Long Tail or Long String Keywords (Key Phrases)

I wonder what member here on Webmaster Talk think about Long tail or long string keyword phrases?

I ask as I, in the main, love them!

Here is my reasoning.

OK let me explain - I have every link on Google page 1 for a search term like "commission the worlds best SE0 writer".

Yeah nothing great I hear you say noone is searching for that. Yet I have a few hundred inter related search terms also with a lot of page 1 Google domination.

My thinking is I only need 5 of the right people to ever search for these inter related search terms and hire me and the job's a good one.

Now I expect most SEO types would be targeting the search term "SEO" for example. But to my mind I am glad I don't target that search term specifically and am very happy Wikepedia are dealing with all that traffic thta comes from people searching for "SEO".

My thinking is this, there are two main types of people searching for "SEO" most likely. They are

1 People looking for the definition of "SEO"

2 SEO industry insiders obsessed with their results who are battling to sell a product/service (their SEO) and who spend lot's of time fighting a losing battle.

Now here is why I prefer Long tail or Long string.

1 Let's use the SEO example again. What is it someone has in mind when searching for "SEO"?

I would say it is fairly unlikely they want to "hire" or "commission" a SEO or they would have sense to use those words to wouldn't they?

Lets use a second example

2 DIY - What would someone most likely be looking for if they searched for DIY?

Well for us here in the UK they better hope thay are looking for B & Q's DIY.com which was mostly designed by Rich M or they will be a bit disapointed.

Where as if a surfer wanted "DIY" Tips" DIY Advice" DIY Tools" or "DIY Supplies" wouldn't they narrow down the search by adding extra paramaters "eg long tails" or long string" phreses to be more specific and better help them find what they are looking for?

What are your thoughts? Are you busy trying to beat Wikipedia for the search term "SEO" for example if you are an SEO or are you using your imagination and long tail/string terms?

Or, if you own a "Social Networking" site are you living with the frustration of seeing Bebo Facebook MySpace and Wikipedia continually thwarting your efforts or, again, are you thinking outside the box and using long tail or long string keyword phrases?

Long Tail Keywords are you using them?

Any knowledgeable SEO person should know long-tail keywords are gold mine for any website. In many cases long tail keywords entail bigger percentage of the traffic.

"Long tail" search is NOT the gold mine, it is by the very nature the low volume "tail end" of the search traffic, and if it makes up the largest percentage of traffic, then you are doing very badly indeed in your promotional/optimising efforts.

Certainly it should convert very well when compared against the higher volume generic words/phrases simply because it comes from more specific searches.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

"Long tail" search is NOT the gold mine, it is by the very nature the low volume "tail end" of the search traffic, and if it makes up the largest percentage of traffic, then you are doing very badly indeed in your promotional/optimising efforts.

Certainly it should convert very well when compared against the higher volume generic words/phrases simply because it comes from more specific searches.

I would agree that is is NOT the gold mine, but for new sites or sites with highly competitive keywords, the long tail is a great place to start. Especially because of the second part of your statement: conversion. If i were #1 for a term like "fence" I would get 50-60k visitors per month, and I would probably make more sales, but the actual conversion rate would probably be very low (not positive on that one and hope to one day find out!).

In the longer term, for me anyway, I want to rank for more competitive one and two word phrases, but I do know it will take time so I am happy to be ranking for long tails as it is earning me money through conversions while I work towards ranking for better terms.

I do try to make sure my long tails have the competitive keyword within them. IE: "onguard fence prices" I rank # 2 or 3 depending what google feels like that minute. "onguard" is a brand of aluminum fence I carry. That term doesn't get a lot of searches, but when it does I would gather someone is pricing that product and I hope they buy it from me!

Conclusion: I my non-expert opinion, long tails can be an important part of getting conversions on a newer site, but my goal is to rank for the better terms down the road.

but for new sites or sites with highly competitive keywords, the long tail is a great place to start.

Definitely.

One of the biggest problems in discussing SEO/SEM methods is we are dealing with two factions. One is the commercial sector of site owners/operators looking to actually improve product sales or leads for projects/services and then there is the MFA "bandits" who do NOT understand (or care) about conversions, targeted traffic or actual optimising work. Their only aim is to get as much traffic as possible in a short time frame as possible and hope that some actually click on the adverts.
I'm trying to invent the term "machine gun marketing" for the "social media marketing" tactics of spraying link drops into the crowd and hoping some hit the right target.

And of course these people are far more prolific and vocal about their form of "optimisation", they muddy the waters for the ones who are are actually marketing real products.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

"Long tail" search is NOT the gold mine, it is by the very nature the low volume "tail end" of the search traffic, and if it makes up the largest percentage of traffic, then you are doing very badly indeed in your promotional/optimising efforts.

Certainly its should convert very well when compared against the higher volume generic words/phrases simply because it comes from more specific searches.

Like Keith said above, I agree it not "The Goldmine", but long tail are still better converters. I think it is quite probable to assume there are a lot of people out there spending an awful lot of frustrating time trying to compete for search terms they are quite unlikely to achieve.

I think these people would likely find there time better served by narrowing down their long tail search terms.

I did an SEO job for a Window Film Company (Since ruined by a management takeover and site redesign that lost them all their page 1 rankings) and like Keith's example above I got the Company (among many other search terms) a page 1 for "3M Window Film" 3m Window Film Installation".

3M, among many other things, make Window Film. I found it very frustrating when I was asked to remove this mention of 3M. Obviously they lost their page 1 ranking not long after I removed it.

I don't understand the mentality of being afraid of mentioning other's names on your own site.

For example unless 3M told them No Remove It, they would likely be happy as at the end of the day - it is still a means to selling their products as they are the suppliers, it's a funny old World!

