His typical Adwords seminar is two days.  The first morning is about keywords and ads.  Everybody is watchin', sippin' coffee and smilin'.

Then the math starts after lunch.  I sit in the front and turn around..... quite a few of the people behind me are using their phones or are watching the screen with a "10,000 mile stare".

The second day... quite a few people are not there.... by the afternoon the math nerds are the only people left along with a few people with the 10,000 mile stare.

Now, I am not saying that he is a bad teacher.  He is fantastic. Fantastic.  He says there during every break, during lunch, back early after lunch, stays late to answer EVERY question.  The problem is everybody thinks that makin' money from Adwords is easy, you just write an ad and pay 5 cents a click.  Then they realize that they are up against genius people who have rock bottom costs who are really hungry.

If you have not done so, consider reading. Advanced Google Adwords by Brad Geddes.   I have read it twice, and reread some parts of it many times.  Best book anywhere for adwords.

If you are spending major money on PPC then you must attend Brad's Adwords Seminars.  This is  two days of intense training for Adwords.  This is not a fluffy seminar.  The first morning covers the basics and then you get deep into spreadsheet math.

Adwords is not a word game, it is a math game.   This is not a seminar where you will sit, sip coffee, fart and go home an expert.  You are going to do lots of math that will require you to think VERY HARD.  But if you can learn what is being taught you will definitely make a lot more money and your competitors will be making a lot less.

Making money with Adwords is very difficult for me.  More difficult than SEO.  Why?  You are competing against the entire resources of your competitor.  They might have lower cost inventory, cheaper shipping, cheaper labor.   If they get 60% off MSRP and you get 40% off MSRP then they can spend that 20% on Adwords and still make the same profit that you do.  But if you bid enough to compete with them then you lost 20% off the top, then pay credit card fees, shipping from manufacturer to you, labor, shipping supplies.  You just made zero profit.

My suppliers are often the ones who bid against me on adwords.  Really really hard to beat them when they have huge cost and expense advantages.

Like I say, Adwords is a game for the people are really good at math, have highly skilled people making a website that converts customers like greased pigs, and are cut-throat competitors on costs and expenses.

You better know your numbers or you will lose your shirt.

This really isn't a direct answer, but it is how I approach the problem.

The difficulty with long-tail keywords is that there are SO MANY OF THEM.   It is impossible to target all of them.

Building specific landing pages for each of them would be really time consuming if done properly with content and would make a very spammy site if done quickly.

So, what I do is draw upon my knowledge of the products or topics that I am targeting and write the following types of content.

1. The questions that people most frequently ask.

2. The things that they don't ask but need to know to be succesful

3. The things that would surprise them - like misconceptions, extremes  and WTFs.

If you have a lot of #1 content on your site it will pull in a lot of these long tail keywords.  These pages should be substantive in length and detailed in information.  That will put a lot of diverse words on the page that will match many long tail queries.  These will pull in traffic.

Content in the #2 and #3 category, if written with substantive length and detail, will also pull in a lot of long tail... but in addition, these are the types of pages that people will link to, share and recommend.  They are the astonishment topics that people enjoy and share.  In general, these are some of the most successful pages on my websites.  My site is mostly factual and serious topics... but I get tons of traffic on these types of topics through links on reddit, stumbleupon, cracked, FB, etc.

barbequed ribs

OMG!   Oh, I am laughing so hard I will have to wash my glasses.

We prefer to make our client's competitors do their own work and break a sweat.

I fill that tag with BS.  That'll fix those lazy weasels.

No, honestly... I still use meta keywords.

When I write an article I write the title tag first....  "Begin with the end in mind."    Then I write the meta keywords.  Makes me think about where I am going.

Anybody who is lazy enough to harvest that info is lazier than smart.  Not a threat.   And, I believe in the theory that imitators come in second.

.....  and....   I bet Google is using meta keywords and counting those nofollow links  it's their "reverse psychology" algo to screw SEOs.  (Of course they are not counting blog and forum spam and sitewides... but nofollow links that appear to be editorially given - such as wikipedia citations - are counted at 5x the normal rate)

I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason.

Try digging a little deeper into the analytics.

If you are looking at his analytics you should be able to see where those visitors were coming from on that day... also pages that they entered and lots more.   The answers are just a few clicks away.