I have read pros and cons about Long Tail Keywords versus Short Tail Keywords for SEO. I would like to hear some of the experiences by memebers of this forum as to what is more beneficial: Long Tail Keywords or Short Tail Keywords? What works and what does not work? Appreciate all the feedback
Ray, If you can rank high with short tail, then that is by far the best in terms of traffic alone. Problem is, that's the hardest to rank high in. The other problem is that the traffic will not be targeted. If you have a blog about big pictures of horses. Then "big pictures" will get you lots of hits but they may be looking for big pictures of upper female body parts and not horses. lol I couldn't resist. You'll do much better with traffic that is looking for what you have and the long tail keywords will get you traffic that is interested in what your site is about. What you want to look for are keywords that get a lot of traffic but have low competition. Do you Google's keyword tools? You need an Adwords account to use it I THINK.... They kind of bury it. Google Keyword Tools and I will pop up high in the results, of course. Type in the keywords you want to research. BTW, a keyword is usually more than one word. It is a phrase. Find keywords that have 2000 or more searches per day. The Google those Keywords and put quotes around them. Like "internet marketing" Then look at how many results it generates. Over 70,000? LOTS of competition. Start with the long tail, as you get better at SEO, expand it but remember what I said about targeted. You don't want to waste bandwidth on people that are not interested in what you have. BTW, much of what I learned started with the course I took myself in my signature. I've been doing this a long time but it explained it the best. I took it now I offer it to others too. It has made a huge difference in my business in five weeks.
For getting heavy traffic, short tail keyword is more beneficial, but if you want targeted traffic only, then Long Tail Keywords are the best. Long tail keywords help you getting targeted visitors and that may increase your conversion rate. While short tail keywords can give you a great traffic, but that may not be targeted traffic. Depends on product or service of your business, you should choose keyword. You can choose a keyword location or service specific for your site.
It's not a question of "what's better- x or y?". It's a matter of time and goals. A younger site is better off targeting long tails and avoiding the strain of competing with the big fish. As you gain authority, traffic and grow - the shorter tails will become an option.
With the advent of google instant its always advisable to see if the long tail has some or no mention in the title of the short tail leaders If its already there then no point targetting the long tail cause all instant users will rush to that site even if your site is #1 for the long tail. Nice tip regarding the searching with "quotes"
Long tail keywords always give best result because long tail keywords hopefully showing meaning of requirement of use.
As soon as you use the word always, you are always wrong..... Opps, I must be wrong about always being wrong then. LOL
They both work but you will have to work harder to rank for short tail keywords. The long tail keywords are considered the low hanging fruit and are easier to rank for and get limited traffic. The money is in the short tail keywords.
There is more money in long tail BUT its like the holy grail... Long Tail keywords with lots of traffic is where the money is. Short tail keywords are where lots of traffic is if you rank well.
generally most of people writing long tail keyord for search so there may be good chance to visit your site and also long tail keyword has lesss competition then short tail keywords.
Sickthing, Quick question. My long tail keyword has my short tail keyword in it. Here are the local monthly searches from Google keyword tool for both: Short Tail Keyword - 200,000 local searches (sept/2010) Long Tail Keyword - 20,000 local searches (sept/2010) Would you suggest going after the long tail keyword in this scenario. Is 20,000 searches ample enough to build a SEO marketing campaign for the long tailed keyword? Also would it be possible to rank high for both long tail, and short tail, since my short tail keyword is also in my long tail keyword I hope that was clear Thanks Ray
There is less competition so you can rank on the first page of Google for long tail keywords far easier than ranking for short tail keywords. Whether you can achieve high rankings for competitive keywords or not, long tail keywords could be highly beneficial for you. If you have a website selling ‘Armani Suits’ but can’t pull any search engine traffic, rather than targeting the keyword ‘Armani’ or ‘Armani Suits’ try targeting more specific keywords such as ‘Armani Mens Suits’. Hopefully you will see an increase in conversions and sales.
Hi Ray, great question. It is possible your long tail keyword targeting will show up in short tail search. If your short tail keyword was red and long tail was fast red cars it is possible your long tail could show up when search for red. To evaluate if a keyword is a good one it is also required you look at the results. Go to Google and enter your keyword in quotes like "fast read cars" First thing to check is how many results there are. I usually go after results of less than 80,000 as you have a better chance of placing there. If you know a bit more about SEO then click the resulting links from your search and see how well they are doing it. If they got there by dumb luck, chances are good you can knock them off the top. My cut off point for determining if I will be interested in a keyword is 2,000 searches per month. 20,000 you might have more competition but you won't know that until you check it out. The holy grail of keywords, long tail or short tail is where there are a lot of searches and not much competition. So a high number of searches is half the battle. i hope that helps!
Short tailed keywords are pretty tough to compete (unless the products are in the hot trends or was released days ago), but long tailed keywords can give us chance to compete well in the search engines. Most long tailed keywords were having low competition stats now.
If you want to get many traffic, short tailed keywords are well, if you want to improve converter rate. I think both short keywords and long trail keywords are important to the website.