I’m slowly but surely trying to figure out how to identify a good keyword but I have a few questions for long-tail keywords: 1. How many searches should a good long-tail keyword have (est. range)? 2. What is a good results to number of searches? 3. I am using google’s keyword tools and should a good long-tail keyword have a lot of advertiser competition? 4. Is there anyway to know if you have a good chance of getting in the top 5 results on google? As in, is there any indicators that your like wow I can probably do really good with this keyword? Thanks a lot guys.
1. Long tail keywords tend to get a very low volume of searches. They are your 4 - 6 word phrases that only get searched for by a handful of people. If the search volume is high, there is likely already people competing for that specific phrase. The trick is to find the longer phrases that the major competition is ignoring. Each phrase may only bring 5 - 10 people to your site each month, but if you are targeting 500 of these types of key phrases, then it adds up to a lot of traffic. 2. Ignore the number of results for a keyword. That doesn't really tell you anything useful. Instead examine the sites showing up for that keyword. Are they optimized especially for that exact keyword? Do those pages have many links? 3. Ideally there would be very little competition for the long tail keywords you go after. That makes ranking that much easier. When they mention advertiser competition they are talking about how many sites are bidding on that keyword using PPC. That may not directly relate to how many people are going after that phrase in the organic listings. 4. Check the top ranking page's links. Do they have many links pointing to that particular page? Is the page on a quality site with high PR throughout? Do they use the phrase in their page title? Are you confident in your ability to better optimize your pages or get better links than the sites ranking for that term? Those types of questions can help you determine if you have found an easy niche to go after.
Thanks a lot for your reply, it really clears a lot of things up for me! That’s exactly what I needed. My site is just an information site about fitness and health. It’s not a blog style. Should I create individual pages, each targeting a single long tail keyword? Should I try and get back links to each of these pages? Again thanks and I appreciate anyone’s input.
Yes many blogs or websites create a page for each long tail keyword that they want to target. Depending on the competitiveness of the phrase, you may need to get some links pointed to each page. If the overall authority of your website is high enough, the links from within your website may be enough.