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Three Good Reasons To Target Long-Tail Keywords! by Stephen Mahaney, 22 December 2006

Three Good Reasons To Target Long-Tail Keywords!

Seasoned professionals in the arena of online marketing know it's clever to use keywords that target potential customers who are "late" in the buying cycle. So, how do you find out what these keywords are? ...and why are they so important?

Key points

  • How do I find out what these keywords are? ...and why are they so important?
  • Highly specific multi-word phrases tend to be far easier to rank well for than the more generic single keyword or double keyword phrases.
  • The long tail keywords are much easier to rank for.
  • People who search by using long tail keywords are far more likely to become buyers!

In professional terms, what we are talking about here is the concept of targeting so-called long tail keywords.

Long Tail keywords are those 3 and 4-keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling. You see, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. In virtually every case, such very specific searches are far more likely to convert to sales than general generic searches that tend to be geared more toward the type of research that consumers typically do prior to making a buying decision.

To help illustrate this phenomenon, let's take a look at the typical step-by-step buying path that a customer travels on the way to a making a purchase.

  1. Consumer becomes aware of a product.
  2. Consumer seeks information about that product in preparation for possible purchase.
  3. Consumer evaluates alternatives to product (features, pricing, etc...).
  4. Consumer makes their purchase decision.
  5. Consumer pulls out their credit card and completes the transaction.
  6. Consumer then evaluates the product after buying it and decides if they want to keep or return it.

Using the above six step path to a purchase as our model, you can probably already see that you want to target the consumer who is somewhere around step 4...

Consumer makes their purchase decision.

...because once they have made their decision to buy something, that's when they start using very specific search phrases to seek out their target purchase.

Now for the GOOD news...

Highly specific multi-word phrases tend to be far easier to rank well for than the more generic single keyword or double keyword phrases.

Here's a specific example. Let's say your site sells guided mountain climbing tours in California. At first, you might consider targeting a generic phrase like travel. After all, an adventure tour is generally the type of excursion people like to participate in while traveling on vacation.

However, if you tried to go after that phrase, you'd be facing direct competition from big sites like Yahoo.com, CNN.com and Travelocity.com. It's unlikely you'd be able to knock any of those sites out of the top 10 unless you're willing to invest a pile of money and a mountain of time.

But, even more important, travel isn't the best phrase for you to target anyway. That's because many people who search using that phrase are looking for items such as plane tickets, ocean cruises or just doing very general research on where they might like to go. They're probably not saying to themselves...

"I'm looking for someone who sells guided tours for beginners to climb Mount Shasta so I can take my family on a fun trip this summer."

If they were, they'd be entering something different than travel.

Even if you were to target a more specific phrase like mountain climbing you'd still be up against heavy hitters like About.com, Wikipedia.org, and the USDA forest service. And, unless you sell everything related to mountain climbing for every mountain around the world, the traffic you'd get for that keyword isn't likely to convert to many sales.

So let's look at some of the keywords that are specific to what you're selling—keywords that you can start ranking for and generating traffic and sales right away.

Here are a few highly specific keyphrases that relate to customers who are much later in the buying cycle—at least at step 3, probably at step 4 and possibly step 5:

  • california mountain climbing tours
  • beginner mountain climbing in california
  • guided mountain climbing tours
  • mount shasta family climbing tours

Of course, these are just a few examples. I'm sure you could think of many more. However, the point is twofold;

  1. The long tail keywords are much easier to rank for.
  2. People who search by using long tail keywords are far more likely to become buyers!

More Good News...

Of course this suggests that you should be creating pages that zero-in on snagging searchers who use long tail keywords. And, since there are potentially so many different long tail combinations that searchers may use to buy what you offer, that means you'll likely be creating more pages.

Well the goods news is that Google likes sites that have more pages. It makes the site look more substantial, more natural, and even more real in the eyes of the world's most popular search engine. Bear in mind that your "unique" pages need only be variants of your main offering(s) but focused on a specific long tail niche.

Therefore, each and every page will have a unique title, description meta tag, h1 header tag, and body content that emphasizes your offering by using the long tail keyword that you choose for each specific page. It isn't rocket science, but it sure does work well to snag consumers at the optimum stage of the buying process!

So, instead of focusing on just two or three highly competitive general keywords, target the dozens or even hundreds of easy-to-rank-for long tail keywords.

Also bear in mind, however, that the downside of focusing too much effort on the long tail is, if you target phrases which are too specific, you might not get enough traffic to sustain your business. That's why it's best to have:

  • a few pages sending you large amounts of less-targeted traffic, and
  • a large number of pages with each sending you small amounts of highly targeted traffic.

