SEO Crimson

One of the aspects of Internet marketing I’m learning is promoting products through Pay Per Click advertising services, such as Google’s lead advertising product and largest revenue generator, Adwords accounts are generally one of the largest lines on the marketing budget of any business operating on the web today. The way these services work is that you bid in a Vickroy auction style format for the top price you are willing to pay per click-through to your website. Google then serves ads that trigger your specifications for certain keywords on their search pages and content network (3rd party publishers- Adsense).

One of the necessities of advertising in this way is learning how to keep PPC costs low. One important way to do this is to long for the “long tail” keywords. That is to say, your term should be “buy red widgets” instead of just “widgets,” because it costs less, usually, the more specific and detailed you are because there should be less competition. With this in mind, it helps your cause to generate large numbers of keywords (thousands) in order to get the most traffic from the least costly keywords.

For example, if I wanted to advertise a page on dessert recipes, I would use Google’s keyword tool. I’d type in “cookies,” and copy and paste the entire 150 word list it returns to me onto my keyword list. Then I’d do the same for brownies, the same for cakes, the same for candy. Eventually, I have a long keyword list of over a thousand terms. This developed “long tail” will help keep my bidding costs low.

Finally, I would apply a low cost per click bid, knowing that I won’t be able to show ads for some of the most popular terms, ie “cookies.” but I will show ads for “chocolate chip cookies recipe.” This is how I could get the most traffic for the lowest possible price, and this is the importance of generating large pay per click keyword lists.