How to trim the long-tail fat from your paid search program

Let’s face it. Enterprise paid search advertising is a big mess of big data. A lot of the manual techniques that can be used to optimize small to medium-sized paid search programs are simply not scalable when you’re dealing with thousands upon thousands of individual keywords and ad groups.

This is especially true when it comes to the famous “long tail” of search.

Unlike head and torso terms, which have a relatively high amount of search volume and therefore result in a relatively high amount of clicks and conversion data, many long-tail terms sit there gathering dust. They only result in clicks every once in a while, which makes them notoriously difficult to evaluate from a conversion and ROI standpoint. Moreover, there are so many of them that attempting to evaluate on a one-by-one basis is a fool’s errand.

But with a bit of craftiness – and a penchant for slicing and dicing big data – it is possible to identify and eliminate unproductive long-tail keywords en masse.

I can’t give away the exact recipe that we use to identify long-tail clunkers, because that would just be wrong. However, what I can do is provide some key reporting dimensions, metrics, and cadences that you can use to build out your own scalable approach to managing the long-tail:

1. Establish a minimum threshold of clicks/spend without a conversion – we have a unique recipe for determining this at HSN but you can experiment with different thresholds until you determine the right threshold for your business/client. In addition to that threshold, decide upon a time frame in which you will query conversion data to determine non-converters (e.g. no conversion after x clicks/spend over a six-month period)
2. Compare different attribution models – A good place to start is by comparing last-click conversion data vs. first-click conversion data. The goal here is to ensure that the clunkers you identify are true clunkers no matter how you look at it (Note: If you don’t know what the difference between first-click and last-click attribution is or how to gather that data, find out in a hurry because your business is missing a huge piece of marketing perspective)
3. Query your keyword data on a regular, ongoing basis to identify new clunkers – Quarterly, monthly, maybe even weekly. Whatever floats your boat. The key is to continually mine for keywords that are simply not worth keeping in your portfolio
4. Develop a strategy for reallocating the spend that you “save” by pausing unproductive keywords. This is key because the ultimate idea isn’t to simply remove unproductive keywords. The real goal is to take those savings and reallocate them into productive areas of the program so that you can maximize your paid search budget (or your overall marketing budget across all channels)