Using Head, Mid, and Long Tail Keywords

As a digital marketing agency, we often notice that when people are developing a list of keywords for a PPC campaign, they outline a list of keywords that come to mind, which is perfectly natural. We also see that these keywords primarily consist of head and mid tail keywords. Head and mid tail keywords consist of one or two to three keywords respectively. One important thing to keep in mind is that long tail keywords that are searched a small number of times add up to a greater number of searches than the most popular head and mid tail keywords. So, if you are looking to drive a high volume of traffic in a short period of time, you want to target a lot of words, not just the most popular ones.

The reason why this is important to understand is because depending on your offer and the type of traffic you want to generate, you want to use different types of keyword phrases. If you are looking for prospects that are performing initial research, you want to use one to two keywords as they will be performing a general search. For example, if a prospect wants to understand SEO, they would likely use a broad search term such as “SEO” to learn more and perform research about what SEO is.

If you are looking for prospects who are considering making a purchase, you are going to want to use keyword phrases that are between two to three keywords because their searches are going to be more specific. If you are looking for prospects that are ready to make a purchase decision, you are going to want to go after keyword phrases that contain three or more keywords. For example, “SEO services Toronto.”

You also want to develop a list of negative keywords if you are using broad match or phrase match keyword phrases to ensure that you are not bidding on keyword phrases that are not relevant to what you do.

If you have any questions about the different types of keywords and how they apply to PPC, please leave a comment below.