Well, long tail keyword are very much useful if you are targeting to specific group of audience, product or local area or any specfic area and in this way you will get targeted traffic too.

I do incorporate long tail keywords where appropriate, but I do not spend my SEO efforts on them. It just helps to generate a little extra traffic.

Originally Posted by alex_cristo

Well, long tail keyword are very much useful if you are targeting to specific group of audience, product or local area or any specfic area and in this way you will get targeted traffic too.

"Local" is a perfect example. I had a site in Raleigh NC for my fence contracting business and the majority of my traffic/conversions came from "raleigh fence contractors" had I ranked for "fence contractors" or "fence" the traffic would have been mostly worthless.

Originally Posted by FenceGuy

"Local" is a perfect example. I had a site in Raleigh NC for my fence contracting business and the majority of my traffic/conversions came from "raleigh fence contractors" had I ranked for "fence contractors" or "fence" the traffic would have been mostly worthless.

I agree, I don't really want the search term "SEO" for that very reason. I have this niggling feeling any site I put on page 1 amongst my SEO sites would pretty much cause my server to crash as I just don't think enough traffic would convert quickly enough in order to warrant what it would cost to keep the site up for all probable unconverting traffic.

I may be wrong of course, I might even change my mind one day, but for now that is how I am thinking about one word search terms like "SEO" "Fence" "Telephone" "Piano", you name it I really feel people would search for more specific "long tail" terms when looking for that "something specific" and this I feel especially applies to services and products.

One of my sites have 50,000+ pages. That sites do rank very well for the major keyword on the niche, which brings in significant part of the daily traffic. And then there is a big percentage of the traffic that comes from long tail keywords. I think thats a good thing.

Also to add with that, if I have an general e-commerce website I would put most of my effort ranking better with long-tail keywords. I think thats what would maximize the revenue since the traffic would be very very targeted.

Yes I think it (longtail) is definately a better way to get targeted traffic than quantity traffic that is less likely to convert.

I am presently convinced "SEO" would serve me as little, as "Fence" would for Keith (FenceGuy) would when it comes to actual conversion rates when compared to longtail "more targeted" search's.

In My Opinion long tail is ok. Good for a beginner to see yourself ranking #1 on google. But then you realize your only getting 5 hits a day. Then you realize you need to go big or go home. I used to do long tail keywords for my blog. Got some traffic made very little money. Then as I was going by I realized that some long term keywords were harder to rank for because some people wanted them too so that discouraged me when I was used to doing only a little bit and becoming #1. So i did some extra work and got that #1 position and only got like 10 people a day. Still crap in my opinion. Now I go after keywords that get like 200,000 searches a month. Rank on top page and you are having a good time : )

Originally Posted by brp002

In My Opinion long tail is ok. Good for a beginner to see yourself ranking #1 on google. But then you realize your only getting 5 hits a day. Then you realize you need to go big or go home. I used to do long tail keywords for my blog. Got some traffic made very little money. Then as I was going by I realized that some long term keywords were harder to rank for because some people wanted them too so that discouraged me when I was used to doing only a little bit and becoming #1. So i did some extra work and got that #1 position and only got like 10 people a day. Still crap in my opinion. Now I go after keywords that get like 200,000 searches a month. Rank on top page and you are having a good time : )

So are you saying that you only go for single keywords with over 200,000 a month searches?

If so I would be interested in seeing any single keyword you have a page 1 Google rank for!

I have some keyword phrases that have an equal (or more) amount of searches per month, but would not dream of stating a longtail keyword phrase of say three or four words is worth less to have on page 1 than a one word key term in most cases.

The most likely of exceptions of course being P**N.

I don't doubt that conquering long tail keywords is the way to go. In our business, if I tried to conquer "china sourcing" or "china manufacturing" I'd be up against huge competitors with multi-million dollar budgets like made-in-china and globalsources.

However, "find the world's best seo guy"? I would say, if Google's keyword tool comes up with any less than 100 searches a month, forget it. The top result only gets 30-50% of the clicks, which means even if you conquered a keyword with 5 searches a month, you'd still only get 2-3 clicks a month. Even if you could get an insane conversion rate like Schwan's at 50%, that's about 1 inquiry a month, which might convert to 2 customers a year.

Plus, at anything less than 10 searches a month, Google won't even tell you if anyone's searching at all. You might be chasing a niche that doesn't exist.

That's my take on it.

Originally Posted by FenceGuy

"Local" is a perfect example. I had a site in Raleigh NC for my fence contracting business and the majority of my traffic/conversions came from "raleigh fence contractors" had I ranked for "fence contractors" or "fence" the traffic would have been mostly worthless.

Nice niche. I see it gets about 110 searches a month. What kind of conversion rate are you getting, and what volume of revenue is it bringing in?

Well to say frankly, as a SEO kid I targeted single words or a phrase like "blogging for beginners" but not more than three words. But I think I should consider adding more words and making it a long tail one.

Originally Posted by jgdeutsch

Nice niche. I see it gets about 110 searches a month. What kind of conversion rate are you getting, and what volume of revenue is it bringing in?

I am not in that business anymore, and that was just an example of the keywords, there were a dozen others. Also, it's the slow period for that industry, during peak season I easily got over 3k visits a month, which converted into sales that made me over $60k US per year and I paid zero dollars for advertising. So those 110 searches may not seem like much to you, but they provided me a nice income.

It's not always quantity, but quality....

Long tail is important. IF you can rank for several high volume long tail keywords then slowly you will rank for the actualy keyword that gets many thousands of hits a day.

You have to build up slowly.

It is very difficult for new sites to rank well for popular short keywords. So it may be good to target long tail keywords first. It is easier to rank well and at least you can get some traffic.