Tracking Long tail keywords through Google Analytics

  Google Analytics, Tracking   25 Comments

 

This is advanced seo conference stuff. It Should be Many SEOs agree that there is power in the long tail. There are also several solid stats to back up this claim. Recently i was asked one question and i think the same question bothers you too:

 

There may be millions of ‘rare’ search terms in the tail, but the important things to ask are how much of the traffic they generate is relevant to a particular business and is there enough ROI to make it worth spending to chase those searches – Ivor Morgan (Head of Sales & Marketing at Morpheus Limited, UK)

In this post i will answer this question using my certified Google Analytics Ninja skills analytics-ninja and prove you in the next few minutes why hiring an SEO Analyst is profitable for your business. So here we go. You may have been waiting for reports like these for a long long time:

The Power of the Long Tail

Fig.1 The power of the long tail keywords

 Here majority of one word keyword phrases are brand terms. So conversion rate (CR) is bound to be high. The CR from two words keyword phrases is higher than the three words keywords phrases. But three words keyword phrases are generating more revenue than one word and two word keyword phrases. This is a real life example of the power of the long tail keywords.

The power of Long Tail Keywords

Fig. 2 Revenue is coming even from four and five words keyword phrases. That’s cool.

The power of Long Tail Keywords

Fig. 3 Revenue is coming even from six, seven and eight words keywords phrases. WOW.

The power of the long tail keywords

Fig.4 Revenue is coming even from nine words keywords phrases. I am getting conversions even for ten words keyword phrases. This is super cool.

Now the question is how i generated these reports. Answer is Google Analytics Advanced Segments, Custom Reports and Advanced Regular Expressions.You can learn more about advanced segments and custom reports through these videos:

 

I created 10 advanced segments using regular expressions. You can create them straightaway by logging into your Google Analytics account and then clicking on the links below one by one:

Give me my first advanced segment
Give me my second advanced segment
Give me my third advanced segment
Give me my fourth advanced segment
Give me my fifth advanced segment

Take a break.
.
.
.
Lets go…

Give me my sixth advanced segment
Give me my seventh advanced segment
Give me my eight advanced segment
Give me my ninth advanced segment
Give me my tenth advanced segment

ok that’s enough. Phew!

Once i created these advanced segments i applied them to my custom reports to get the results as shown in figure 1 to 4 above. That’s it?…………Not really. You should also be interested in knowing which keyword phrases are driving conversions and revenue and which are worth targeting. So you are basically looking for something like this:

Fig. 5 These are the three words keyword phrases which are worth targeting.

 

Fig.6 These are four words keyword phrases which are worth targeting

Similarly you can determine 5 words to 10 words keyword phrases which are worth targeting and for which you are not currently ranking in top 10 on Google and other search engines. Note that i have used the weighted sort (feature of Google Analytics) to get the most actionable data. Once you have targeted all such keywords, then you should target those keywords from which you are getting at least one conversion (without using the weighted sort). I used following regular expressions to filter keywords on the Google Analytics reporting interface:

^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){0}$ =>Filter 1 word keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){1}$ =>Filter 2 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){2}$ =>Filter 3 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){3}$ =>Filter 4 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){4}$ =>Filter 5 words keyword phrase

^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){5}$ => Filter 6 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){6}$ => Filter 7 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){7}$ => Filter 8 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){8}$ => Filter 9 words keyword phrase
^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){9}$ =>Filter 10 words keyword phrase

 

 

Himanshu Sharma About the Author: is the founder of seotakeaways.com which provides SEO Consulting, PPC Management and Analytics Consulting services to medium and large size businesses. He holds a bachelors degree in ‘Internet Science’, is a member of 'Digital Analytics Association', a Google Analytics Certified Individual and a Certified Web Analyst. He is also the founder of EventEducation.com and EventPlanningForum.net.

My business thrives on referrals, so I really appreciate recommendations to people who would benefit from my help. Please feel free to endorse/forward my LinkedIn Profile to your clients, colleagues, friends and others you feel would benefit from SEO, PPC or Web Analytics.

 

 

  • http://Website Jon

    Great post. One question though:

    I have hundreds of sites in my Analytics, and when I click the Advanced Segment links in the post it tries to create the segment for the first profile. Any idea of a work around?

    Thanks
    Jon

    • seo himanshu

      When you are creating an advanced segment there is a drop down button just below the ‘save segment’ button. Like ‘Visible in and N other profiles. Here N can be any number from 1 to …… Through this button you can apply your segment to any number of website profiles.

