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Diving for Pearls: A Guide to Long Tail Keywords – Next Level

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Diving for Pearls: A Guide to Long Tail Keywords - Next Level

Welcome to this refreshed installment of our educational Next Level series! Originally published in June 2016 this blog has been rewritten to include new tool screenshots and refreshed workflows. Together we’ll uncover keywords in the vastness of the long tail.

Looking for more Next Level posts? Previously we explored how to create relevant and engaging SEO reports.

One of the biggest obstacles to driving forward your business online is being able to rank well for keywords that people are searching for. Getting your lovely URLs to show up in those precious top positions — and gaining a good portion of the visitors behind the searches — can feel like an impossible dream. Particularly if you’re working on a newish site on a modest budget within a competitive niche.

Well, strap yourself in, because today we’re going to live that dream. I’ll take you through the bronze, silver, and gold levels of finding, assessing, and targeting long tail keywords so you can start getting visitors to your site that are primed and ready to convert.

Quick steps to building a long tail keyword list:

  1. Draw from your industry and customer knowledge

  2. Add suggestions from Google Autocomplete

  3. Explore industry language on social media

  4. Pull relevant suggestions from a keyword tool

  5. Prioritize using popularity and difficulty metrics

  6. Understand the competitive landscape to pinpoint opportunities

What are long tail keywords?

The “long tail of search” refers to the many weird and wonderful ways the diverse people of the world search for any given niche.

People (yes, people! Shiny, happy, everyday, run-of-the-mill, muesli-eating, credit-card-swiping people!) rarely stop searching broad and generic ‘head’ keywords, like “web design” or “camera” or “sailor moon.”

They clarify their search with emotional triggers, technical terms they’ve learned from reading forums, and compare features and prices before mustering up the courage to commit and convert on your site.

The long tail is packed with searches like “best web designer in Nottingham” or “mirrorless camera 4k video 2016” or “sailor moon cat costume.”

This adaptation of the Search Demand Curve chart visualizes the long tail of search by using the tried and tested “Internet loves cats + animated gifs are the coolest = SUCCESS” formula.

Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

The Search Demand Curve illustrates that while “head” and “body” terms typically amass higher search volume, seeming appealing at first. The vastness of the “long tail” presents a more substantial opportunity and larger percentage of search traffic that shouldn’t be ignored. You can really see this illustrated when combined as a percentage of search traffic. While this graph contains no cats, it is still entirely illustrative. However the long tail of search isn’t slowing down anytime soon with voice search and AI integrations we can expect the vastness of the long tail to continue to grow.

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While search volume for any individual long tail keyword is typically less, user intent is much more specific and viewed as a group targeting the long tail often enables you to target a larger more engaged audience. Also beautifully illustrated in Dr. Pete’s infamous chunky thorax post.

The long tail of search is being constantly generated by people seeking answers from the Internet hive mind. There’s no end to what you’ll find if you have a good old rummage about, including: Questions, styles, colors, brands, concerns, peeves, desires, hopes, dreams… and everything in between.

Fresh, new, outrageous, often bizarre keywords. If you’ve done any keyword research you’ll know what I mean by bizarre. Things a person wouldn’t admit to their best friend, therapist, or doctor they’ll happily pump into Google and hit search. In this post we’re going to go diving for pearls: keywords with searcher intent, high demand, low competition, and a spot on the SERPs just for you.

Bronze medal: Build your own long tail keyword

It’s really easy to come up with a long tail keyword. You can use your brain, gather some thoughts, take a stab in the dark, and throw a few keyword modifiers around your ‘head’ keyword.

Have you ever played that magnetic fridge poetry game? It’s a bit like that. You can play online if (like me) you have an aversion to physical things.

1678336498 181 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

I’m no poet, but I think I deserve a medal for this attempt, and now I really want some “hot seasonal berry water.”

Magnetic poetry not doing it for you? Don’t worry — that’s only the beginning.

Use your industry knowledge

Time to draw on that valuable industry knowledge you’ve been storing up, jot down some ideas, and think about intent and common misconceptions. I’m going to use the example pearls or freshwater pearls in this post as the head term because that’s something I’m interested in.

