*For an intro discussion on long-tail keywords please visit this previous post.*
There are a number of people asking the question regarding the use of long-tail keyword strategies when picking keywords for new content. If you’ve ever spoken to us or read our blog then you’ll know that we never favour writing content based on keyword. Rather, you always write for your market based on your target.
However, one SEO strategy is to watch trends in your log files to see where searchers are winding up on your web site. This will help you identify what new content to create or feature. However, should you dive deeper into the longtail keywords? Should you attempt to capture more of the uncompetitive and low traffic words in hopes of marginally increasing traffic?
The answer is yes if you’re a big huge retail web site, and no if you’re everybody else.
Here’s what I mean.
The answer is NO, longtail keywords should not be your primary focus if your web site does not have content to support them. In order to clarify what I said let’s answer the YES side first.
YES, compare and investigate long-tail keyword data if you have the content to support it. What do I mean? In order to make it worthwhile you need TONS of pages to capture all the different iterations of longtail keywords since you can’t build a single page to reflect 100 longtail keywords as it would read unnatural. Small markets = small web sites = small amount copy = no need for longtail keywords.
Well longtail is a statistical model representing the accumulation of all single searched phrases. These obscure phrases nobody thinks of can capture lots of traffic in aggregate.
Look at this image:
The green represents the longtail keywords, red the ‘hot’ keywords. Longtails really only help for huge web sites in highly competitor fields where you have a wealth of different places to send longtail visitors. Anyways, the point is, chasing the green is only worth your time if you have such a huge base of products and huge traffic.
If you don’t don’t bother. Why?
For small markets you don’t need the longtail focus since the markets you compete in are relative small and uncompetitive. That means you can capture the ‘hot’ markets because so few others are. google is also smart enough to return your web site for close searches (search terms that aren’t exact matches to your major keywords). This return increases when there are fewer web sites with your terms (uncompetitive markets).
It also bears to mention that long (length) keywords does NOT equal long-tail words. So “Greek Restaurant Seattle Washington” may be the primary keyword even though it’s four words long. The length does not indicate a longtail word…..now, “grek restaurent in down town seattle” IS longtail NOTbecause of its length but because statistically nobody uses that combination in search.
Thus, you do not need to focus on longtail words because your returns for the effort building longtail pages should be spent on the major keywords (since it’s easier to be dominant and alone in your uncompetitive/moderate market). Reign supreme for your selection of choice keywords in small markets will have residual returns for longtail searches regardless if you target them or not.
Remember:
LONGTAIL IS NOT LENGTH of keyword.
LONGTAIL IS NOT anything until the data is mined from a particular web site. What is longtail on AMazon may not be longtail on barnes in noble, however, both have a VERY LONG TAIL (because of the number of products).
Small web sites DO NOT have to focus on LONGTAIL. In fact, their model doesn’t look like the one pictured above, their green is much shorter and smaller and their red much larger. It’s pointless to spend the time creating CONTENT to support phrases that will yield one search a year.
This approach should save you time and clarify your objectives in small to medium sized markets: reigns supreme in your key terms and you’ll capture the rest…..however, if you’re in competitive field, then continually writing new content on a blog or equivalent is one way to start capturing different search traffic (other than major terms).