There has been a lot of talk going around about optimizing the use of long-tail keywords. Of course, this is an important element in your SEM (search engine marketing) strategy. Let's briefly go over why it should be part of your overall marketing campaign.
How does the Keyword Cycle work?
If you are not familiar with the concepts of head terms and long tail terms let's take a second to go over these concepts.
- A head term is when someone is searching for something in general, let's say a TV. So they would start their search with this head term: "TV".
- As they do more research on the topic, they will look for something more specific: "LED TV". They enter this short tail phrase to find a particular type of TV.
- Now they are getting more specific on what they want, and have decided to search for a particular brand based on reviews they have read. They enter a long tail term such as "Samsung LED TV 50 inch" or "50 inch Samsung LED TV".
If you thinking to yourself "Hey, I do that all the time" well you're not alone! The less we know about a topic, product, etc the more head terms and short tail phrases we'll use. As we understand or become familiar with a topic, the more likely we will start searching with medium and long tail phrases.
Is it true the medium to long tail phrases get less traffic? Absolutely. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As you can imagine, the shorter terms usually get more traffic, and are therefore more competitive. The long phrases tend to get fewer searches, but these have higher conversion because this type of person has a better idea of what they're looking for. The opposite is true with short tail phrases. Because they get so much traffic, they usually don't convert very well.
Here is a great graph that illustrates the relationship between Long Tail and Short Tail phrases (courtesy of eliance.com):
So, which ones do you go after? Actually you should go after both. A big mistake a lot of companies make is they tend to focus on one or the other. A well structured strategy will focus on both.
Head and Short Tail Phrases
So why do companies go after the head and short term phrases?
Well the attraction of the traffic is a big reason people go after these terms. We all know that as your ranking on those short terms increases, so does the traffic. Sure, you won't get as many conversions on those terms, but it will help you build your brand, which is a beneficial investment towards sales down the road.
Basically, head and short tail phrases:
- Generate a lot of searches
- Have a low conversion rate
- Is a great tool for branding
- Can be extremely competitive.
Long Tail Phrases
As you can see from the graph above, there are a lot more long tail phrases than there are head and short tail terms. Overall, you can get a lot more traffic using long tail terms, although individual terms do not generate much traffic. In some cases, multiple long tail keywords will create more traffic and convert even more viewers than Head and short term phrases alone. Just make sure you rank well across the board for these phrases.
To summarize, medium to long tail phrases:
- Don't create much traffic alone, but cumulatively they can make up a large portion of your sites' traffic.
- They convert much better than head and short tail phrases.
- It can be difficult to optimize all of them.
So how do we optimize Long Tail keyword phrases?
Here are a few suggestions that will get you going in the right direction:
- Use a GOOD keyword tool (such as SEOMOZ) to help you get an idea of where you are getting traffic and conversions from.
- Keep a close eye on your analytics to see where traffic and conversions are coming from.
- On each of your pages, use your 1-3 main keyword phrases in the copy and make certain you use plenty of long tail variations.
- Create variations of your anchor text when you're building links with long tail variations.
- If your site has a blog, create content that is based around these long tail phrases. Then link with those long tail phrases back over to the main page of your site so that have optimized the base phrase. (For example, if you are an electronics store and you wrote a review on the LED TV example above, link the work TV back to your homepage, or even to the TV section of your site).
Last of all, be certain to think outside of the box. The keyword tools are a great way to get started, but you will be surprised at how many variations you can come up with. As you do this, you'll get a better idea of what kinds of terms are being used in your industry.
