Hunting for Long Tail…. Query Keywords that is
Posted By Melanie Prough on April 20, 2009
I know what the heck is a long tail keyword? ….well my friend, it is the Goose with the Golden Eggs. Long tail keywords are phrases that are dense enough in your document for “some” engines to use in indexing your site. For example “DIY Your SEO”, this one is actually a very common long tail, but we see some anatomical features there. It has hard hitting keywords within the phrase, and it’s going to be incredibly relevant due to its composition also.
So why use this technique in your link baiting?
Lets say for example an end user searches for “online wedding album”. You see this is fairly natural end user search language, but the trick is this….relevancy! Those terms independently have no value to my site yet at all, but I am getting my share on the 166 monthly searches for that long tail……Where I am outranking the competition, even though I have little keyword power for those terms individually. You see, this natural search term phrase signifies a better grasp on how people might search for such a product. When they do I am in the top 10 because I am link baiting for that exact phrase…. So bang, my result is more relevant than the PR 5 generally kicking my butt in SERPs. So ideally you can hit a couple of these natural long tails from the beginning, and they help to pump up your search position in the other broader terms. This is especially effective when the theme is a “really big pond”, and no niche seems possible.
How do you find possible long tail terms to target for your site?
I use 2 free services to find effective long tails. The first is good old fashioned Overture, this tool returns monthly searches for your query and many related ones. So you have a pool of long tails to choose from that contain your “punch” words. The second keyword discovery / suggestion tool I use is the Adwords Suggestion Tool. Lastly, I use Google Trends tool to get a better grip on how many searches and the geographical relevance of the long tails that I am considering. The only problem with Google Trends, is sometimes for smaller results it won’t graph. That doesn’t mean there is no value. If you hit a long tail that’s getting 600 searches a month, it won’t graph…..but you may be in a “small pond” and say the #1 SERP. According to Cornell University research this would deliver approximately 338 visits a month from this long tail. The added value here is that conversions for these particular searches will be far better due the the original relevancy of the end users search. So the end users you get from this long tail are more likely to have found what they were looking for, and in turn will raise your conversion ratio.
I suggest you treat the research, discovery and implementation of long tails like any other keyword. The only real added concern is “search-ability” or “natural language” of the long tail. If its not searched it won’t be effective. Really want to deeply and effectively index you site? Try different unique long tail campaigns for each major / landing page … Now you’re cooking with fire.
Where is long tail searching most effective?
Google tends to do a VERY nice job with long tails. You can expect some serious quick action from properly formed long tail phrases in your content. What are you waiting for?
Peace and SEO
Melanie
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Long-tail has always made sense to me for all the reasons you’ve just listed. I’ve always had trouble implementing them though, so thanks for the tips, I’ll be trying it all out!