Google Adwords and Longtail searches

[AgentMail]

Hi All,

So it is 10pm on a Friday night, and here I am reading up about google adwords and SEO.

I just had a quick question I can't seem to find an answer on. If I have a keyword, for example direct mail, and it is set up as a broad search, is there any point in then have longtail key phrases (dont know if I have the terminology correct) for anything with direct mail, as wont I show up anyway because of the broad search setting.

So for example if I were to have a longtail of direct mail companies in Brisbane, would there be any benefit? I just want to make sure I am not wasting my energy if google is already making sure I show up for that.

Thanks and have a good weekend

[Evo 'the marketing guy']

Your broad search - direct mail - will only hit if nothing else in your account matches the search on direct mail.

So if I type in direct mail sydney and you have that as a keyword then that will come into play instead of your broad search term direct mail

Few suggestions.

Broad is a terrific tool for getting a feel for your market, but I actually find it very wasteful. You can - in some categories -get too many dud clicks.

I prefer exact match and phrase match. Sure it lowers the clicks a lot but I find the traffic a lot better quality.

I'm bidding on around 2,500 words and the main keywords (like your direct mail) dominate each day, but I am regularly chuffed when I find some long tail keyword that are doing a lot of heavy lifting (in their own little way).

The great thing about the 'long tail' is that you can find a lot of keywords that are a bit cheaper (yay!) than the main ones that have lots of competition.

And then, once you are ready, you can link your ads to 'goal' completions in google analytics (like an enquiry form) and really measure the traffic that converts!

It may well be your long tail friends!

[AgentMail]

Thanks Evo,

Yes, after doing some very overdue homework on Adwords, I found that 25%, yes a whole 1/4 of my clicks were coming from people looking for envelope stuffing jobs. Because I have the keyword envelope stuffing (as some people use that phrase to refer to what we do) and had it as a broad search.
Mortified only begins to describe it!
I have added some negative keywords, but at the moment I only have about 50 or so keywords and only one campaign, which I have found out is also a problem due to quality ranking and relevance.
So my next job is to learn how to improve my ads quality ranking, and then group my keywords to an individual campaign.
Then after that, I need to learn how to monitor all of this and make sure I am actually getting it right!
Luckily I guess my adwords budget is only about $200 per month, so I have only wasted about $2,500 over the last 12 months expensive lesson right!

[Aidan]

Agentmail,

Think of it as a competition, in some ways its kinda like SEO.

If your competitors are bidding specifically on an exact long tail keyword then they will likely have their ads served in preference to yours (if you only have a broad match keyword that might be suitable).

There's a bit more to it than that as other factors, particularly quality score and keyword bid, will also come into play but that probably answers the question you had on setting keywords up.

As for setting up your campaigns and adgroups, use seperate campaigns if you are looking to seperately target geographical areas, the display network or device types (i.e mobiles, tablets) or if you need to set a budget, or schedule ad showing to specific days or times.

Use adgroups to target related search terms with their own ads. Have two ads per adgroup so you can test and compare the results and see what types of messages are attracting clickthrough and conversions.

If you are using broad match and getting too many mismatches then try using modified broad rather than the original expanded broad, it can save a truckload of work on building a negative match list. It still allows Google some rope for picking up matches that are misspellings and plurals and some other very close matches but stops the very broad matches that the original broad match allows.

To use the modified form of broad simply put a + sign immediately before your keyword (+keyword)

Hope that helps

[Evo 'the marketing guy']

As Aidan said, campaigns rule! You should segment your adwords as many ways as you can so that keyword families are all together. It is a bit more work in the short term, but makes it easier to monitor over the long term.

What I find interesting is that some keywords bring nothing but 'tyre kickers' who have no intention of buying. I'm very chuffed when I see the competition bidding hard on keywords I have found to have little value!

It may(?) be worth getting an expert to review your adwords work as there are many, many tricks the experts use! I'm not suggesting you hand it over - NO WAY, TOO MUCH FUN! - but a one hour consultation a few times a year may be of value.

[Khalid Adam]

The trick with adwords is that you start where you start unless ofcourse you are wiling to pay for adwords consultation.

Once you get results, use metrics to find which 20% of keywords produce 80% of the results then start culling.

Long tail or otherwise, it comes down to a CTR and CPC. adwords is not a once off and you know this already so just like seo, it requires tweaking but unlike seo, the results are faster.

if done right, you wont need adwords after 12months unless you are launching a new product or business.

my advice to you is not to get bogged down just yet. get started with a daily budget (Sady max $100) and tweak everyday based on results.

also, learn to use negative keywords.

warning: it's really fun and you can get obsessed with it.

Originally Posted by Evo 'the marketing guy'

As Aidan said, campaigns rule! You should segment your adwords as many ways as you can so that keyword families are all together. It is a bit more work in the short term, but makes it easier to monitor over the long term.

What I find interesting is that some keywords bring nothing but 'tyre kickers' who have no intention of buying. I'm very chuffed when I see the competition bidding hard on keywords I have found to have little value!

It may(?) be worth getting an expert to review your adwords work as there are many, many tricks the experts use! I'm not suggesting you hand it over - NO WAY, TOO MUCH FUN! - but a one hour consultation a few times a year may be of value.

[JohnW]

Not enough attention is paid to setting negative keywords.

I regularly get asked to review existing Adword campaigns and 25% - 33% is wasted on clicks for inappropriate or irrelevant keywords. This is the norm because people are specifying broad searches without setting negative keywords.

Some examples:
a. Broad keywords that include: "cheap", "budget", "free", "2nd hand" or "used" when the product being advertised is new and high quality.
b. A catering company buying keywords that accidentally included people searching for free recipes.
c. A high-rise building maintenance company whose "anchor points" adwords were mostly going on car seat belt anchor point clicks not high-rise safety anchor points.

Regs,
JohnW