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!

That's a grand claim and I bet you think it's not achievable. Don't people pay search companies big $$$ to do this sort of thing and isn't it supposed to take a hell ot a lot longer? Well yes and yes but I'll explain all that later. First take a look at the the proof and marvel over how the internet still allows us to do such things, all FREE of charge.

Pudding, hmmmm

The proof's in the pudding

The trick is in finding the right longtail keywords that produce results. Check Google trends to see if your keyword/s are climbers or a falling out of style searches (the below example: "most professional stock photo sites" was the former case).

You'll notice the 17 minutes marked by Google (under result 1) and the amount of web sites Google finds for this very phrase: over 30 MILLION! You'll also see the site is actually a social video site, namely MY SPACE - so what's the deal there?

Well that's the power of social media marketing....

Bad quality image? Blame MS outlook!

Nice, but is this stuff really legal?

It's legal alright, but this technique isn't as good as it used to be. Basically its all part of Google's new search formula that values novel content from sites with a high page rank (Google's website scorecard). Combined with the priority video get on search engines, we have a powerful SEO tool, if used in the right way. It isn't as good as it used to be because up until recently, ranks like this stuck a lot longer.

The good news is that quality content distributed over various avenues, like social media channels will have the net benefit of increasing your search presence in a short amount of time - but it's all about consistency, good content (we'll it helps) and distribution.

OK, but if its so good why don't I do for my own site?

Below's the pudding and that's one of the long-tail keywords mentioned in my last post - this one also brought up 78.8 Million sites for this search (not really as long-tail as I'd like)

"Automate your revenue" NOT "Automatic your revenue" - sounds like a washing machine!

So how can I do the same?

You'll need to sign up to a number of social video sites such as Viddler, YouTube, BlipTV, Revver, MySpace etc. Get your video ready, make sure you title the video using the longtail keyword you wish to target, add a link to your website in the description and hit upload. Grab a coffee, wait, enjoy your coffee, wait some more - then query Google...

If your not getting first page number 1, make sure you read the previous post: How to get 1000 hits per day with niche keywords. Try another longtail keyword.