Comments on: Sunday Morning SEO: Target Long Tail Keywords First

By: Imogen Stiles

Imogen Stiles — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:51:49 +0000

Do you think Facebook in addition to social media marketing will eventually replace Google as the primary advertising on the net?

By: Jason Kaminski

Jason Kaminski — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:05:01 +0000

I just wanted to chime in about what I think is the most important characteristics of a keyword. I believe you need a keyword that is relevant to what your content is on your website, blog, or whatever. I also believe that you need a keyword that is searched enough, but not so much that you can not compete. That brings me to my next point obviously that you need a keyword that is not overly competitive. I would recommend finding long tail keywords that are searched 30 times or more daily and have 50,000 or less competing pages. Finally, I would try to find a keyword that has commercial intent if the content on your website or blog is trying to market. You want keywords that are going to attract people who are willing to buy. You can find long tail keywords with those characteristics all over the internet for a variety of niches.

By: John

John — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:00:34 +0000

Beginners in he blogging space tend to target generic keywords not considering the amount of competition in that space. I think a simple analysis on the Google Adwords tool is more than enough to deduct keywords. What you would end up with(and what you should ideally be targetting) is a long tail keyword that has lesser traffic and fewer competitors, increasing your chances of ranking well and getting targetted traffic.

By: phone rental

phone rental — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:48:31 +0000

I completely agree that the long-tail keywords give the best traffic, as it’s the most quialified one searching for specific services or products. But some clients want to compete for more generic keywords as they want bigger traffic. It’s hard to make them understand the need of long-tail keyword strategy.

Thanks Dee for the post and thanks Alan for your link, good one.

By: Alan Mitchell

Alan Mitchell — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:32:34 +0000

Hi Dee,

I agree that targeting long-tail searches can achieve significantly better results than chasing after the generic, short-tail searches. Ranking high on the first page for specific searches such as “credit cards with free balance transfer” is always better than being on the third page for “credit cards”.

I recently did some research on PPC searches containing different numbers of words (i.e. short, medium and long-tail searches), and came to similar conclusion to yourself: that en masse long-tails can deliver significant volume. What’s more, since people making long-tail searches are often further along in the buying cycle and are therefore more motivated to buy, conversion rates are often much higher. A well though-out long-tail strategy, can be extremely profitable and is infinitely less frustrating that trying to achieve number 1 spot for that super generic keyword.

http://www.alanmitchell.com.au/techniques/benefits-of-long-tail-keywords/

With more of a PPC focus, I also found that since people making long-tail searches are typically more specific in their needs, long-tails present a great opportunity to write highly targeted and tailored ads and achieve a strong CTR. Although the research was carried out with PPC in mind, the general principles still apply for SEO.

Thanks,
Alan

By: SEO services dubai

SEO services dubai — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:48:43 +0000

True long tail keywords really help to generate enquirers.

By: fornls

fornls — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:47:08 +0000

@David S, @Dee Barizo,

Thanks for sharing your advice. Let me checkout the link!

By: Dee Barizo

Dee Barizo — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:22:30 +0000

@David S

Thanks for the link. It’s got great information.

By: David S

David S — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:48:34 +0000

The future of online marketing will be in highly targeted keywords. I can see the day when your many-worded question will bring you exactly what you want. Greg, from SEO (SEO Blog), mentions how businesses can use their FAQ page to take advantage of these long-tail search queries.

By: Justin Brooke

Justin Brooke — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:48:06 +0000

Thanks for pointing this fact; fighting for keywords can be a hard process and often it helps when we target those that are rarely used. Thanks for sharing this resource.

By: Pragmites

Pragmites — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:52:46 +0000

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:37:08 +0000

And the benefit of ranking well for these less competitive keywords is that gradually your entire site will grow in authority, gain more exposure and inbound links, and hence gradually rank higher for those currently less attainable keywords. It’s what programs like SBI effectively teach.

By: Chung Bey Luen

Chung Bey Luen — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:15:12 +0000

You are right Dee, long tail keywords is the correct strategy to go. I have been implementing this strategy on my blog and I get quite good result.

By: Change Your Life for Better

Change Your Life for Better — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:51:21 +0000

I had learnt it only recently. I didn’t intentionally write articles on my blog for SEO purpose. I decided to write with reader in mind and to give value to the reader by writing from my experiences.

It happened that one of my article that I wrote very recently has become a good general topic. I had been centered on topic unknowingly. I used tags related to that.

Later I just wanted to search for the three words which central to that article. You can see the search from this link from Google ( search for “learn effective multitasking” ). You can see the above article comes first in the list. This is a great learning for me in several ways.

First of all, I learnt the importance of a field called SEO. I heard it before but never bothered about it. But I also learnt that keywords are important but having key phrases is very useful. Using those phrases which are most likely to be used by the people searching for information on that topic. So we should use synonyms as well.

Then I also concluded that having keywords or key phrases that are searched in Google can give more page rank value than having articles on keywords which give search results but nobody uses them.

Later this week I checked its page rank and found that it got a PR=0. This is surprising. It seems a PR=0 means that the content is centered around a topic that is searched for.

Thanks for writing a post on this topic :).