But overall, it's best to think of it this way; would you rather rank for one keyword which sent you 1000 visitors a day or 200 keyphrases, half of which sent you 1 buyer a day?

After you do the math you'll see that 100 buyers are much better than 1000 site visitors who are only doing research. And there is no question that the use of ultra-specific keywords demonstrate a greater intent to buy on the part of the customer. This simply leads to more sales which is, of course, what you are really after.

There's just no substitute for Research

In the end there is no substitute for doing your keyword research and determining which keywords have enough traffic to make them worth going after. And this effort must be dovetailed with doing your competitive intelligence research to determine which keywords you'll be able to rank for based on the sites you'd have to compete against.

Of course, Wordtracker is the hands-down best place to find a huge list of related keywords as well as learn how much traffic each is likely to provide your site. For many of the sites we manage, at least half of our customer traffic comes from these longer, more specific phrases—and such traffic tends to convert at a much higher level than generic 1 or 2-word keyword phrases.

So, now you have the tools it takes to get...

  1. easier rankings
  2. higher sales conversions
  3. and many more pages indexed in Google

...all of which will certainly lead to a much more profitable bottom line!

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About Stephen Mahaney

Picture of Stephen Mahaney

Publisher of SearchEngineNews.com and the award-winning UnFair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars.

101 comments

  1. I have to laugh, this used to be called "bottom feeding". Picking 2,3or 4 word terms to capture traffic, now this in mainstream. Dang... my secret is out now. Just will get tougher I guess.

    Thanks, keep up the good work.

  2. Nice article but would be nice if it show us how to use wordtracker to find these long tail keywords.

  3. But tell me something.

    Wouldn't the so called 'big guys' be aware of this and use their money to dominate, whether it's 'long tail' or...?

  4. Stephen's article" Three Good Reasons To Target Long-Tail Keywords"! is great advice with simple to follow instructions on getting 1. easier rankings

    1. higher sales conversions
    2. and many more pages indexed in Google

    Bravo Stephen

    Mitch

  5. Thanks for the great article. I don't think david need worry about his secret being out, most will be too lazy to do the research necessary to succeed.

  6. Indeed, it's been working for me quite nicely, especially when I set up articles on my site with these "long tail" phrases, then write the article! I'm finding that people come through the door that way and my unique visitors numbers are increasing.

    I was a little frustrated, however, last time I used Wordtracker after you changed your format. It seemed to take an extremely long time for the search process. The earlier version seemed to go so much smoother. Was there a bug on Dec 18th, or is it just to be expected now?

    Thank you!

  7. I think it's interesting that these several-word phrases are now being referred to as long-tail. They used to just be called multiple-keyword phrases, or something similar. The idea has always been around, just called something different. I never heard it called bottom-feeding though; ptoooie!

    BB

  8. Yes targeting for the long tail keywords is a must for us smaller companies to compete with the larger big names. I t does get those that are in the buying phase but as well many larger companies do not have niche or long tail targeted pages. This would take up too much space and time. This is when they rely on good affiliates to make their own sites more for long tailed search.

  9. Please do not talk about it, also show us how to do this in wordtracker.

  10. Very imformative article on keywords. Is it true that meta crawlers are no longer adding weight to the meta name "keyword"??? I have been told that they still use the keyword phrase in the met name "description" and the title and that the amount of keyword content on the page is what makes you gain popularity. Any feed back is appreciated.

  11. Your points all make great sense to me. I'm just launching a new site about how to develop and sell products to Wal-Mart and other retailers. Since my complete course is expensive, I'm giving away a $39 CD or a download or the audio plus a PDF transcript free.

    Then I'll put those people in an autoresponder series so that when they are ready to buy, they will remember who I am. I want to give them free info now and catch them when they are anywhere between step 1 and 6 and then continue to give them free stuff until they are ready to buy - next month or next year - I'll get the sale.

    My question - how do you find someone to build these key word phrase web pages at a reasonable price? I'm good at marketing but don't know html or how to build a web page.

  12. Thank you . Very helpful. I will do more research now and keep on.

  13. Well i'm new to all this ,and just reading all I can so this article has helped me ,I understand it in theory ..its putting it into practice that will time the time .

  14. I just hope my competitors didn't read this, I've been after the long tail for some time now. Good article that I wish you hadn't posted. Cheers.

