Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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Targeting the Long Tail

(continued)

Why sponsor long tail searches? For one, they aren’t likely to have much competition, which means

lower costs per click. For another, by the time a searcher is using a long tail term, they are probably

closer to the end of the buying process.This makes long tail searchers a very desirable group.Look

again at the example:“motel”compared to “baltimore pool motel airport.”Maybe you’d get 15,000

clicks for “motel”and only 100 clicks for “baltimore pool motel airport.”But if you run a motel near

the Baltimore/Washington International Airport with a pool, you’re likely to get more reservations

from those long tail visitors.

Experiment with some long tail terms in your PPC campaign and you may discover some top per-

formers that become candidates for future organic SEO efforts.

PPC engines have their own tools to help you figure out which terms you want

to add to your campaign and how much you want to spend on each. However, we’ve

found that it’s often better to use our own simple spreadsheet, especially for small or

new campaigns. Using a spreadsheet to record your keyword choices cuts down on the

PPC interface learning curve, since everything you need is together in one document

rather than partitioned in various PPC reporting or admin screens. And spreadsheets

allow you a little more flexibility in manipulating parameters that matter to you, like

maximum bid price or predicted click-through rate. We’ve created a worksheet that we

think will be useful to you in the planning phase of your PPC campaign, called the PPC

Keywords Worksheet. You can download it from

www.yourseoplan.com

The PPC Keywords Worksheet contains the following columns: Keyword, Cate-

gory, Bid for Top Position, Estimated Click-Throughs, Estimated Cost, Conversion

Value, and Landing Page URL. See Table 7.1 for an example of how Jason at Babyfuz-

zkin might fill out his worksheet.

Here’s how you’ll fill in your worksheet:

Keyword

In the Keyword column, add your top-priority keywords and any additional key-

words you’re interested in testing. Review your long list of keywords from Chapter 6. Were

there any terms that caused a lot of debate but didn’t make the cut? Were there two terms

that seemed equally promising? Results of this test PPC campaign will be a great tiebreaker.

How many keywords should you have in your PPC campaign? That depends on two

things: your budget, and your desire to stay within the hour-a-day time frame. But

we’ll throw you a bone with this vague suggestion: somewhere between 10 and 50. For

the purposes of this PPC trial period, it’s best to keep your campaign smaller so that

you can give proper attention to the details.

Now:

Go to

www.yourseoplan.com

and download the PPC Keywords Worksheet.

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