So what are long-tailed and short-tailed keywords? And how can they help achieve over-the-top result in your PPC campaign? Let us get into some ranting here…

Long-tailed keywords are keywords that are very specific and will usually result in a conversion (either a sale or opt-in) as the person who types these kind of keywords are very eager to look for something. Some examples of long-tailed keywords can be a model number of a digital device (E.g. “Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop”)  or keyphrase like “online florist Singapore and free delivery” As you can see from these types of keyphrases, the intent of buying is very high and that is why a conversion will usually occur.

On the other hand, short-tailed keywords are very broad and general, such as “online florists”, “flowers”, “Singapore flower”, etc.  This type of keywords may or may not result in high conversion because the searchers are not very targeted, in other words, they might not be buyers. For example, if someone types in “online florists” in Google, he or she may want to find out how to start a florist business online, or is wanting to buy flowers from online florists. Then, for people who want type in “Singapore Flower” as a search term may not really want to buy flowers online. He or she could be just looking for the flower that represents the country Singapore. Do you get it?

I’m not saying that short-tailed keywords won’t result in conversion. For example, key phrase like “aircon servicing” can be very targeted for companies who provide aircon servicing and repair to consumers.

Therefore, it is all about choosing the right keywords for your PPC campaign so as to make your campaign effective. Before you add any keyword to your campaign, make sure that the keywords make sense to you. If you are using Google Adwords for your PPC campaign, what you can do is to design various ad groups and do split testing. After split testing, delete those keywords that do not convert. This will help you to come out with ad groups with the best mix of both short-tailed and long-tailed keywords, and start driving quality traffic to your website.

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This is a common question that always arise when people intend to use search engines to market their product… Search engine optimization and PPC (pay-per-click) which one is better? From my opinion, I think that there are pros and cons for both search engine marketing methods.

Conventional wisdom might ask: why would you pay for a ranking when you can get one for free? This may be an easy to answer when in the past, by just putting keywords in the meta tags, you will be able to achieve high organic listings for your keywords. However, search engine algorithms has became more complicated, and to obtain good organic ranking in search engines, you will need to put in more effort, time and dedication to secure and sustain strong organic search rankings. Let us discuss some of the key advantages and disadvantages of both SEO and PPC:

SEO Advantages: Do not pay for clicks, higher conversion rate, users may more readily trust organic listings.

SEO Disadvantages: Take longer time to obtain rankings, more effort and time to sustain rankings, cannot guarantee placement, unpredictable environment due to ever-changing search engine algorithms.

PPC Advantages: Immediate exposure, have control over editorial, enable easy testing and optimization of ad text.

PPC Disadvantages: Expensive, pay for clicks, requires ongoing tweaking and analysis for success, some users may not trust sponsored listings.

As you can clearly see from the comparison above, both SEO and PPC has their pros and cons.

In fact, I think an effective search campaign should consist of both SEO and PPC because you can use both to target different set of keywords. For example, you should use PPC and buy keyword phrases that are very broad and short-tail or extremely niche and long-tail. Then optimize organically for medium-tail terms that have a strong search volume but a moderate level of competition. If your website sells golf equipments and clubs, you should use PPC to target keywords like “golf” and “custom made golf clubs for amateurs”. Then use a term such as “golf clubs” (medium-tail term) for your organic search optimization.

With the right search engine marketing plan, you will be able to get tons of targeted traffic to your website. If you do not have the time to plan out your search engine marketing campaign, it is best for you to hand both PPC and SEO to one agency to handle it entirely. Entrusting these two aspects to an agency alone will allow your agency to make both of them work well together and prevent any overlap. This potentially enable you to create synergies that would otherwise have been missed if you engage a SEO agency and PPC agency separately.

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