  15. Thank for the helpful articule about long tail keyword phrases.

  16. I would second that post by Manuel. So much software out there, and not enough time to learn it quickly

  17. Excellent article,

    Just shows that anyone can be successful (with some help from Word Tracker of course!!)

    Dave

  18. I have known about this type of key word or key phrase optimising for some time but haven't really done anything with it .However after reading your article and with some renewed vigour. I think I might give it a try. In the new year I have planned on doing some work on my site. An upgrade from a single paged site to multiple page's make for the perfect time to do some key phrase optimization . regards:nigel webmaster : http://www.lottoworldlinks.com/ p.s thanks for the renewed vigour

  19. Thanks...I finally understand that term: long-tail...after reading the excellent detailed description.

    Kari

  20. longtail, whatever, unless you got a lot of variant products to offer it dosent work. I sell only one product, that dosent have the depth of longtail phrases associaed with it. Meaning, the long tail is only say one search, ever for that particular phrase, or over a very long period, not enouth to warrent building exstra pages for.

  21. I will add to what Terry stated; most will look for a easier way and burn up a bunch of time doing so.

    Great article,

    W.C.M.

  22. Great article, I heard about the idea behind long-tail keyword phrases. But the question is: Are those long tail keywords generating any significant traffic?

  23. Great article. I just woder how to find those 3- or 4-word phrases in German.

  24. I agree with Manual. The concept is easy to understand, but applying it to Wordtracker and confidently extrapolating long tail keywords needs more explaination.

    I thank you for the article and look forward learning more from you.

    Thanks again,

    Tom Harris

  25. Hey, you guys are on to something here!

  26. Great Article. Fortunately with all of the possible "long tail" keyword combinations, there are literally millions upon millions of niches to fall into.

  27. The articles are great to read and certainly offer valuable help and insight to keeping ahead of others in this game of no guarantees. I do agree with Manuel however, an example with perhaps several screen shots of using your tools to establish the correct information would give the article the cherry.

  28. Excellent article, Stephen. This is exactly what we have been working to accomplish for ourselves and our clients, and it is very helpful to now have the benefit of your clear presentation of what you see as the "buying path" and the logic of focusing upon those at Stage 4.

    Terry makes a good point in his post that it takes work - and, I believe, a professional discipline - to apply these principles properly. Many will embrace the concept but fail to apply it for their commercial advantage.

  29. Great info. I just became aware of "The Long Tail" in the past week after 3 different people I admire mentioned it. I think the trick to this long tail keyword idea is to actually have a product or service that lends itself to the idea. It seems to me that a business would need a lot of long tail phrases to make up for all the traffic they can't get from a term like "car". I like the idea, I need to bounce it against my service to see if it will fly. Thanks

  30. At first when I saw the e-mail I thought... can not be anything we don't already know... must be someone coming out with a new phrase to describe a well-known SEO battle strategy. Saved the e-mail though (always save WordTracker e-mails), checked it out today, and I was almost upset... these days it seems people are afraid to come out with something unique and original for fear of being bashed for it... I say, c'mon, give it a try...pioneering paved the way, we should all contribute toward the future of SEO!

    Who do we thank for the new name, by the way?

  31. I am very happy with Wordtracker articles.They have been helpful and inspiring for me. The articles motivate me to keep pressing forward and not give up my dreams to make my website the greatest site of all time.

                thanks for the inspiration,
                                                   Gary Rodriguez
                      
  32. I am very happy with Wordtracker articles.They have been helpful and inspiring for me. The articles motivate me to keep pressing forward and not give up my dreams to make my website the greatest site of all time.

                thanks for the inspiration,
                                                   Gary Rodriguez
                      
  33. Three reasons why I found this article invaluable: 1) It provides clarity. 2) It is succinct. 3) It demystifies long tail keywords. Thank you for this information, it is much appreciated. http://www.slimming-made-easy.com

  34. Great article Stephen. I’m doing research on long tail keywords. Keep up the good work. Robert Brealey

    P.S. “I’ve discovered an amazing new system which makes it easy to start making money online. To see how it works, just click here now:”

    www.AnyoneCanProfit.com

  35. Our company has been a subscriber to Stephen’s searchenginenews.com for years. His team’s insights are outstanding and have proven extremely useful to our company and our clients’ web sites. I highly recommend his service. The money you spend on his newsletter and book will return to you 100 fold. We’re living proof.

    Thank you Stephen!

    Jeff Taylor @ KHMInternet.com http://www.khminternet.com

  36. I’m constantly online doing SEO research and I seldom find useful information. This article was very informative and useful. I look foward to Googling you to see what else you have to say. Thanks alot.

