Long Tail Keywords
June 9, 2008 By: Justin | 5 commentsBefore you start working with keywords, it is important to understand the concept of the long tail, which is an economy theory that tries to explains modern economics. It covers the concepts of what happens when shelf space is not limited and people are allowed to expand into niches. The internet provides almost unlimited niches which sit at the tail of the long tail graph. These are focused niches with low competition. These long tail niches can be easily targeted for great gains.
Long Tail Videos
Here is a video from Chris Anderson that explains the basic concepts of the long tail. If you’re interested in getting involved with internet marketing, you should spend some time learning about the long tail.
Here is a quick promo video that sums it up nicely in about a minute
Long Tail Applied to Internet Marketing
The concepts of the long tail can be applied to keyword research. You’ll read about long tail and niche marketing all over the internet. When marketers talk about niche affiliate marketing, they’re talking about the long tail.
Here is a quick example of the long tail. These are search volumes provides by Wordtracker for various related keywords.
Keywords / Searches
Credit Card ———————– 3323
Visa Credit Card —————– 201
Student Visa Credit Card ——- 42
This is a keyword example of the long tail. The keyword “Credit Card” is at the head of the curve. This keyword has a high volume of search and lots of potential hits, but the competition for it is very high. To rank for a keyword like Credit Cards is not easy. It is possible, but would take a significant amount of work. Lastly, “Credit Cards” is not targeted. The search can apply to platinum cards, student cards, bad debt cards, information on credit cards, credit card calculators, etc. The term is too general. The term does not give away the searcher’s purpose. Without knowing the purpose, you can’t always provide content to fill their need. As you get more targeted, the competition goes down and the searcher’s purpose is more obvious. Since you target an audience where you can predict their need, you can fill this need and increase the likelihood they’ll convert. Keywords like “Student Visa Credit Card” are very focused. You know the searcher is either a high school or college student, who is younger than 22 years old and has no credit history. They’re looking for their first credit card that is accepting of their thin credit history. This allows you to provide them with solutions to their problem. You will receive fewer visits, but you can be more confident they’ll convert.
By focusing on multiple long tails you can quickly dominate multiple targeted niches. This will allow you to bring in traffic that is comparable to dominating a head keyword, but the traffic is very targeted. Focusing on long tails will increase your ROI. You’ll rank easier and have higher conversions.
When you’re doing keyword research, you should use this understanding to select keywords. This is a general introduction, but I will write more articles to cover the research in depth and step by step.
If you’re interested in learning more about The Long Tail, here is one more video. It is long (30 mins), but covers the topic in depth. The discussion is not keyword related, but discusses the long tail theory. The presentation is to Google, so the presentation is a little more theoretical and high end.
Post is part of our Search Engine Optimization Guide, that teaches basic SEO
Filed Under Keywords, SEO Lessons |
Tagged With features, keyword research, keyword selection, Long Tail
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I am glad I stumbled on to this article because I am not really sure how to implement the longtails. Like with student visa credit card, would that be one article or would that be a whole site. Then if it was a whole site, how do you get several articles out of that. AS you can see I am new. But I will check back often for the update.
You can approach it either way. I picked a really long keyword.
Long tail keywords are normally easier to dominate. You can create a whole site on “student visa credit card” and then have more specific posts on related topics. Or you can have it focus on just student credit cards, and have the long tail as a post.
Like if the main keyword was for “student visa credit card” … I pulled up wordtracker, and you could make posts on these
student visa credit card college
application card credit student visa
visa credit card for college student loan
These search terms have very very low search volume, so they might not be the best option, but I hope that explains the idea.
Yes that does thank you very much. What do you suggest would be the longest a title should be if I am working a long tail keyword? Like how many words?
Consider the limitations of search engines. I think its around 70 characters. You’ll notice in the SERPS that the title will get cut off. You want your keywords near the front and try to fit them all in before Google cuts them off. If Google cuts off your site name, than that’s fine, but get your best keywords close to the front of the title.
Justin,
Thank you for posting these videos, this is great stuff. I had known about long tails from vic, court, griz etc, but this really helps to define them more than just “a couple people will stumble on to them”.