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Longtailed keywords: How can I get the most out of my SEO campaign? by WoodyRoundUp

Some keywords, like “CRM” are highly competitive but are not really profitable. CRM usually stands for “customer relations management” but it can also stand for “cause related marketing”. Moreover, many CRM products are niche products aimed at specific industries. On the other hand, people searching for something like cheapest car insurance are almost certainly looking for news related to car insurance.

When somebody does a search on the Internet, you want to make sure that if they click your AdSense ad that they are looking for you and are likely to buy your product or service. How can you get the most money out of your SEO campaigns?

Longtailed keywords

Let’s step away from the CRM example and go to an example about mobile app monetization. “Mobile app monetization” is a very specific keyphrase that only people who develop mobile apps and are looking to make money off their apps will look for. Therefore, it’s a good choice for a mobile app monetization company like Moolah Media to optimize for “mobile app monetization” and “monetize mobile apps” since almost everybody looking for those terms is looking for Moolah’s services.

On the other hand, let’s say they optimized for “mobile apps”. Then they would get people looking for Angry Birds, N.O.V.A., the Kindle app for Android, and all sorts of things that are totally unrelated to hosting ads within mobile apps. People would still click on their ads and this would get expensive, or they would waste money hiring an SEO company to do organic SEO work for unspecific keywords.

But occasionally short tailed is better

There are a few exceptions, though: When somebody searching for a short tailed term is looking for your site. For example, pretty much everybody searching for the term “credit report” will be looking for information on what a credit report is, or how to get one online. It thus makes sense for credit reporting sites to optimize for that term, in addition to longtailed ones like “free credit report”, “get a credit report”, etc.

So the rule you should follow is to optimize for terms that will have a high click-through rate, especially when you’re doing AdSense campaings. In general, longtailed words are better because they are more targeted and thus more cost effective, but do not force yourself to avoid good short tailed keywords just because you read somewhere that short tailed is bad.

This is a guest post by Murray Newlands. Murray and his company, Influence People, do blogger outreach work for a plethora of clients.