  37. Nice article and given a good tips on long tail keywords.

  38. Great info thanks a lot keyword serach its always reshaping ; you just dont know it all. will be nice if someone talks about;

    missedpell keywords - (does exist ??)

    that’s something I had been thinking of for the last 6 months if someone wants to make a test on it will be nice , please let us know apctek@hotmail.com - (keep it low profile guys L.O.L.)

  39. Thank you so much for giving me a better understanding. I am also glad that you wrote it clear enough for us beginners to understand. I am just starting to learn about keyword. My blog does show me what search terms were used to get to my post. That is why I am now wanting to learn how to apply those more affectively! I will continue to read & see if I can get this all packed in my brain.

  40. Using long-tail keywords is an effective way to get customers. Thank you for the useful post!

  41. i just wanted to say that am affiliate of one of the greatest produvts on the internet today,and i wouls really appreciate to all these guys here who visit this site,to visit my website because it really rocks.

    its all about making money on the internet,and it’s all automatically!

    you can download it here: www.tinyurl.com/2xypb7

  42. Going for the long tail is only option for positioning when your market is dominated by those with deep pockets. However, it takes time and lots of work, which is a good thing as it’s a natural barrier to entry for those not serious about growing their business. What continues to fuel the drive is watching your site stats and seeing those long tail phrases start getting ranked and visitors showing up!

  43. Hi to all, I guess you could call my site a beginners attempt at marketing. What I really need is to learn how to do the keywords and phrases and what works for affiliate marketing. In reference to the “long tail” keywords, I will have to try to use that technique. I thouaght that the simpler the keywords, the better. but to rise above the masses one has to be unique and that is hard to do. Jim Topbookshelf.com

  44. This is a good post. But there is a big issue about link ranking. I mean you can create a million pages but you will not get a visitor without good links to the site.

  45. Interesting article but it sounds all too easy. This technique doesn’t work in the financial sector as the competition is far too great.

  46. Hmmmmmmm. Would be good if you could have linked this more to Wordpress stats.

  47. Incredible information stephen! THANK YOU! To add something to your discussion, internal link buttons using the key word/s make a dramatic difference. Its seen as a valid use of an active key term with Google and others. A good example of this is shoe-lacing.com . The use of the buttons is over played but proves how this technique is very effective in search engine placement. Thanks Again Randii

  48. Thank you for sharing this information with the world. Long tail keywords have made my introduction to SEO a life saver

  49. Great article - Long tail keywords are a must for breaking into broad categories where the competition is stiff. Thinking about what customers actually type in when they're at stage 4... that's the key.

    We're not going to get all the traffic - but this type of targeting followed up with a credible, specific landing page that satisfies the inquiry of our visitor and calls them to further act is priceless.

    www.SailboatsforProfit.com

  50. I would just like to also suggest that the use of these specific long tail phrases and pages built for them is a worthwhile enhancement for bidding down the Google AdWords PPC campaign. The better the page relevancy, the higher the placement.

    Thanks again for a great article!

  51. An excellent article. It has helped us increase visitors and sales. http://www.superaffiliatestore.com

  52. Thanks for the excellent article. We are experts, who know how to write SEO-friendly content and articles for our customers. We are usually engaged to rewrite and re-brand the whole site.

    In our experience, viable multiple-keyword phrases require putting in the time on genuine market research. A little bit of qualitative market research on our customer’s client side goes a long way to quickly reveal the best multiple-keyword phrases, several-word phrases, long-tail phrase

    Next, we would 1) identify ideal customer archetypes “cash cows” and then follow up with customer access to these “cash cow” archetypes or 2) research logical prospective ‘ideal customer archetypes” ourselves and then conduct a sample of at least 5 desirable/ ideal customers to get usable data for long-tail phrases.

  53. Great article! Long tail keywords have been out there for years. But now they are more competitive as more and more people are using them. But what do you do if in your niche searchers don't use long tail keywords as they don't know much about your product or services. My website http://www.worldofmagnets.co.uk sells magnetic therapy products. And my keywords revolves around the word magnet-ic. Or possibly pain relief. Most of the times wordtracker will bring no long tail keywords at all in my niche apart from the usual magnetic bracelets.

  54. I have a question on this. Does a listing of individual relevant keywords work as well as the same words listed as a phrase, and does the order of the words matter? For example I have the words seattle, baby, portrait, photographer listed in my keywords. When doing a Google search for Seattle baby photographer, my site appears first, however do a search for baby photographer Seattle and it doesn't show up at all. Do I need to also list the words as a phrase rather than individually, and in all possible word order combinations? I thought that listing the same keyword too many times can hurt rather than help.

