Short tail vs. long tail keywords phrases...What`s yr opinion ?

Hello,
I`ve red this somewhere and I was a bit surprised.
I always thought that if you focus on long tail keywords phrases you gain some kind of improvement in yr ranking for short tail keywords as well.
Pls feel free to comment on this. Thank you !

 

i guess it depends... if you can drive targeted traffic then long tail keywords for a high conversion rate.

if you are getting alot of general traffic then short tail keywords?

 

I agree with gurk. Keywords place a big role in your listing on top. Search some good keywords and check how many listing are already there and can you compete with them ? If yes, go for it.

 

Pls stay on topic.....I didn`t say I don`t know how to choose my keywords.
My question as about whether or not the reverse is the case ....read the quote....Thank you!

 

it is true if general traffic is so much then short otherwise long

 

Ok, so I feel like I didn`t make myself clear.

Let`s say I want to rank for ‘Home Loans’. I know that by focusing on this short tail keyword phrases I can achieve rankings for a long tail keywords phrase like let`s say ‘Home Loans Sydney’.
My question is if I`m focusing on ‘Home Loans Sydney’ will I achieve rankings for ‘Home Loans’ as well? Cuz this quote I found somewhere it says I cannot.

 

It would only work if practically nobody had targeted the shorter keyphrase.
In the example you give, sites that had established themselves for 'Home Loans' will always do better than you for that phrase if you've targeted 'Home Loans Sydney'
But if you target 'daffodil elephants go for home loans madness" You will also top serps for 'daffodil elephants', but it won't help you make any impact on 'home loans'

 

It is true, when you have a short keyword phrase, the longer ones will be found as well, but when you have a long keyword phrase there would have to be very few competitors for the short phrase to be found as well.

 

Thanx guys, this is the kind of answer I was waiting for. So in short it`s working, but it will depend on how much competitors do you have. From that qoute I understood things a bit different. But it all make sense now! Thank you !

 

Long tail keywords are very helpful. Why? Even though individual long term keywords bring little traffics, if you can make lots of long term keywords, it will bring lots of traffic in overall. Plus, you are targeting much better your targeted audience with long term keyword.

 

daffodil elephants is harder to score for than I thought !
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...home+loans+madness&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

versus
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...daffodil+elephants&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

this is a good example, though - this thread in the only page in the internet where all seven words in the keyphrase appears - it's not the only page where the first 2 appear - and the other pages are older - this one only appeared a couple or so hours ago.

 

ok belongus3 heres my thouhgts

If you have a keyword lets take "long distance running" and your page is about that topic as well. when you build back links they would be "long distance running" after some time you rank on page 1 for the term. If you search for "distance running" you should be ranked for that as well but not as high i mean in the top 5-10 pages depending on were you rank for "long distance running".

After that you would only need to add some more backlinks to the "long distance running" page but instead use anchor of "distance running" then you will rank for both long and short term hope this makes sense if not let me know

 

It makes a lot of sense. Thank you Raven. It`s kind of what I thought also, but that quote from a article I`ve red online was a bit weird. Or maybe my understanding of it was...I don`t know.

And thank you guys for taking yr time and clarifying this for me.

 

It is usually best to use long tail keywords if the niche you are working in is very competitive

 

no problem belongus3 feel free to pm me your site if you ever have a question or anything again dont mind helping a fellow webmasters

 

What about plural words guys?

The rule above does it apply to plural words as well?

Which is best "Beef With Been Recipe" or "Beef With Been Recipes". I mean if both rank the same, but the plural has less competitive websites, wouldn`t be a good idea to use the plural phrase so I can gain some rankings from the singular phrase as well ?

 

same thing rank for one and then try the other but you should move up for both

 

I wonder what's the guy thinking about when he wrote that sentence. Maybe it works in certain cases, such as the name of a specific creatures.
I wrote a series of articles on "arowana", even though there are many species of arowana, I did find that using "arowana" as keyword instead of "golden arowana", "Green arowana" works better, because there is practically no search for long tail key word in this niche.
However, in most popular topics, such as cancer, it's better to get long tail keyword, since "cancer" is too vague, and too competitive.

 

Did you mean to say aim to rank for the long tail, which also would
include the short tail, and you'll be on your way to rank for the short tail.

Or another way to approach it... work like a dickens to rank for the short tail,
and you'll rank for some long tails along the way.

 

I find that you need to add an extra level t your keyword research to make the most of longtails.

Research the short tails that have lower competition. Then find the long tails that have very low competition but contain your short tail.
That way all the time your building links with your long tails you are improving your shot tails.

Its a case of taking the long term view of which keyword do you want your website to go after.