May
31

I’m really enjoying this blogging thing! Every comment I am getting from my readers is a new idea that I feel rushed to put into practice.

My reader, Andrea, mentioned she parses log files to mine for keywords as well. That is an excellent idea.

I decided to put that idea into code and here is a new tool to mine for long tail keywords.

To make really good use of it, I would setup a PPC campaign in Google with a “head keyword” in broad match, bidding at the minimum possible. Make sure your ads maintain good click-through rates (over 0.5%) to avoid getting disabled. Run it for a week or two (preferably more) and you will have a good number of search referrals and “long tail keywords” that people are actually looking for. You can later create good content pages that include those keywords. In most cases, long tail keywords are really easy to rank with on-page optimization only.

I will probably write a Youmoz entry with more detailed instructions on how to take advantage of this. In this way I can get more people to try it and get really valuable feedback.

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May
25
Long tail for PPC?
Published by Hamlet Batista on Fri 25 May 2007 3 Comments

If you have read a lot about search marketing and specifically pay per click, you have probably heard about the phrase “long tail keywords”.

I was fortunate enough to learn about this early and I was able to exploit it very well in Overture — now Yahoo Search Marketing.

The idea is to try to focus on all of the possible variations of a keyword that people use when searching, specifically phrases with 3 or more words, and not try to compete for the single word or two word keyword, for example “buy nice car in florida” instead of “buy car” or “cars.”  Getting enough long tail keywords can potentially get you the same or close to the same level of traffic, but at a much lower cost, and with more conversions as people that type single word phrases are more in research mode.

When I started doing PPC in Google back in 2002, I immediately tried to use the same techniques I used so successfully in Overture.  Later I realized that it was not necessary.

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