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Search Analysis: Converting the Longtail into Sales
SEM News Source: http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com
Published: Mar 18, 2008 - 07:15 am
Story Found By: SlightlyShadySEO 1529 Days ago
Category: SEM
This is a rather advanced entry. It covers a way to use the user’s query to construct a more targeted page, by attempting to understand the purpose of the user’s query, and break it apart into it’s essential parts. In doing so, it enables us to successfully monetize longtail traffic much better than previously before. It should be noted that some definitely consider this cloaking. So be careful in how it is applied.
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from HamletBatista 1528 Days ago #
Votes: 1

"Take a look at any adwords tutorial you’d like; they all mention the fact that you should avoid “broad” match as much as you possibly can. This is because longtail searches are much much harder to convert into sales. Making a landing page or site relevant to every single search someone could possibly come up with is nearly impossible."XMCP - Nice post/technique, but i have to disagree with this. Long tail queries convert better in my experience, provided the page closely matches what the user if looking for. It makes sense because when people type general/head queries they are not ready to take action yet, but when they type specific/long tail queries they are closer to make the deal. :-)The reason some PPC tutorials recommend avoiding broad matches, is because most newbies don’t know how to use them properly. Broad matches require a completely different strategy. They are very powerful if you monitor them closely and use a large list of negative keywords. I personally like to use a separate ad group for my broad matched keywords. Again, the key is making sure the searcher is finding what he/she is looking for.

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from SlightlyShadySEO 1528 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Ah, I gotcha. The longtails for my sources are generally blackhat sites, which means I have no control over the different keywords I’m getting hits for. I’ll fix that up as soon as I’m a little more awake.

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from PPCblogger 1528 Days ago #
Votes: 1

Agreed, specific long tail queries are often where you see the best conversion and return. Broad match isn’t just about caputuring the long tail, you need to beware of the expanded match element in particular...

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from DanThies 1528 Days ago #
Votes: 1

One of the things we have to understand about the long tail... if you do a good job with your keyword strategy and SEO, you will inevitably get a lot of referrals for terms that are completely irrelevant. If you simply grab the "bottom 1000" in a list of 100,000 search terms bringing you traffic, chances are good that the top 10 converted better than the bottom 1000. If you remove the completely irrelevant terms, you’ll find that conversion is far better among your "bottom 1000 relevant terms" than it is with your "top 10 relevant terms."Shady’s ideas may be based on blackhat "keyword driftnet" sites that monetize the long tail, but there is a lot of opportunity for every marketer in this area.

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from SlightlyShadySEO 1524 Days ago #
Votes: 0

@Dan: Thanks for summing that up better than I could.I’ll admit, while I jump back and forth between PPC and blackhat SEO, my definition of "longtail" gets a bit skewed sometimes haha. Glad there’s still oppurtunity for other marketers with it though :-)

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