  55. Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and positive comments regarding this article over the past 12 months.

  56. Hi Stephen, first time I have come into this post, and s I paid for a Lifetime Membership, after some frustration on finding my way around, I am determined to crack your code on "http. Since I paid $404.00 I resent your saying you will fix it for another $8.95 or $2.95, so I have been close to asking for my money back. But I have been published 20 times elsewhere that I did not pay, so I will try again here. My webmaster says you are the best, but I so far have had little for my money. If I get my money back, and simply be a free member, what would I lose?

  57. Thank you for this terrific article! After first reading this article several months ago, I registered about 30 three and four-word domains containing commonly searched keyword phrases that Wordtracker helped me to identify.

    While I have not sold any of them yet and they remain "parked", they have performed extremely well for a bunch of newly registered parked domains, and all possess solid resale potential. This article alerted me to the potential value in researching three and four-word keyword domains and registering them when available.

  58. This is really obvious - once you know how! More useful advice which we can use Wordtracker to implement. Ewan Kennedy.

  59. very nice article on niche seo.

  60. Thank you Stephen. Your article was very helpful for me. I could finally reach the first page of the search engine with many of my website without spending one cent in advertising. I've learned that using wordpress blog with some good plugins get the job done a lot faster, by posting often you can keep a hight ranking quiet easily. Thanks again Stephen.

    Marc

  61. bottom feeding, lol.

    ye i've done this for ages with great results, one great way of doing it is by using different town and city names for your different landing pages

  62. Thank you for the article Stephen....luv the long tail :)

  63. i will try this on my new site, i can see why it is good to drill down to more specific keywords!

  64. Your article is really relevant to all webmasters who want not to throw money in adwords or other system like that. At the high costs it takes even more relevancy. Great work

    Frequentia

    http://frequentia.net The etools Megastore for Webmasters

  65. Well written article.

    I wonder if the concept is credited to an individual? Probably one of those collective realisations. Simple... Brilliant.

    Q: How much do different search engines' results vary?

  66. Excuse my ignorance, I am new to this subject. Suppose I could go check for myself, but what I really mean is:

    Do different search engines use different methods to query the web or is there a standard index which they all refer to? ...?

  67. @Shaman Every search engine uses it´s own ranking algos and it´s own webcrawler - so there is no "reference-index" or something like that.

    @frequentia Even for adwords this approach is really brilliant - if you can use longtail-keywords as exact-match you will definately save money compared to broad-match. So Longtail-Keywords even rock @ adwords

  68. Excellent article on longtail key words. I've found great success with focusing on catchy article/page titles, as these are a key part of SEO for improving your SERP ranking for these key words.

  69. This makes sense, i guess the more specific you are the smaller the competition and the visitors you get will be relevant

  70. This is a great technique. THe article is spot on!

  71. Thanks for writing such a clear and understandable article. Despite the fact that competition is fierce when it comes to consumer marketshare, information such as this helps me to appreciate the vast opportunity that still exists for the little guy. Truth is not everyone who reads this article is going to take action and that leaves the door to profits wide open.

    Thanks again.

  72. Stephen - very informative article, thanks!

    David Portney President, American Seminar Academy www.SeminarAcademy.com

  73. Thanks. This article was well-written, not to mention very helpful. I will be sure to pass this information on to my students.

  74. Well written article.

  75. thanks

  76. Thank you for the article. I had recently cancelled my google word ads as the competition was stiff and I was unable to think out side the square regarding the use of appropriate key words. Now, rearmed, I will again attempt to make this work! Watch this space!

  77. This is a great method, though it can be tough to keep track of the long tail. There's a free app called Hittail that makes it easier.

  78. Don't forget about the API costs. A lot of campaign managers have started to cut down on the long tail as API costs are becoming a more and more significant part of their calculation.

  79. It's amazing how many people don't know the true value of long tail keywords. I've found more I never thought of just by looking in my stats.

  80. Very good point about looking in the web stats!

  81. Its amazing i was trying too specific keywords which has costed me a more as the browser based game market is very competitive. Thanks for the article.

  82. Finding good quality longtails can be difficult, however when found they bring in good quality target specific visitors, great read.

