I’m glad you guys are back!
Last week I took you guys through the importance of using long - tailed keywords (link to last week's blog) rather than using short - tailed and broad match keywords, especially if you are working with a smaller paid search budget.
These long - tailed keywords are the keywords that will end up triggering higher-quality traffic for your Google Ads and Bing Advertising strategy. Versus triggering traffic that is just looking for generalized information on the topic area that your product and services fit into. Ultimately, these high-quality users are more likely to convert on your landing page and more likely to eventually become customers.
So just because you have included these long - tailed keywords in your strategy does not mean your work (and their work) stops here. These long - tailed keywords are pertinent for not only your overall keyword strategy, but also for your ad copy and your landing pages as well.
So why does this even matter?
It matters because not including these long - tailed keywords in your landing page copy, as well as in your ad copy will end up lowering your overall quality score in Google Ads and/or Bing Advertising. The lower your quality score, the less amount of time these search engines algorithms will choose to show your ads over competitors, even if someone searched for an exact term you have included in your strategy.
Whether these keywords and words that have the same meaning or context as your keywords, (Yes! The search engines are that smart - you can read about the Google Hummingbird update here on Moz), are in the actual landing page copy or in the title of the landing page, you just need to make sure your page content utilizes the actual keywords or very close synonyms to make the page relevant to the search query. Not only is this pertinent to raise your accounts overall ad quality scores, but it provides a synchronized user experience for your potential customers.
If you guys are still with me, you may be thinking this is a very trivial blog post about something that everyone already knows about. If that’s the case, then more power to you! However, this notion of having everything be synonymous from keyword buy, to ad copy to landing page copy is often overlooked as people who are managing paid search accounts don’t interface or direct the landing page experience in many firms. We have seen it here many times and it usually coincides with two phenomena 1) a lot of unqualified paid search traffic 2) little to no conversions on the landing page.
I’m here to give you a friendly reminder to all you guys and gals out there managing either your own brands account, or for a client - please, please, please make sure all those long - tailed keywords are what you are bidding on in search, your ads and landing pages are all using those keywords or synonyms.
For instance, if you are a marketing team of one or working on a small team, here’s a method I use. To make sure I end up including many, if not all of those long - tailed keywords on my landing pages and my search ads, I do the following - I start with the end in mind. I create the landing page where I want the user to visit from my search ads. Then I use a mini color code for myself and also anyone else on the team that I am working with to quickly reference all the keyword matches. It’s as simple as this:
Pink Text on Landing Page= Long - Tailed Keywords
Yellow Text on Landing Page = Phrase or Exact Match Keyword
Purple Text = Text that is not a keyword
Your page would end up looking like this after you color code it, for example:
Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Tempus egestas sed sed risus pretium quam vulputate dignissim suspendisse.
Aliquam eleifend mi in nulla posuere sollicitudin. Lorem mollis aliquam ut porttitor. Mi in nulla posuere sollicitudin aliquam ultrices sagittis.
Ultricies tristique nulla aliquet enim tortor at auctor. Massa sed elementum tempus egestas. At varius vel pharetra vel turpis nunc eget. Egestas purus….
So why is this helpful? It may sound a bit pointless to you, and that is totally fair, you do not have to do this in order to have a successful campaign.
But I like it and client’s appreciate it too because at a quick glance, you can see right away how many of those keywords (exact, phrase and long-tail) are being included on the page. This is not a scientific process, it’s not complicated, but simply put, it is efficient and tells you what you need to know within a matter of seconds to write extremely relevant ads using the exact match and long-tail keywords as well as which keywords to bid on at the campaign level.
In the end, what you end up with are ads and landing pages that work well together to convert your visitor. And, we all know that higher conversions potentially mean more business.
Paid Search is oftentimes seen as a very convoluted process - but it truly does not have to be. Hopefully this quick little color coding technique can make things just a little easier for you as you start to develop your landing page and PPC strategy. It will allow you to quickly examine your landing page copy to make sure it includes all those long - tailed keywords and phrase/exact match keywords that will carry your campaign to success.
There is so much to Marketing, and it all starts with understanding your target customer, come back next week when we start exploring customer research techniques.