The Pay Per Click Long Tail

This podcast will discuss the relation of Pay Per Click and the Long Tail and their importance for your website. We’ll also discuss the limits of broad matches and explain you how to manage cost effectively your keyword list and your tail.

In order to have an accurate definition of the tail we need to define the head. The head could be defined as a number of keyword and everything else would represent the tail. The head represents a measure of traffic volume. In this case the head is defined as, either the top 250 keywords by click volume or the keywords with 500 clicks or more in 90 days. The tail is represented by everything else.

The importance of the tail is determined by several elements. The tail varies according to the type and size of your business and more specifically of the number of the products or services you propose on your website and how people search in the category.

The tail is, or can be treated with a broad match strategy. The use of broad match has to be carefully managed. Broad match can be unprofitable and less efficient. If we take the case of a landing page for example, a visitor who is looking for something specific will arrive on the home page and will probably not continue its research on your site. Better landing pages means better conversion rate from each visitor, which signifies much value coming out of the traffic of the targeted keyword.

Because the traffic has different values you can differentiate the bids. With a higher value keyword you’ll spend more money, with a lower value keyword you’ll spend less. In other words more targeted bidding brings better resources allocation and a bigger program with better efficiency.

When building your keyword list, you need to spend a lot of time on the head about the language and how people are going to search for your products. For the head, your list has to be done by a human and not by automated software robot. Your keywords needs the right attributes as well as the landing pages need human verification. Whereas for the tail, you can use tools to build your keyword list, but you still have to control the results and the coherence.

When managing your keyword list, you must have sophisticated stats in order to make an accurate evaluation of your needs. Classification scheme and URL checking software is vital when you provide a wide range of products or services. It will help the classification of keywords and keep your strategy organized.

To conclude the best alternative is high bidding on exact match keyword ( for the head) and low bids on broad match and negative keywords (for the tail) is the most beneficial solution when managing your PPC plan.

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