11/05/2023

Capture High-Value Long Tail Keywords in Google Ads

Google Ads is a powerful advertising tool for any business, but it can be difficult to find the right keywords and put together an effective campaign. One of the best ways to score big with your Google Adwords campaigns is by capturing long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are made up of phrases that have less search volume than more popular terms, but they often convert better because searchers are looking for specific topics or products.

In this post we’ll show you four easy-to-implement techniques that will help you identify profitable long tail keywords in Google Ads and make sure your campaigns get off on the right foot!

What is a long tail keyword?

A long tail keyword is a search term that usually has a low volume of monthly searches. It’s a keyword with more specific and niche terms.

Exactly how low is low volume? Depending on your industry, and target country or market, this could be anything below 100 searches / month (a good rule of thumb for most industries in the US market) , or perhaps below 30 / month (for a niche industry in the US, or a mid-sized industry in a smaller country).

The long tail theory is a marketing concept created by Chris Anderson in 2004, when he was Editor-in-chief for Wired Magazine. The theory is based on the idea that a few products, such as best-sellers or blockbusters, account for the majority of sales and profits, while many other products have much smaller sales, but when you add the total sale volume of these many small-sellers, you get a bigger total revenue than from the “few best-sellers”.

It’s the same for Google Ads and long tail keywords. A single long tail keyword may not give you many impressions, clicks or let alone conversions. But if you add up enough long tail keywords (providing that they are relevant), you may get as many or even more conversions than if you were only bidding on high volume keywords.

Why do long tail keywords have higher value in Google Ads?

Long tail keywords have a higher value in Google Ads because of their specificity. The more specific the keyword is, the more relevant it is to the searcher, and the more likely they are to generate conversions for your campaigns..

Also, long tail keywords are generally less competitive on Google Ads, given that most advertisers tend to use more “short head” keywords (the opposite of a long tail keyword, short terms with a big monthly search volume). This means that for a long tail keyword, you’ll normally have fewer competitors than if you were to use a short head keyword.
Long tail competition, of course, depends on the nature of your industry or niche, and on the term itself. It’s important to note that there is no universal rule saying that the less frequently searched a term is, the less competitive it is on Google Ads. There are some very obscure health terms that will usually have very high competition and extremely high CPCs.

The value is usually in the balance between specificity or relevance to the user, and competition. If you can have highly specific long tail keywords, with lower CPCs or competition, you’ve found a diamond. And in order to find diamonds, you usually need to dig a lot.

How to find long tail keywords for Google Ads

1. Google Ads Keyword Planner

One of the best ways to find long tail keywords is by using Google Ads Keyword Planner. It can provide you with a list of keywords that have low competition and high search volume. However, this is just a starting point, since the Keyword Planner data is easily available to anyone with a Google Ads account (that is, your competition). After exhausting what the Keyword Planner has to offer, you still need to dig deeper.

2. Targeting broad match keywords and using the Search Term report

Another way capture long tail keyword ideas is to have broad match keywords running, and then mine the Search Term report.
With this report, you’ll get all related terms to your board match keywords that users are actually searching for. Add to the most relevant ad group every search term that looks promising.

This is a daily task that we recommend to scale and improve all Google Ads search campaigns. This way you’ll have a constant flow of better keyword ideas and you’ll improve your relevance and quality score by focusing on the exact keywords that people type into Google.

3. Your own Keyword Research

Obviously, you can also conduct Keyword Research outside Google Ads. For this task, there is a wide host of third party tools focused on keyword research for SEM and SEO purposes, and they can all prove very effective.

To name a few, SEO suites like Semrush, Sistrix and Ahrefs are some of our long-time favorites, but also some free tools like Answer The Public, or free Chrome extensions like Keywords Everywhere or Keyword Surfer will also help you do the job.

Finally, don’t stop at third party tools, they’re also available for your competition. A sure way to access data available only to you is to talk to your customers, via customer surveys. A simple Google Forms sent via email is a great way to capture the terms that your audience use and that may very well be turned into great long tail keyword for your campaign.

How to get the most out of your long tail keywords

Even if you’ve followed all these steps and found lots of promising long tail keywords, you shouldn’t stop at targeting those keywords. Having specific content is also important.

We could say that the more specific or niche the content of your landing pages is, the lower your competition will be, and the closer you will be to real and specific pain points of your audience (and therefore, closer to converting). Your copy and CTAs will resonate more with your audience.

Conclusion

Long tail keywords are a must have to any search campaign because they have less competition, but it can be difficult to find them.

If you’re looking at ways to streamline this process, be sure to try OrbitalAds. We automate all the steps above so you’ll never run out of long tail keyword ideas to add to your campaign.