Have you watched how your friends use their mobile devices lately? When they want to search for something, they pick up their phones, push one button and then ask questions.
“Where do I find a wedding planner in Los Angeles?”
“What restaurant has the best fries in Boston?”
“What are the best tourist attractions in Florida?”
Their search engine will return the best results that answer their questions. For Google users, it’s the strategy behind the Hummingbird updates, pushing content that is informative, relevant and valuable to users. It also means businesses should incorporate long-tail keywords into their pay per click marketing strategy.
It’s All About The Right Keywords
Any solid pay per click marketing strategy is built on keyword research. You must target the most relevant and most cost-effective keywords to get the most return on your investment, and these come in the form of long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords — a phrase or string of three or more words — refine your target audience to a more granular degree than basic keywords, but they are more difficult to research.
For example, your research might yield “handyman dallas” as your best basic keywords to target. Unfortunately for you, the competition for those keywords is probably going to be fierce. You want to start capturing the attention of users who might ask Google to show results for “I need a handyman for outdoor tasks in Dallas.”
Your keyword phrase — “handyman for outdoor tasks in Dallas” — begins to get longer and more specific. What you’ll notice in your keyword research is that the total search frequency drops, as does the competition for that phrase and the cost per click.
Read More: How to Use Negative Keywords in Your Pay Per Call Campaign
Identifying Your Long-Tail Keywords
Basic keyword research is easier to manage, and is becoming easier to test and easier to edit. However, with the advantages of low competition and lower cost per click, the long-tail keyword strategy might get you more conversions. It just takes a little more work.
Here’s how to get started:
- Ask friends, family and customers what they might search when it comes to your line of work
- Go to Google.com and start searching for a term related to your business; Google will return results of phrases that are already popular search terms
- Load up Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool and search those phrases and others that apply to your business; then add any specialty (like the handyman’s outdoor tasks) and the region or area you want to target
- Check the organic keywords results in your site’s Google Analytics
Putting It All Together
These four simple methods should help you get a good list of phrases to start your long-tail keyword research for pay per click marketing. Ultimately, all you have to do is think like a customer and answer the questions he or she might have. That’s what search engines like Google want to do and, thus, they are demanding very specific and very relevant content for its users, including in its paid search ads.
If you start now, you’ll enjoy a low level of competition for your keywords and gain the advantage over your competitors. And that’s a valuable opportunity to convert searchers at a lower cost per click.
Read More: Guidelines for Pay Per Click Beginners