Hey Guys, I've worked on a couple different campaigns and have been trying to determine what is better to go for from the start; longtail or shorttail keywords? Shorttail obviously are more difficult/time consuming to get but have a higher search volume. Longtail volume is not there but might convert better.. -any thoughts?
Long tail and short tail keywords can be effective. Everything depends on your niche, because for one niche there might be long tail/short tail niche keywords with high popularity, for another niche there might be no popular niche keywords at all. Describe the niche you work in, so I can check long and short tail keywords for them to give you a keyword list, as an example, using Xedant.com Keyword Database that I am constantly using for my own projects.
The more targeted your keywords the more conversions you should get. I think the phrases that occur in the late buying cycle are the ones that are 3-4 words long. There's always a trade off between raw traffic and smaller targeted converting traffic. Depends on what you want to do. Generally the broader/short tails are more work to rank for and long tails don't take as much work. If your starting out, work from the long tails, have a few of them developed in your niche and then create a broader term site so that you can link your long tail sites to your short tail site to give it more weight.
Go for long tail keywords usually people don't search by 1 or 2 words. I always search by e.g "free image hosting online" not just image hosting or image hosting online. People are more specific while searching IMO long tails are best.