      • http://Website Jon

        Thanks, that would probably have been easier, good plan!

        What I did was to use your URLs and append &id=xxx

        (XXX being the id of the profile).

  • http://Website Jon

    Actually I’ve sorted it. Just wondering how to create the Custom Report you have. Mine nearly look like yours but I’m doing something wrong. Can you go through the set up of this Custom Report?

    • seo himanshu

      Create a new custom report. Select ‘keyword’ as dimension and ‘visits’, ‘goal conversion rate’, ‘revenue’ and ‘total goal completions’ as metrics.

      • http://Website Jon

        Ok thanks. Created the Custom Report and re-read your post but still a bit confused as I couldn’t get Weighted Sort option. Guess I don’t know as much about Analytics as I thought!

        Not sure why you need to run the filters on keyword again if you’ve already set up the Advanced Segment with the same regex.

        I’m subscribed to the feed anyway, so I’ll check on any updates to this topic.

        Thanks Himanshu.

        • seo himanshu

          You will see ‘weighted sort’ option once you sort one of the metrics like ‘conversion rate’ in ascending or descending order. Just click on the ‘conversion rate’ column head for that. Through advanced segments you can understand the impact of keyword phrase length on other metrics but you can’t determine the actual keywords. That’s why i used filters. Try to apply advanced segments on your keywords custom report and you will get my point. By the way i apply advanced segments to all traffic sources report and filters to the keywords custom report. If you like this post then please share it with others. We bloggers need lot of such support to keep going :)

          • http://Website Jon

            Thanks and I see what you mean about using Advacned Filters on the keywords custom report.

            By the way. I think this is a mistake above:

            ^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){10}$ =>Filter 10 words keyword phrase

            Should be

            ^[^\.\s\-]+([\.\s\-]+[^\.\s\-]+){9}$ =>Filter 10 words keyword phrase

            Thanks
            Jon

  • http://www.alexanders.co.nz Rachel Alexander

    This is fantastic! Thanks for sharing how you got these reports. I can see I have a lot of work ahead of me in the Xmas holidays learning how to do this. Also didn’t realise Google Analytics was doing accreditation like Adwords.

  • http://Website Rajan Jain

    It is a good food for thought here. Short tail keywords are difficult to rank for but give lot of traffic. Long tail keywords are easy to rank for, give very less traffic but can have a great conversion rate. So i prefer to target both of them. Very interesting post. I am learning a lot from you himanshu.

  • http://Website Donald

    This is the best article i have seen on long tail keywords. I have been focusing on generic keywords upto now. Its time to start focusing on the long tail. But i have one question. How I can determine conversion rate of keywords?

    • seo himanshu

      To determine conversion rate of keywords, you need to create a custom report with ‘keyword’ as dimension and ‘goal conversion rate as metrics’.

      • http://Website Donald

        Thanks seo himanshu.

  • http://Website Justin

    Excellent article. But i think i need to read it couple of times to sink in. I specially like the regular expressions you have used to filter keywords on the reporting interface. Thanks again for this wonderful post.

  • http://Website Gary Young

    Hi Himanshu! I am having a little hard time understanding your blog post. How you built those custom reports and applied advanced segments?

    • seo himanshu

      Hi Gary! You can learn about advanced segments here and about custom reports here. I hope this helps.

  • http://Website Jitender

    Thank you for adding the videos Himanshu. It is of great help to me. I was struggling with advanced segments. Can you also add a video for regular expressions. Thanks again.

    • seo himanshu

      I don’t know any video about regular expressions as such. If you want to learn more than i recommend Mastering Regular Expressions book by jeffrey. It is the ultimate resource on regex.

  • http://Website Adam

    you really are an analytics ninja :) never even tried the segments before but got to know a lot thru your post here.thanks a lot.

  • http://www.iareweb.com Brian

    Thanks for the tutorial. Btw, getting slightly different values when using your RegExp than I received when using these which Avinash recommends.

    Here is a tutorial on using RegExp in Google Analytics as well.

    • http://www.seotakeaways.com/ Himanshu

      Hi Brian! Avinash used different regex. May be more refined than mine as you can see my post is older than his post. Anyways I would not be bothered about the actual numbers. I look for trend in the data and i would suggest you the same. Thanks for pointing out the GA tutorial. But i should remind you that i am GA certified with GAIQ score of 95% and i have read all these stuffs gazillion times so far :)