Let’s go! Let’s say I run a jewelry business and I know that my customers regularly have questions, like:

How do I clean freshwater pearls

Using my knowledge I can rattle off and build a keyword list.

Search your keyword

Engage google suggested search tool to get some more ideas. Manually enter your keyword into Google and prompting it to populate popular suggestions, like I’ve done below:

1678336499 661 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Awesome, I’m adding Freshwater pearls price to my list.

Explore the language of social media

Get amongst the over-sharers and have a look at what people are chatting about on social media by searching your keyword in Twitter, tiktok, Instagram, and Youtube. These are topics in your niche that people are talking about right now.

YouTube is also pulling up some interesting ideas around my keyword. This is simultaneously helping me gather keyword ideas and giving me a good sense about what content is already out there. Don’t worry, we’ll touch on content later on in this post. 🙂

1678336500 511 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

I’m adding understanding types of pearls and Difference between saltwater and freshwater pearls to my list.

Ask keyword questions…?

You’ll probably notice that I’ve added a question mark to a phrase that is not a question, just to mess with you all. Apologies for the confusing internal-reading-voice-upwards-inflection.

Questions are my favorite types of keywords. What!? You don’t have a fav keyword type? Well, you do now — trust me.

Answer the Public is packed with questions radiating out from your seed term

Pop freshwater pearls into the tool and grab some questions for our growing list.

To leave no rock unturned (or no mollusk unshucked), let’s pop over to Google Search Console to find keywords that are already sending you traffic (and discover any mismatches between your content and user intent.)

Pile these into a list, like I’ve done in this spreadsheet.

Now this is starting to look interesting: we’ve got some keyword modifiers, some clear buying signals, and a better idea of what people might be looking for around “freshwater pearls.”

1678336501 886 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Should you stop there? I’m flabbergasted — how can you even suggest that?! This is only the beginning. 🙂

Silver medal: Assess demand and explore topics

So far, so rosy. But we’ve been focusing on finding keywords, picking them up, and stashing them in our collection like colored glass at the seaside.

To really dig into the endless tail of your niche, you’ll need a keyword tool like our very own Keyword Explorer. This is invaluable for finding topics within your niche that present a real opportunity for your site.

If you’re trying out Keyword Explorer for the first time, you’ll have 10 free searches/mo with a free Moz Community account and even more with a Moz Pro free trial or paid subscription.

Find search volume for your head keyword

To start, enter a broad industry keyword. In my case I’ll type in “pearls” into the Keyword Explorer search box. Now you can see Moz’s Monthly Volume displaying how often a term or phrase is searched for in Google:

1678336501 164 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Now try “freshwater pearls.” As expected, the search volume goes down, but we’re getting more specific.

1678336501 7 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

We could keep going like this, but we’re going to burn up all our free searches. Just take it as read that, as you get more specific and enter all the phrases we found earlier, the search volume will decrease even more. There may not be any data at all. That’s why you need to explore the searches around this main keyword.

Find even more long tail keywords

Below the search volume, click on “Keyword Suggestions.”

1678336501 858 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Well, hi there, ever-expanding long tail! We’ve gone from a handful of keywords pulled together manually from different sources to 1,000 suggestions right there on your screen. Positioned right next to that, search volume to give us an idea of demand.

The diversity of searches within your niche is just as important as that big number we saw at the beginning, because it shows you how much demand there is for this niche as a whole. We’re also learning more about searcher intent.

I’m scanning through those 1,000 suggestions and looking for other terms that pop up again and again. I’m also looking for signals and different ways the words are being used to pick out words to expand my list.

I like to toggle between sorting by Relevancy and search volume, and then scroll through all the results to cherry-pick those that catch my eye.

1678336502 964 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords
1678336502 423 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Now reverse the volume filter so that it’s showing lower-volume search terms and scroll down through the end of the tail to explore the lower-volume chatter.

If we don’t have tracked data in our database you can always cross reference with another data set to validate their value.

This is where your industry knowledge comes into play again. Bots, formulas, spreadsheets, and algorithms are all well and good, but don’t discount your own instincts and knowledge.

