Before we get started let me define what a long tail keyword is. A long tail keywords is a highly specific keyword containing 4 words or more.
Here’s an example :
buy nike tennis shoes size 10
discount nike running sneakers
red leather high heeled shoes
As you can imagine someone typing in a keywords like : “buy nike tennis shoes size 10″ is READY TO BUY! In other words an effective long tail keywords will have a very high conversion rate.
But here’s the thing, a 4+ word keyword will not get a lot of traffic, maybe 1-2 clicks a month. So the trick is to bid on 30k,50k, even a 100k long tails. You can do the math, the traffic will add up.
These keywords have very little to no competition so you’ll get a very low cost per click. Heck, with a strong list of long tails you can launch a very effective direct linking campaign, and completely clean up.
Sounds pretty simple right?
Well I hate to burst your bubble, but coming up with huge ’smart’ list of long tails (like the examples above) that actually get traffic is NOT easy :
- Sure you could crack open KeywordDiscovery and Wordtracker, but you’ll be disappointed with what you get back. They’re typically not the type of quality long tails that will generate massive amounts of traffic and high conversion rates. Plus everyone else in your market has access to these keywords.
- The other thing is that the long tail strategy really doesn’t work well in every niche. Niches like retail, travel, insurance, that have massive amounts of search volume, and people are often looking for something very specific, will work well with the long tail strategy.
- You could make a huge multiplier of terms related to your niche and generate 100k long tail keywords. However, unless you really understand your niche chances are you’ll get a huge list of junk keywords that don’t get any traffic.
- The long tails for different niches, say retail vs travel, will be very different, so that just one more layer of complexity added in!
So is it worth cracking the long tail strategy for ppc affiliate marketing. Are there really affiliates out there making a fortune bidding on 100k+ long tail keywords?
Every heard of Clicks2Customers (C2C)? They’re the biggest super affiliate company in the world, started by renowned PPC expert, Vinny Lingham. Clicks2Customers (which has now become more of a performance-based agency), specializes in the travel and retail markets with a direct to merchant long tail strategy.
When I mean long tail, I mean REALLY long tail. C2C bids on several million long tail keywords per merchant. And you thought managing your 10k keyword campaign was intimidating!?!
C2C brings tens of millions of dollars in affiliate commissions every year.
So I wouldn’t say long tails are the holy grail of search so much as developing a killer system for generating quality high converting long tails, now that’s THE Holy Grail of Search.
This is a research project I’ve started with a fellow super affiliate. We have some very good ideas, but we still need to test them.
clicks2customers direct to merchant long tail keywords vinny lingham
Why not just buy a premium domain and build a business around it. Seems like you jump around toooo much f@#cking around with google this and google that.
You have the money, buy a domain like spyware.com , cheaphandbags.com and so on and build a business around it. I mean you already know how to send affiliate sales, go all netshop around the net.
Just my 2 cents.
your site has been hacked – just take a look at your meta description
@ Alex Buds— Google will lift the limit on your keywords once you’ve “proven” yourself to them. (I think Amit mentioned it a little while back).
@Small business Laptops “Why not just buy a premium domain and build a business around it. Seems like you jump around toooo much f@#cking around with google this and google that.
You have the money, buy a domain like spyware.com , cheaphandbags.com and so on and build a business around it. I mean you already know how to send affiliate sales, go all netshop around the net.”
Unfortunately, we’re all pretty much doomed to jump through hoops for google, half of the stuff on this site is about jumping through hoops for google.
It really doesn’t that much (it helps) what your domain is. Any domain can be the equivalent of a “premium” domain if you know how to use it. aalhaoqnsaf.com could be make you a lot of money if you used it right. i.e. jumped through some hoops for google.
db
Amit:
If you were going to build a campaign with tens of thousands of longtail keywords, what tools would you use to automate the entire process?
Efficient PPC? Anything else?
Thanks.
Jon
In Tyler’s comment he stated that there are affiliates that doing $400k a month using nothing but organic search. What are your thoughts on this, Amit? If these numbers are indeed accurate, I’m assuming they must be using some powerful tools like Jeff Johnson’s Traffic King Pro.
Do you have any recommendations where an aspiring affiliate marketer can learn the techniques and strategies of the $400k a month earner who is doing with with organic search.
I have to say, I’m a bit skeptical . . . but I am trying to be open minded on this one.
Jon
Hi Amit!
Your presentation on BIP was interesting, but the concept of going “wide” – how effective is it if you have a limited number of pages on your site, and every page is optimised for, say, name of product and 1 or 2 qualifiers.
How to exaclty understand the meaning of going wide? – finding synonyms of your main keywords (ex. laptop review -> notebook review -> portable computer review … etc) or this is something else?
I’d be glad if you clarify the point, thanks!
As a website designer, the use of long-tali keywords has made an enormous impact to my business. Trying to gain a decent position on keywords such as ‘website design’ is utterly fruitless but recently I selected numerous geographical locations near my home town and optimised pages for ‘website design anytown’, ‘website design thistown’, etc, etc. Out of the 20-odd new ULR’s I created specifically for the geographical locations, I’ve already got listings on page 1 of Google with 8 of them. God bless long-tail keywords!