By making optimizations for long -
tail search terms, you give yourself the opportunity to present the final facts that will convert a web visitor into a new client right at the moment when they are most ready to make a decision.
Not exact matches
A
search for shoes is more common, but a
search for «shiny red women's shoes,» which is a long
tail keyword based upon the head
term, are more effective, making them more valuable.
Targeting long -
tail search queries not only attracts qualified «buyer» traffic, but these
terms will typically have much less competition.
I know these long
tail keywords aren't
searched for a lot, but when you combine them all and compare them to head
terms, there is much more traffic in the long
tail.
Of course, it was not the obvious «long
tail traffic» because it has no value in
terms of money and
searches.
Out of the 262,169 visitors that came to Quick Sprout from
search engines in the last 30 days, 238,195 came from long
tail terms.
Pages focusing on more common
search terms should appear high in your pyramid, while pages optimized for more long
tail keywords should appear in a lower part of your site structure.
Using long
tail keyword phrase variations of competitive
search terms is also a valuable strategy for getting your website to become an authority on a particular keyword topic.
There is clearly more
search value in long
tail keywords as a whole than the popular keywords (70 % of all
search queries comprise of long
tail terms).
SEOs used to be able gauge
search volume for large, «head»
terms (e.g. «jeans») compared to medium
terms (e.g. «women's jeans) compared to «long
tail»
terms (e.g. «women's boot cut blue jeans»).
So while it's important to target a
search term like «inbound marketing,» it's crucial to also target a long -
tail term like «how to get leads with social media.»
Or you could target keywords with low
search volume that are easy to rank for — typically long -
tail keywords, which do drive highly qualified traffic — but never see that big win that comes from ranking for a hugely important head
term with tons of traffic.
Yale Appliance's Sheinkopf started targeting long
tail keywords in his blog posts when he realized the important
term «counter depth refrigerator,» with a monthly
search volume of 8,700, was more valuable to him than purchasing listing positions through PPC for
terms like «refrigerator.»
Since Keyword Tool Dominator is leveraging the Autocomplete databases from Google, Amazon, Bing, and eBay you can find hundreds of great long
tail keyword phrases from just one
search term.
Head
terms are broader and likely bring in a lot of
search volume, while long -
tail phrases get your ads in front of a highly targeted audience — so it's good to include both in your campaigns.
As I have noted numerous times in the past, the
search engine «broad matching» algorithms have gotten increasingly better at aggregating
tail keywords into the same auctions with head
terms.
That's because head
terms are generally
searched more frequently, making them often (not always, but often) much more competitive and harder to rank for than long -
tail terms.
Long
Tail Pro shows the
search volume under «local
searches» for how many times each month people are
searching for these
terms on Google.
The young veteran started his
search for a new canine companion and quickly found the perfect match, albeit a curious one: the longest -
term resident at his local animal shelter who was more likely to growl at visitors than she was to greet them with a wagging
tail.
Long -
tail searches will end up visiting your site 31.8 % of the time and head -
term searches will visit just 1.3 % of the time.
In fact, most lawyers are shocked to learn that aggregate long -
tail search volume greatly exceeds the volume for the «handful» of head
terms they believe potential clients use to find lawyers like themselves.
From an SEO point of view, this depth not only addresses the long -
tail type
searches, but over time, will help create the authority and trust qualities that are so important for competitive
search terms.
The contact rates (what you care about most) are 0.8 % for research queries, 4.6 % for head -
term / intent to find a lawyer queries, and 4.6 % for long -
tails searches with intent to find a lawyer.
However, there are a large number of people who are
searching on very specific
terms; this is what we call the long
tail or niche markets.