Use the suggestion filters to your advantage and play around with broader or more specific suggestion types.

1678336503 109 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Looking through the suggestions, I’ve noticed that the word “cultured” has popped up a few times.

1678336503 650 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

To see these all bundled together, I want to look at the grouping options in Keyword Explorer. I like the high lexicon groups so I can see how much discussion is going on within my topics.

1678336504 263 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Scroll down and expand that group to get an idea of demand and assess intent.

1678336504 767 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

I’m also interested in the words around “price” and “value,” so I’m doing the same and saving those to my sheet, along with the search volume. A few attempts at researching the “cleaning” of pearls wasn’t very fruitful, so I’ve adjusted my search to “clean freshwater pearls.”

Because I’m a keyword questions fanatic, I’m also going to filter by questions (the bottom option from the drop-down menu):

1678336505 380 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

OK! How is our keyword list looking? Pretty darn hot, I reckon! We’ve gathered together a list of keywords and dug into the long tail of these sub-niches, and right alongside we’ve got search volume.

1678336505 158 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

You’ll notice that some of the keywords I discovered in the bronze stage don’t have any data showing up in Keyword Explorer (indicated by the hyphen in the screenshot above). That’s ok — they’re still topics I can research further. This is exactly why we have assessed demand; no wild goose chase for us!

Ok, we’re drawing some conclusions, we’re building our list, and we’re making educated decisions. Congrats on your silver-level keyword wizardry! 😀

Gold medal: Find out who you’re competing with

We’re not operating in a vacuum. There’s always someone out there trying to elbow their way onto the first page. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that just because it’s a long tail term with a nice chunk of search volume all those clicks will rain down on you. If the terms you’re looking to target already have big names headlining, this could very well alter your roadmap.

To reap the rewards of targeting the long tail, you’ll have to make sure you can outperform your competition.

Manually check the SERPs

Check out who’s showing up in the search engine results page (SERPs) by running a search for your head term. Make sure you’re signed out of Google and in an incognito tab.

We’re focusing on the organic results to find out if there are any weaker URLs you can pick off.

I’ll start with “freshwater pearls” for illustrative purposes.

1678336506 151 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Whoooaaa, this is a noisy page. I’ve had to scroll a whole 2.5cm on my magic mouse (that’s very nearly a whole inch for the imperialists among us) just to see any organic results.

Let’s install the Mozbar to discover some metrics on the fly, like domain authority and back-linking data.

1678336506 378 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Now, if seeing those big players in the SERPs doesn’t make it clear, looking at the Mozbar metrics certainly does. This is exclusive real estate. It’s dominated by retailers, although Wikipedia gets a place in the middle of the page.

Let’s get into the mind of Google for a second. It — or should I say “they” (I can’t decide if it’s more creepy for Google to be referred to as a singular or plural pronoun. Let’s go with “they”) — anyway, I digress. “They” are guessing that we’re looking to buy pearls, but they’re also offering results on what they are.

This sort of information is offered up by big retailers who have created content that targets the intention of searchers. Mikimoto drives us to their blog post all about where freshwater pearls come from.

1678336507 59 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

As you get deeper into the long tail of your niche, you’ll begin to come across sites you might not be so familiar with. So go and have a peek at their content.

With a little bit of snooping you can easily find out:

  • how relevant the article is

  • if it looks appealing, up to date, and sharable

  • be really judge-y: why not?

Now let’s find some more:

  • when the article was published

  • when their site was created

  • how often their blog is updated

  • how many other sites are linking to the page with Link Explorer

  • how many tweets, likes, etc.

Learn more about how to do a competitor analysis in our free guide, and don’t forget to download the handy worksheet.

Document all of your findings in our spreadsheet from earlier to keep track of the data. This information will now inform you of your chances of ranking for that term.

Manually checking out your competition is something that I would strongly recommend. But we don’t have all the time in the world to check each results page for each keyword we’re interested in.

Keyword Explorer leaps to our rescue again

Run your search and click on “SERP Analysis” to see what the first page looks like, along with authority metrics and social activity.

