A recent post by Tom Demers on Search Engine Land caught my attention this week. The post discussed the difference in CPC and conversion rates between short and long tail queries in paid search (although this could apply to organic optimization as well) and shows some very interesting data. Tom took a random sampling of WordStream clients Adwords accounts with about a million dollars worth of spend, spread across roughly 15 million impressions and analyzed the aggregate cost, number of conversions, and cost-per conversion across the data sample.
Based upon Tom's data there is obviously enormous value in long tail search queries if used properly. As you can see from the charts below the advertisers within his data set convert 90% of their traffic from keywords that only get between 1 and 99 clicks. The majority of their conversions came from keywords getting only 1-5 clicks! The cost for conversion is also much lower when comparing the 1 to 99 click terms with the more competitive and larger traffic terms.
What does this mean? Long tail works! Get out your favorite keyword research tools and start looking at your log files to find more targeted long tail queries to add into your campaigns now. Another good article you might want to check out is Query Mining for Gold which covers some great ways to find these hidden gems. Best of luck!
Montana Thomas is a Senior Affiliate Sales Executive for Credit.com and has more than 10 years of online marketing experience in the affiliate market. Montana shares his unique insight and experience about affiliate marketing, paid search and SEO.
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