Transforming Pixels to Gold

Winning the search game with a lot of hits

I'm just illustration the point with this title on the potential of using the right long-tail keyword even on paid search. I go on about this long-tail stuff all the time because it really is the untapped market that is available to us right now online.

In fact, niche markets as well as keywords will always be here. If you think about how people will always be doing or searching for something new - new and unique terms will always come into play. I guess those who find them first can capitalise on an early advantage... 

But before I get too esoteric, let me get to the point.

The 4 EASY steps, paid-search formula

1. First focus on just a few good performing long-tail (niche) keywords. In the example below I'm using: "read novels online" (read this to find out how to determine strong long-tail keywords).
2. Write a Google ad that solves a problem - i.e. the potential customer is usually searching on Google for a solution - bug them with irrelevance and they won't click on your ad!
3. With a good ad, you'll need to be getting over at least 1.2% click through rate (CTR) for Google to start lowering the cost for each clicks your ad gets (cost per click - CPC). If it's under that change the ad copy or try a different keyword (unless you want to pay Google more than you have to).
4. Google tells you the adverage daily cost per click - all you need to do is match this by manually capping your CPC everyday. Eventually you can get your keyword down to about 4 - 6 cents (if you're using good long-tail keywords).

So say you had a monthly budget of $1000 - at 6 cents a click if you do this right you'd expect 16,000 targeted visits to your website. This also means that on a small budget, say $15 - expect to get about 200 clicks!

Here's some proof

Check what difference lowering you CPC over a few weeks does to your clicks

The above was a launch campaign for Photos to GO stock photo site. I had a 3k montly budget for a limited time and was using a whole host of keywords - some long-tail others very competitive like "stock photography". On the 2nd month running I had a few competitive keywords dropped to focus on the long-tail words while lowing the cost per click for each. You can see the results - close to 3 times the amount.

Small budget for an up-and-coming author - I got 208 clicks for less than $13

The campaign above was done with 1 keyword only - "read books online". The last I checked that was a hot keyword (a lot of searches and low Google cost). I managed reduce the cost from about 30 cents to 2-3 cents a click with a couple of hundred impressions a day (average over period total was 7 cents). Quite nice when you think I was using a $20 free Google voucher!