytics, PPC on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 by Joy BrazelleIn marketing, like many things - it is easy to get into a routine, to narrowly focus your attention on one theme.
Despite the fact that there were a lot of us, our parents chose to focus on the single theme, names that start with ‘J’
This is especially true of pay-per-click. It is not uncommon to have a small list of keywords that perform okay for you. Overall your pay-per-click is relatively profitable. So, why bother changing it?
What differentiates the average marketer from the marketing ’super-stars’ is the initiative (and the know-how) to take pay-per-click to the next level.
It is possible in many analytics packages to see which ad groups are performing well (as long as your destination URLs contain tracking parameters.) But, that does not tell the full story. It is very likely that within the ad group, there are some keywords that are performing very well, and some that are performing very poorly.
Armed with that knowledge, you can try to improve the poorly performing keywords by creating new ad groups and writing better, more relevant ads.
To take the campaign to the next level, you should shift your spend away from the keywords that just won’t perform and focus on the ‘long tail’ keywords.
It is easy to find these keywords, especially if you can segment out our ‘converted’ traffic. What you’ll probably see is more ‘generic’ terms drive a high volume of conversions.
But, the ‘long tail’ keywords will provide interesting phrases that you probably had not thought of.
You can also use average time to mine keywords that may have not yet resulted in conversions, but do drive quality traffic of visitors who stay on your site for a long time.
Once you’ve found these keywords, you can create new ad groups and write new ads for these ‘long tail keywords.’
One final note, broadening your focus from a single theme and finding the long tail keywords does take some time, as does setting up the new ad groups and writing new ads. But, it can make the difference between a marginal ROAS and an outstanding ROAS.
