Become a Home Based Travel Agent

The 8 Secrets of Long-Tail Keywords
By Tom Ogg

Over a decade ago I was doing seminars for travel agents on how to exploit the Web to grow their business. At the time many quality URLs were available for registration without having to buy them from someone else. I coined terms for the various types of URLs as Category, Descriptive Category and Descriptive Keyword. A Category URL, as an example, was PortReviews.com. A Descriptive Category URL was AlaskaPortReviews.com and a Descriptive Keyword URL would have been SewardAlaskaPortReviews.com. In their simplest forms, a Category URL was a research URL, a Descriptive Category URL was a Shopping URL and a Descriptive Keyword URL was generally a buying URL. As web users drilled down through the research, shopping and buying stages of a transaction, the URLs and search terms became more and more refined.

Category URL websites tended to follow an affiliate revenue business model, as visitors were looking for information and PPC revenues based on highly relative ads drove extraordinary click through rates generating substantial incomes for sites with high traffic. Websites residing at Descriptive Category URLs tended to be in the business of selling advertising to companies that were looking for the specific demographics that the Descriptive Category URL engaged. Descriptive Keyword urls were best used on websites that actually sold a product or service relative to the keywords that described the URL. Today Descriptive Keyword urls are known as Long Tail Keyword urls, but they act the same and have become even more important to travel entrepreneurs that market on the web. Long Tail Keywords are important now because consumers use them to search when they are getting close to buying a product or service. They are also important from a PPC advertisement perspective because they offer a high conversion ratio (click to sale) and potentially a low cost per click because of a lack of competition for the specific keywords.

While there is no globally accepted definition of the term “Long Tail Keywords” there is a consensus that accepts the following “Long Tail Keywords usually have at least three, and some times as many as six, or more words. They are used to establish a very specific definition of the content that resides on a web page and to help searchers find the specific information that they are looking for. Long Tail Keyword web pages are optimized to obtain high search engine rankings on search page results for their specific keywords. Long Tail Keywords tend to produce a smaller number of visitors than other types of keywords, but deliver visitors that are more likely to purchase the specific product or service being offered relative to the keywords, as they are well along in the purchasing process. As consumers become more and more understanding of search and the web, Long Tail Keywords will become increasingly important to those marketing products and services through websites.

Here are the 8 Secrets of Long Tail Keywords:

Use Long Tail Keywords to Create Sales and Revenue: They can deliver organic and paid search driven visitors to your website that are ready to purchase your specific product or service. This can be accomplished in two different ways. 1. Long Tail Keyword optimized web pages in your website can gain high search engine rankings for the specific keywords and deliver organic traffic to your site. 2. Long Tail Keyword PPC advertising can deliver new visitors that are ready to purchase your product or service by clicking on your advertisement when it is delivered either in a search environment or on relevant content on a publisher’s website that is running contextual PPC ads, as part of a network.

Use Search Terms Your Clients Will Use to Purchase: “Seven Night Eastern Caribbean Cruise” could be considered a long tail keyword search string, but it lacks the focus and commitment of a more descriptive long tail search that “Seven Night Oasis Golf Eastern Caribbean Cruise” does. The first is really a long research search, while the other indicates the searcher has drilled down to a very specific cruise and is now shopping, but may be ready to purchase. “October 12^th 2012 Oasis Eastern Caribbean golf cruise” indicates that the client may now ready to purchase and is doing some last minute shopping comparisons before doing so. This is when you want to have the client delivered to your website. You should deliver the potential client to a landing page designed to sell this specific cruise and special interest the client is looking for.

Understand the Keyword’s Search Volume and Competition: Long Tail Keywords are generally very specific in nature. For this reason the search string may have a very low search volume. As an example, “Carnival Caribbean Cruise” may have a massive search volume while “12 night Carnival Spirit Hawaii Cruise” would have a much lower search volume. Again, if your landing page for these specific keywords offered the best value proposition, your conversion ratio would be dramatically higher than folks arriving at a web page based on the first search string. You can use Google AdWords Keyword Tool to uncover viable Long Tail Keywords. Use sites like WordTracker.com to discover a keyword’s search volume and how much competition there is for the keyword. WordTracker will also suggest addition keywords that may be relevant. Ideally, a keyword with high search volume and low competition are the ones that you want to use. Keywords with high search volume, but even higher competition should be avoided.

Understand the Relationship Between Keyword Price and its Search Volume: Many keywords have high search prices. Crystal Cruises, as an example commands a ton of money per click in PPC advertising, but you can drill down to a long tail keyword that can intercept a Crystal Cruise buyer at the appropriate time by using long tail keywords that cost a pittance to the more generic search term. However, if no one uses the long tail keyword, your efforts might be lost. Be sure to check the volume and price of long tail keywords that you optimize your landing pages with to make sure that they are viable. A high priced long tail keyword may drive traffic, but not conversions. Again, you should use the Google AdWords Keyword tool for this purpose

A keyword’s price is usually dependent on how competitive it is, or how many websites use the keywords making competition for clicks quite intense. Generally, as one drills down to long tail keywords that are responsive to searches, where searchers are ready to buy, the specific keywords will drop in price.

Understand Your Long Tail Keyword Conversion Ratio and Cost vs. Yield per Conversion: Especially when using Long Tail Keywords for PPC campaigns, you should deliver your visitor to an environment that enhances your conversion ratio from click to sale. This is best accomplished by delivering them to a dedicated landing page isolated from your normal website with the sole function of consummating a sale. If you have a low conversion ratio consider revising the keywords to make sure you are capturing the potential client in the buying cycle and not before. This is one of the biggest mistakes that travel agents make. By tweaking your keywords and web page format, you should be able to increase your conversion ratio.

Once you know your conversion ratio (click to sale) you can determine your average yield per click and conversion. This is extremely important, as if your cost per click is higher than your yield per click; you are losing money even though the effort is driving revenue. When your yield per click dramatically exceeds the cost per click, this is your signal to increase your PPC advertising budget for the Long Tail Keywords that are producing the page visits.

Analyze Your Keywords: You should run Google Analytics on your website and review your site’s performance weekly. The Google Analytics report will show you exactly what keywords your visitors used to find you in search engines and what pages they entered your website on. I was shocked to find out that our website www.PuntaMitaCondoRentals.com main portal page was created by surfers looking for information on Punta Mita Surf Spots. They landed on an interior page and then backed into our site where we rent our condos. Knowing this, we built other logical Long Tail Keyword pages such as “Nayarit Surf Spots” and so on. We furnished our condos to appeal to surfers. The result was that our occupancy rate has gone through the roof based solely on Long Tail Ketword organic traffic in spite of the challenges that Mexico faces. Use Google Analytics to uncover your opportunities to grow your traffic and profits.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize: You should optimize every page in your website with different Long Tail Keywords. Use keyword links to the page and put the keywords in your META Tags, H1 Headline, textual content (especially the first 500 words on the page) and use keyword links from other pages in the website. Be sure to tag all pictures and graphics in your site, as well. It is estimated that as much as 15% of Google searches are for images to locate content. Use Keyword .alt tags and be sure to use keyword captions for each picture. While tagging can take time, it will reward you by creating new entry ways to your content.

Content, Content, Content: While all of this can create new traffic targeted on visitors close to making a buying decision, it will not do anything to increase your revenues if your content is sub-standard. Unique and quality content is mandatory to make search engines love you. Never publish copied or duplicate content and be sure that your content is the strongest on the Internet for each Long Tail Keyword that you are optimizing pages for. Just like in real estate where it is Location, Location, Location the same is true for content.