  83. Yes long tail can be better and easier to target but it's harder to find traffic for.

  84. Use ezine articles and press release to nail those long terms. ;)

  85. I think the mutil-keywords is good ideas, But we could depend on wordtracker more because it is not experter in your industry, You must anaylize words and customers .and write your words self

  86. :)

  87. We use the free Google tool to hook out the Long Tails - it's an essential part of your Keyword Coherence.

    Thanks Stephen! I really 'Got' the bit about Long Tails being used by committed searchers.

  88. Great article. I just woder how to find those 3- or 4-word phrases in German.

  89. Thanks Mr.Mahaney,

    I quite agree with your opinion and thanks for sharing this information. in my experience,Long-Tail Keyword is much easier to rank.(The long tail keywords are much easier to rank for.)

    Long-Tail Keywords has a better conversion(higher sales conversions).

  90. Please bear me a to leave one more comment. I quite agree with your opinion.

    let's say suppose we are selling oil painting reproductions. and we all know artist gustav klimt works are very popular. like the kiss,the two friends,The Three Ages of Woman etc. If we tried to seo "oil painting" directly,it is very difficult to rank in top 5.about 10,900,000 result in google.com.(most of the the ones who look for oil painting is not the pospect client to buy,most of them are SEO/AD company,or even your competiors.If you are in top 5,it bring you about 200visit per day,but the conversion is very low,it is a bout 2 or 3 purchase.

    however,if we seo "gustav klimt paintings",there is only about 1,160,000 result.obviously much easier to rank high,and it bring directly pospect clients who need gustav klimt paintings.In my data record,it has much higher conversion. BTW,i have compare several soft,like google free keyword selector,wordtracker.com,yahoo keyword selector(it is closed now.),etc. I reckon wordtracker is te best one,it is more standard and fair data. P.W.Search Enginer suggestion function is changing the habit of the searcher.

  91. Such a great article.

    Thanks for providing valuable information.

  92. Thanks for the article. So many times people assume that everyone knows what "long-tail" keywords are. You did a great job explaining what they are in simple terms.

    Thanks

  93. Thanks for the fantastic article, I am currently working through some courses on SEO, and am in the process of a thorough examination of our sites key words. The insights you provided on using long-tail key words made perfect sense, and were very helpful.

  94. II have to tell you, after building my free membership site with multiple sections and multiple pages per section, its finally nice to see a way to get targeted traffic. Long tail keywords help a lot when your membership site has specific internet business building data that is unique and specific per page. Since my site is a free offer this will help pull more "free " traffic to each page as I continue my marketing and list building. I will use the long tail keyword strategy because it makes huge sense and because as you said "Well the goods news is that Google likes sites that have more pages." and i have lots of pages. Thanks - I learn as I go. Greg Burrus

  95. A must read for any web developer is Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail." It is an excellent book that takes the reader from the birth of the long tail, to its significance with the internet.

  96. With WordTracker's long tailed keyphrases my company is now able to outperform the competion. Why should anyone pay good money for less? We are now able to find product niches and research exactly what real people ready to buy want most - and the best part of it is that we're using carefully measured scientific data collected daily, and have access to Word Tracker's vast database of aggregated long tail keyphrases. This takes 99% of the guesswork out of keyword searching, and though it does extend the work and increase the hours necessary - it's not done blindly but virtually guarantees positive, cumulative results.

  97. Works extremely well with real estate buyers. More general searches reveal buyers who want to buy sometime- more specific posts find the "Now" buyer.

  98. Another reason to target long tail keywords is conversions. The longer the tail, the more likely the searcher will convert. This is primarily because they know what they want and your site hopefully has it.. if you have targeted the keywords.

  99. There's a point that's obliquely referred to in the article, and in a few of the comments that I'd like to bring out. This is: the long-tail approach relies on research. OK - you all said that already. What I mean is - research into the customer's real information gathering approach, and not necessarily the product features or brand names they might also be using.

    Many of us probably have to be honest and admit we know less about our customers' thought processes and information needs than we should, and it's not always easy to get to this info. But asking csutomers is a great way to get some 'outside-in' perspective. This can then fuel your long-tail research.

    That's the kind of insight that's easier for us smaller businesses to do, because we oftne have a greater degree of customer intimacy. And hey - customers like being asked what they need to know: saying we're interested in their opinions is paying them a compliment!

  100. In the busy market that we operate in, web design and programming, the long-tail is an interesting method that we will be looking into using.

  101. Excellent article. I'm always looking for an angle to keep my SEO strategy fresh and current. It's so difficult to stay on top these days. Thanks again for a great article. Keep it up. I'm subscribing. Dennis Francis DiD Publishing Inc.

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