Paid Search - How long term is the long tail?

[thejenn]

Authored by: IRT Limited

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/art.../0726_rc1.html

A Snippet:

When it comes to PPC traffic it's important to note that generic term produces huge traffic volumes, but more specific term will cost substantially less per visitor. What Google, Yahoo, MSN et al would appear to be saying is that if you want to reach a highly targeted audience, with exactly the product they are looking for, we wont charge you so much for doing so.

[timlb]

Authored by: IRT Limited

There is a paradox at play here. The really hot leads are being sold at discount prices. And sure as eggs are eggs, this wont last for long.

A colleague of mine has suggested that using Google Analytics on your site may have the unwelcome effect of providing Google with the information on your sales transactions and thereby alerting their Adwords system to which are those "red hot leads". Add GA tracking to your site, according to this theory, and watch the cost of those "long tail" niche keywords go up.

Is he paranoid, or does anyone have any experience of this, I wonder?

Tim

[A.N.Onym]

As AdWords are not Pay per Action but Pay per Click such behaviour should go against how the service should be run, unless they do provide Pay per Action services.

No, I haven't experienced this (will try it later), but my guess would be that the long tail keywords your friend was targetting were discovered by his competition and thus increased the costs.

Also, recently Google has included the landing page quality in the algorithm for determining the click cost, so it may be of play there as well.

At any rate, you can do a couple of things for lowering your AdWords bids and improving conversions.

[PaulMS]

Originally Posted by timlb

A colleague of mine has suggested that using Google Analytics on your site may have the unwelcome effect of providing Google with the information on your sales transactions and thereby alerting their Adwords system to which are those "red hot leads". Add GA tracking to your site, according to this theory, and watch the cost of those "long tail" niche keywords go up.

Is he paranoid, or does anyone have any experience of this, I wonder?

Tim

I think many professional online marketers would say your friend is
absolutely NOT paranoid - well, maybe a little. The same discussion was
started when Adwords introduced free conversion tracking. However, I
would agree that quality score probably has more to do with it.

The paradox for me is that Google does set a "maximum number of keywords in an account" limit (whcih varies based on factors they won't reveal), but on the other hand most people know that final refined searches take several iterations (MSNLabs has an interesting tool called SearchFunnel that shows what most searchers searched on in their previous search for a given keyword.

So, if the long-tail converts better, yet the account size is limited (and they prohibit having more than one account for your own business - although I know many people get around that), then the only solution that leaves is to bid on less specific keywords and build one heck of a negative keyword list by searching your stats/tracking program for non-performing or irrelevant keywords.

[A.N.Onym]

Most likely, the number of keywords you can target is limited by your site quality. Quality is the most important thing with Google and I won't be surprised if this is the thing they look at when grading your website.

Instead of depriving yourself of the long tail of search, simply work on adding more content to your website, make it more easy to navigate, remove any blatant advertising (if there is any), etc. Creating a focused landing page may help your ad performance as well.

[IRT]

Hi

I noticed one of my articles had been picked up here so i thought i would get involved.

I'm involved in running some PPC campaigns and we always take a ruthless approach to analysing key term performance. They either work or the don't...at any point in time. And that for me is the crucial point. It could be that some competitor is running a brand building excercise and not too worried about specific returns on key terms. It could be that another competitor has shifted emphasis. But whatever the reason, PPC i my experience is so dynamic that results vary significantly one week to the next.

So in my view part of a successful campaign is routing out the windows of opportunity that appear. The terms or products that lend themselves well to PPC... until the landscape shifts again!

But also some of this just comes back to something far more 'offline'. If your buy price is better than your competitors, your in a stronger position when it comes to generating online demand through a PPC campaign.

[PaulMS]

Originally Posted by A.N.Onym

Most likely, the number of keywords you can target is limited by your site quality. Quality is the most important thing with Google and I won't be surprised if this is the thing they look at when grading your website.

Instead of depriving yourself of the long tail of search, simply work on adding more content to your website, make it more easy to navigate, remove any blatant advertising (if there is any), etc. Creating a focused landing page may help your ad performance as well.

That does make sense based on what I'm seeing now.