Last week, we covered the basics of account setup for a solid PPC campaign.  I said that perhaps the biggest mistake most people make when setting up their PPC campaigns is a poor campaign structure.  If that’s the case, the 2nd biggest mistake people make is poor choice in keywords for their Ad Groups.

The key to choosing the best keywords for your Adwords Ad Groups is to focus on the Long Tail.

The Long Tail

The basic idea behind the Long Tail theory is that every industry contains a handful of super popular widgets (whether it be songs, movies, books, MP3 players or keywords).  These super popular widgets (we’ll call them the ‘hits’) saturate the market, and are consistently selling in high quantities. These hits comprise the head of the long tail graph shown above.  For iTunes, they are the top 100 songs that are purchased millions of ties in a given year. For Netflix, they are the movies that get rented over and over and over.  And in PPC, they are the super-broad keywords that everyone wants to show up for on the SERP’s.

The head of the tail is great… but in PPC, when you get thousands of people bidding on the same keyword, it can get very pricey. Trust me you don’t want to be paying $5+ per click… especially when there is an alternative.

Ironically, companies like Netflix and iTunes, (where the hits are easily measured and understood) more money is made by the accumulation of long tail products than those at the head.  It’s true!  Sure iTunes sells a bajillion copies of Brittany Spears latest single, but the number of bands down that long tail is so long (down to the bands that only sell 1 song) that they blow the hits out of the water.  Pretty cool, eh?

In Pay Per Click advertising, the same idea holds true.  Sure, specific ‘long tail’ keywords have a much smaller search volume than those at the head, but when someone searches for “Blue Schwinn 10-speed bicycle” and they find an ad for “Blue Schwinn 10-speed bicycles” you have suddenly put yourself in a very good position. Obviously this person knows exactly what they want, obviously you are giving it to them.  Your keyword might get clicked on two times a month, but you know what? Each time it’s by somebody who is interested in exactly what you are providing, and it’s costing you pennies instead of dollars!

Put enough long tail keywords in your campaigns, and you are going to find your conversions and your click through rates go through the roof. Your cost per acquisition along with your cost per click should plummet, and you, my friends, will be sitting pretty.

If you’re looking for some help chosing the right keywords for your campaign, here is a great step-by-step article loaded with tips and tools to help you out.

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