1678336507 262 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

All the metrics for the organic results, like Page Authority, goes into calculating the Difficulty score above (lower is better).

And all those other factors — the ads and suggestions taking up space on the SERPs — that’s what’s used to calculate Organic CTR (higher is better).

Priority is all the other metrics tallied up. You definitely want this to be higher.

So now we have 3 important numerical values we can use to gauge our competition. We can use these values to compare keywords.

After a few searches in Keyword Explorer, you’re going to start hankering for a keyword list or two. For this you’ll need a paid subscription, or a Moz Pro 30-day free trial.

It’s well worth the sign-up; not only do you get 5,000 keyword queries per month and 30 lists (on the Medium plan), but you also get to check out the super-magical-KWE-mega-list-funky-cool metric page. That’s what I call it, just rolls off the tongue, you know?

Okay, fellow list buddies, let’s go and add those terms we’re interested in to our lovely new list.

1678336508 459 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Then head up to your lists on the top right and open up the one you just created.

Now we can see the spread of demand, competition and SERP features for our whole list.

1678336509 398 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

You can compare Volume, SERPS Features, Difficulty, Organic CTR, and Priority across multiple lists, topics, and niches.

How to compare apples with apples

Comparing keywords is something our support team gets questions about all the time.

Should I target this word or that word?

1678336509 556 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords
1678336509 439 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

For the long tail keyword, the Volume is a lot lower, Difficulty is also down, the Organic CTR is a bit up, and overall the Priority is down because of the drop in search volume.

But don’t discount it! By targeting these sorts of terms, you’re focusing more on the intent of the searcher. You’re also making your content relevant for all the other neighboring search terms.

Let’s compare the difference between freshwater and cultured pearls with how much are freshwater pearls worth.

1678336510 14 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords
1678336510 843 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Search volume is the same, but for the keyword how much are freshwater pearls worth Difficulty is up, but so is the overall Priority because the Organic CTR is higher.

But just because you’re picking between two long tail keywords doesn’t mean you’ve fully understood the long tail of search.

You know all those keywords I grabbed for my list earlier in this post? Well, here they are sorted into topics.

1678336510 588 Diving for Pearls A Guide to Long Tail Keywords

Look at all the different ways people search for the same thing. This is what drives the long tail of search — searcher diversity. If you tally all the volume up for the cultured topic, we’ve got a bigger group of keywords and overall more search volume. This is where you can use Keyword Explorer and the long tail to make informed decisions.

You’re laying out your virtual welcome mat for all the potential traffic these terms send.

Platinum level: I lied — there’s one more level!

For all you lovely overachievers out there who have reached the end of this post, I’m going to reward you with one final tip.

You’ve done all the snooping around on your competitors, so you know who you’re up against. You’ve done the research, so you know what keywords to target to begin driving intent-rich traffic.

Now you need to create strong, consistent, and outstanding content.

As Dr Pete confirmed:

We don’t have to work ourselves to death to target the long tail of search. It doesn’t take 10,000 pieces of content to rank for 10,000 variants of a phrase, and Google (and our visitors) would much prefer we not spin out that content. The new, post-NLP (Natural Language Processing) long tail of SEO requires us to understand how our keywords fit into semantic space, mapping their relationships and covering the core concepts. Study your SERPs diligently, and you can find the patterns to turn your own long tail of keywords into a chonky thorax of opportunity.

Here’s where you really have to tip your hat to long tail keywords, because by strategically targeting the long tail you can start to build enough authority in the industry to beat stronger competition and rank higher for more competitive keywords in your niche.

Wrapping up…

The various different keyword phrases that make up the long tail in your industry are vast, often easier to rank for, and indicate stronger intent from the searcher. By targeting them you’ll find you can start to rank for relevant phrases sooner than if you just targeted the head. And over time, if you get the right signals, you’ll be able to rank for keywords with tougher competition. Pretty sweet, huh? Give Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool a whirl and let me know how you get on 🙂

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Take back your ROI by owning your data

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Treasure Data 800x450

Treasure Data 800x450

Other brands can copy your style, tone and strategy — but they can’t copy your data.

