1. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
Use a Long Tail Keyword
Strategy in PPC and SEO to
Promote your College
Slide 1

2. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
Overview
The Struggle of Small or Niche Colleges
2) Long Tail Keywords
3) The PPC Side of Things
4) The Organic Search Side of Things
5) What Does It Change For Your College?
1)
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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3. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
1. The Struggle of Small or Niche Colleges
It’s common for small to mid-size colleges with excellent
programs to struggle against larger colleges online.
 Never a lot of marketing budget to invest in one single
program.
 Momentum of a larger competitor’s website, SEO, PPC and
social media activities means:





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Minimal traffic
Low leads
Fewer registrations
Low search rankings
How do you get around this?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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4. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
2. Long Tail Keywords

One strategy is to invest in “the long tail of search”,
specifically long tail keyword tactics with PPC campaigns
and SEO.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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5. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
2. Long Tail Keywords

In this example “logistics management software case
studies” is a long tail keyword phrase, occurring on the
green section of the curve.

The farther to the right a term appears the further out on the
“ long tail” it moves, having lower cost per click and lower
search frequency.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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6. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
2. Long Tail Keywords

As your keyword phrase gets longer and more specific, the
phrase’s total search frequency drops, along with it the
competition for that phrase and the approximate cost per
click.

So if the searches are so scarce and the numbers are so
low, why should you pursue them?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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7. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
2. Long Tail Keywords

Because:
 1. Not many others are targeting them so they're generally more cost
effective to acquire.
 2. These searches align more closely with your program.

This means they generally turn out to be higher quality
prospects and convert at a much higher rate than the
average.

If we can agree that these are people that we would like to
have visit our site how do we improve the odds that we are
seen by them and that we hopefully get clicked on?
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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8. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
3. The PPC Side of Things
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
Pay per click (PPC) ads are targeted at specific keyword
phrases.
The main variables affecting PPC campaigns are specificity
of keyword phrase, the volume of searches and cost per
click (CPC).
 Long tail keywords target traffic of well-aligned searchers and
generally convert at higher rates.
 Because of the very low search volume on these terms, most people
skip over them and concentrate on ones with higher volume.
 They convert at a higher rate (approximately 4-6%) but you still need
a large number of searches to make the numbers work.
 The key to this strategy is to research, identify and pull together
hundreds of long tail keyword phrases.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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9. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
3. The PPC Side of Things

Here are a few strategies and sources to get you started:
 Start with your Adwords Search Query Report for any general
campaigns you are running, identify and pull out the long tail
keyword terms.
 Use the AdWords Keyword Tool and research keyword volume and
costs
 Add qualifying terms (i.e. part-time, full-time, online) to your keyword
phrases
 Add a localizing terms ( i.e. Toronto, Chicago) to your keyword
phrases
 Identify keywords being used by your competitors and incorporate
them into your keyword phrases
 Check your traffic reports in Google Analytics for new keywords
 Check your internal site search for new keywords
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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10. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
4. The Organic Search Side of Things
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
Search engines rank your pages highly if your content is of
high quality.
Incorporate content on your site that uses these long tail
keyword phrases.
 You must blog about it, publish questions and answers about it, or
include a forum about it.


As your content grows and improves, your organic ranking
for these long tail keywords will naturally improve.
This “organic” engagement with your audience, along with
your use of targeted keywords will position youhighly for the
long tail terms you have prioritized for.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – How to Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and SEO to Promote your College
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11. Use a Long Tail Keyword Strategy in PPC and
SEO to Promote your College
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