In SEO as well as in PPC, the main idea is to focus on certain “keywords”. I’ve discussed this before, but a brief refresher may be in order. Keywords are certain words or phrases that a potential customer or visitor to your website inputs into a search engine. Some keywords are more popular than others, and thus from a SEO perspective they are more difficult to achieve high rankings for since they are more targeted, and from a PPC perspective, again, they are targeted more, and thus become more expensive per click. This issue highlights two important strategies when engaging in either a SEO or PPC campaign. First, keyword selection is of paramount importance. Second, it’s advantageous to not ignore the so-called “long tail.” More on that later.
First, let’s discuss choosing the right keywords to focus on. Choosing the right primary keywords to focus a SEO or PPC campaign can make all the difference. When choosing keywords, you need to be specific, but not too specific. You also need to try to avoid very heavily targeted keywords, as that competition can derail a SEO campaign or cause a PPC campaign to quickly become prohibitively expensive. Instead, try to focus on keywords that a potential customer might use to find your business when searching, with enough specificity to avoid drawing in users who aren’t interested in your business but with a broad enough net to get all or most of those potential customers who are. This is especially important with a PPC campaign, as you, the business owner, are paying for every click, whether or not a customer is qualified. With a SEO campaign, you aren’t paying for the click, but going after heavily competed for keywords can waste valuable time and effort without producing much result.
What will this keyword selection strategy look like in action? For instance, a pizza joint in San Diego should avoid focusing on general keywords like “pizza” or “pizza delivery”. These keywords are heavily competed for and largely dominated by the large national chains that have resources with which a small business owner will find hard to compete. Instead, focusing on a keyword (key phrase) like “pizza delivery in San Diego” will be more cost effective and will separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. This phrase is specific, and will draw in customers looking for exactly what the owner is offering, while not being so specific as to lose potential customers. However, there is a way where those more specific and less competed for terms can be useful.
Let’s now move to discussing the so-called “long tail.” So far we have discussed where and how to focus a keyword campaign, but we haven’t discussed those keywords of less desirable status. In the hypothetical example above, these keywords might be things like “meatball subs delivered in San Diego” or “pizza delivery in downtown San Diego” or the like. They are generally keywords less focused on because they are either considered less likely to be used in a search or so specific as to be inappropriate to focus on, which is very true. However, when looking at all keywords from a statistical standpoint, when graphed with number of user searches on the x axis and level of specificity being on the x axis, keyword price (for PPC) or level of focus (for SEO) generally takes the form of a inverse square proportional curve, with the most desirable keywords being at the top and less desirable ones forming a trailing “tail”. However, simple math can tell us this tail accounts for around fully 70% of all possible keywords and searches. This means that while it isn’t really a good strategy to focus a campaign around these keywords, it does behoove a business owner to not ignore these words entirely, as that would potentially be ignoring many possible searches that could potentially yield many qualified customers. These tail keywords also have the advantage of being very specific, so they are more likely to convert into sales, as customers tend to know exactly what they are looking for. Additionally, these terms have the advantage, particularly from a PPC perspective, of being cheap, or in SEO terms, of being easier to achieve rankings for. SEOMOZ has some great data backing these assertions up here.
What have we learned? In short, keyword selection is everything. Choosing the right keywords to focus on can make or break a business, while not ignoring the “long tail” can be extremely cost-effective and profitable for a business. Confused by all of this? You aren’t alone. That’s where The Click Experts comes in. We are a company that specializes in focused and targeted SEO campaigns. We have the experience and expertise to put these principles to work for your business, large or small. We can help design a PPC or SEO campaign, or both, that will increase your business’ online presence in a way that will bring in more qualified customers and greater conversions, and we can do it in a cost-effective manner. Contact us today for a free quote to see what we can do for you!
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