Your data is your competitive advantage in an environment where enterprises are working to grab market share by designing can’t-miss, always-on customer experiences. Your marketing tech stack enables those experiences. 

Join ActionIQ and Snowplow to learn the value of composing your stack – decoupling the data collection and activation layers to drive more intelligent targeting.

Register and attend “Maximizing Marketing ROI With a Composable Stack: Separating Reality from Fallacy,” presented by Snowplow and ActionIQ.


Click here to view more MarTech webinars.


About the author

Cynthia RamsaranCynthia Ramsaran

Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries. She was a writer/producer for CNBC.com and produced thought leadership for KPMG. Cynthia hails from Queens, NY and earned her Bachelor’s and MBA from St. John’s University.

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Revolutionizing Auto Retail: The Game-Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

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Revolutionizing Auto Retail: The Game-Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

Revolutionizing Auto Retail The Game Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

In a groundbreaking alliance, Amazon and Hyundai have joined forces to reshape the automotive landscape, promising a revolutionary shift in how we buy, drive, and experience cars.

Imagine browsing for your dream car on Amazon, with the option to seamlessly purchase, pick up, or have it delivered—all within the familiar confines of the world’s largest online marketplace. Buckle up as we explore the potential impact of this monumental partnership and the transformation it heralds for the future of auto retail.

Driving Change Through Amazon’s Auto Revolution

Consider “Josh”, a tech-savvy professional with an affinity for efficiency. Faced with the tedious process of purchasing a new car, he stumbled upon Amazon’s automotive section. Intrigued by the prospect of a one-stop shopping experience, Josh decided to explore the Amazon-Hyundai collaboration.

The result?

A hassle-free online car purchase, personalized to his preferences, and delivered to his doorstep. Josh’s story is just a glimpse into the real-world impact of this game-changing partnership.

Bridging the Gap Between Convenience and Complexity

Traditional car buying is often marred by complexities, from navigating dealership lots to negotiating prices. The disconnect between the convenience consumers seek and the cumbersome process they endure has long been a pain point in the automotive industry. The need for a streamlined, customer-centric solution has never been more pressing.

1701235578 44 Revolutionizing Auto Retail The Game Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai1701235578 44 Revolutionizing Auto Retail The Game Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

Ecommerce Partnership Reshaping Auto Retail Dynamics

Enter Amazon and Hyundai’s new strategic partnership coming in 2024—an innovative solution poised to redefine the car-buying experience. The trio of key developments—Amazon becoming a virtual showroom, Hyundai embracing AWS for a digital makeover, and the integration of Alexa into next-gen vehicles—addresses the pain points with a holistic approach.

In 2024, auto dealers for the first time will be able to sell vehicles in Amazon’s U.S. store, and Hyundai will be the first brand available for customers to purchase.

Amazon and Hyundai launch a broad, strategic partnership—including vehicle sales on Amazon.com in 2024 – Amazon Staff

This collaboration promises not just a transaction but a transformation in the way customers interact with, purchase, and engage with their vehicles.

Pedal to the Metal

Seamless Online Purchase:

  • Complete the entire transaction within the trusted Amazon platform.
  • Utilize familiar payment and financing options.
  • Opt for convenient pick-up or doorstep delivery.
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Hyundai’s Cloud-First Transformation:

  • Experience a data-driven organization powered by AWS.
  • Benefit from enhanced production optimization, cost reduction, and improved security.

Alexa Integration in Next-Gen Vehicles:

  • Enjoy a hands-free, voice-controlled experience in Hyundai vehicles.
  • Access music, podcasts, reminders, and smart home controls effortlessly.
  • Stay connected with up-to-date traffic and weather information.

Driving into the Future

The Amazon-Hyundai collaboration is not just a partnership; it’s a revolution in motion. As we witness the fusion of e-commerce giant Amazon with automotive prowess of Hyundai, the potential impact on customer behavior is staggering.

The age-old challenges of car buying are met with a forward-thinking, customer-centric solution, paving the way for a new era in auto retail. From the comfort of your home to the driver’s seat, this partnership is set to redefine every step of the journey, promising a future where buying a car is as easy as ordering a package online.

Embrace the change, and witness the evolution of auto retail unfold before your eyes.


Revolutionizing Auto Retail The Game Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

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How to Schedule Ad Customizers for Google RSAs [2024]

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How to Schedule Ad Customizers for Google RSAs [2024]

It’s no wonder that responsive search ads have steadily grown in popularity in recent years. Through Google’s machine learning capabilities, RSAs provide a powerful way to automate the testing of multiple headlines and descriptions to ensure a closer match to user intent. The benefits are clear: RSAs mean broader reach, better engagement, and improved performance metrics.

However, all these benefits come at a significant (but reasonable) cost – they can be extremely difficult to manage, especially when it comes to updating ad copy to promote limited time offers.

I know this firsthand – I work with several ecommerce clients with promotions that constantly change. Not too long ago, I found myself going through the consistently tedious process of updating a client’s RSA headlines and copy. As I was making the changes, I thought to myself: “There must be a better way to update this ad copy. I shouldn’t have to use find and replace so many times while pausing and enabling my ad campaigns.”

After expressing this to my colleague, Jordan Stambaugh, the two of us agreed there must be a better way. But we’d have to make it happen. A few weeks later, we put that idea into action and created a more efficient process for updating RSA ad copy on a scheduled basis. If you want to try this process for yourself, just keep reading.

Responsive Search Ad Customizers 101: Basic Options & Execution

Before diving into the process of scheduling automatic updates for your RSA customizers, it’s essential to understand some key Responsive Search Ad fundamentals.

First, you can customize three main options within RSAs: the Attribute Name, the Data Type, and the Account Value. Each of these plays a vital role in personalizing your ads:

  • Attribute Name: This is essentially the identifier for the customizer. It is how you’ll reference the specific piece of information you’re customizing within the ad. For instance, if you’re running a promotion, you might name an attribute “Promotion.”
  • Data Type: This indicates the kind of data the attribute represents and it determines how the information can be formatted and used within the ad. Common data types include Text (for plain, non-numeric text), Percent (to represent percentage discounts), Price (to denote monetary values), and Number (for any numerical value).
  • Account Value: This is the default value for the attribute that you set at the account level. It acts as a fallback if more specific values aren’t provided at the campaign or ad group level.

For example, if you wanted to promote a 10% off discount using RSAs, you’d use the “Discount” attribute, a data type of “Percent,” and an account value of “10% off.” Then, when someone is searching for products, Google would test automatically inserting a copy regarding a 10% off promotion into your ad.

Once you’ve set up the right customization options, you can start to format your RSAs with customizers.

Here’s how:

  • Start by typing in {
  • Click on Ad Customizer then select your attribute
  • Google will populate your attributes that are already uploaded
  • For a simple offer, use the “Default text” attribute as a catch-all. This will ensure your ads run smoothly if Google can’t pull the right messaging from your RSA feed

 

 

How to Schedule Your Ad Customizers with a Feed

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s cover how to schedule your ad customizers.

Just follow this three step process:

1. Create the feed

Start by creating two sheets: The Parent sheet, and the Child sheet. The “Parent” sheet will act as the primary data source, while the child sheet will pull data from the parent sheet.

We’ll start by building the parent sheet. After opening the sheet, start by renaming the active tab to “Promotions.” Don’t skip this step, it’s crucial for referencing this range in formulas later on.

In your “Promotions” tab, head to the top row and label columns A, B, and C with the headers of your ad customizer attributes. For example, you might have “BrandSaleHeadline” as your attribute in column A, “text” as the Data Type in column B, and “Shop the Collection” as the Account Value in column C.

Once your headers are in place, move to cell C2. Here, you’ll input the expression =lookup(today(),F:G,E:E). This formula will play a key role in dynamically updating your RSA customizer based on the current date.

Next, go to columns E, F, and G, which will be used to manage your scheduling. In these columns, you’ll list out the different values your chosen attribute might take, alongside their corresponding start and end dates. For example, under the “BrandSaleHeadline” attribute, you might schedule various promotional headlines to appear during different sale periods throughout the year.

Here’s how your sheet might look:

Now look back at the first 3 columns on your sheet. They should look like this:

Now create a second sheet. We’ll call this sheet the Child sheet. It’s going to automatically pull in data from the parent sheet you just created, and will be the one you link to Google Ads later on.

Columns A, B and C will be almost identical to the child sheet, but we will be using a special formula later so we can automatically populate this. So, start by labeling Row 1 Column A “Attribute,” then the next column as “Data type,” then column C as “Account value.” 

Then go to C2 and use this expression to populate the right account value from the parent document: =importrange(“[PARENT DOCUMENT URL HERE]”,”Promotions!C2″)

Your sheet should now look like this:

We recommend adding a date range with default text for any days you’re  not running a promotion. In the example above, we have “Shop Our Collection” appearing as default text.

2. Input attributes

Once you have your feed created, the next step involves inputting your attributes into the Google Ads platform. This can be done either manually or through a bulk upload.

For the manual approach, navigate to “Tools & Settings” in your Google Ads interface, then go to ‘Setup’ followed by “Business Data.” Here, you’ll find an option for “Ad Customizer Attributes.” Click the plus sign to add your attributes. It’s crucial to use the same attribute names that you’ve established in your Parent Google Sheet template to ensure consistency and proper data synchronization.

 

 

Alternatively, if you prefer the bulk upload method, again head to “Tools & Settings.” This time, select “Bulk Actions” and then “Uploads.” For this process, you only need to upload columns A to C from your template. 

Be aware that it might take some time for your uploaded attributes to be reflected in the business data section of Google Ads.

3. Set up an automatic schedule

At this point, you’ve almost finished scheduling your ad customizers. Navigate to Tools & Settings, then Bulk Actions, then Uploads, then click the Schedules tab at the top. Select your Child Google Sheet as the data source, and share your Google Sheet with the appropriate email.

 

 

And there you have it – Google will automatically pull in the data you populated in the sheets into your RSAs.

Common Challenges When Scheduling RSA Ad Customizers

When we test these sheets with our clients in the wild, we’ve uncovered five common challenges. Be on the lookout for these issues – solving them before they happen can save you a lot of trouble down the line.

Not scheduling your upload when the site changes 

The first and most significant hurdle is the mismatch between the scheduled data upload and website content updates. For instance, if the Google Sheet is set to upload at 11 am, but the website changes occur at 3 pm, there’s going to be a discrepancy where the wrong message could be displayed for several hours, or new messaging could appear prematurely. Conversely, if the website updates happen before the scheduled sheet upload, outdated promotions might linger until the new data is imported. Synchronizing these schedules is crucial; it’s best to align them so updates occur simultaneously.

Skipping QA during a message change

Another pitfall is neglecting quality assurance (QA) during message updates. It’s vital to regularly check the business data section to verify that the correct values are in place post-update.

Issues with the IMPORTRANGE function

Then there’s the technical aspect of setting up the IMPORTRANGE function correctly in the Google Sheets template. The ‘child’ template must reliably pull data from the ‘parent’ sheet. If this function isn’t configured correctly, data won’t be imported as needed.

Not sharing access of the Google template for automatic uploads

Pay attention to your access permissions for the Google Sheets template. Google will prompt you with the email address that needs permission to access the ‘child’ sheet for automatic uploads. Overlooking the sharing of your sheet with this address will prevent the system from working.

Having date range gaps in your parent sheet

Lastly, a common oversight is leaving date range gaps in the ‘parent’ sheet. Every single date must be accounted for without overlaps. A practical tip is to have an ‘evergreen’ backup message ready, scheduled to run continuously, ideally through the end of the year, to cover any potential gaps.

Conclusion

Leveraging Google Sheets in conjunction with Google Ads to schedule RSA ad customizers is a game-changer for managing dynamic promotional content. This process not only streamlines your workflows but also ensures that your ads remain relevant and up-to-date, reflecting current promotions without the need for constant manual intervention. 

By adopting this method, you’ll save significant time and effort, allowing you to focus more on strategy and less on the minutiae of ad copy updates. Give it a try and experience a more efficient way to manage your RSAs, keeping your campaigns fresh and engaging with minimal hassle.

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