I've just recently got into using the Google keyword tool but still have some questions on understanding long tail keywords. I've found a lot of articles/videos explaining how to curtail your keywords usage to high queries/low competition, but I'm just trying to better understand some things. Such as... Even using a low competition long tail keyword, if I click Google for that phrase, there's still hundreds of thousands google pages for those keywords. How does that help a person start ranking on the first page? Does it do any good to market keywords towards medium competition.. or do you typically try to stay in low competition? and maybe a bit off subject but.. I've seen posts where people say they're ranking first for "this" keyword or "that" keyword. How does a person know what s/he is ranking for a particular keyword? I realize the methods are probably different for many people, but any insight into how some of you interpret these things would probably help me a lot. Many thanks!
You need to look for high search volume/ low competition keywords plus get backlinks to your website to rank..
To get a more accurate idea of how many competing pages there are for your keyword, put quotation marks around it when you search. Should be many less pages.
You don't want to go for phrases with hundreds of thousands of competing pages, you want to try for pages under 50,000. This is not the end-all-be-all of deciding what to go for either. To get the best idea you should use a good keyword tool like Micro Niche Finder or Market Samurai.
You can get a really good idea of how much strong (seo optimized) competition you have if you do a google search on: intitle:keyword If you know just a bit of seo you are probably going to be able to beat someone who doesn't do something as basic as putting their keyword in the title tag.
Some say that long tail keywords are long phrases (that's how I originally understood it), but you can have even 2 word phrases that are considered long tail if they have a low search volume. Sometimes the low hanging fruit is best. As for how they rank? They very likely just go to google and search for their keyword... then see where their site sits on the first page (or not). I've watched many videos and been on webcasts where that is all they do. (My understanding is if you use an automated script to find *your* website rank, google might penalize... that used to be the case with webposition etc., so I'm not sure if they still do it or not. You're best to just search google yourself to see where you are in the rankings.) Amber
long tail words are typically more highly qualified than head terms for example "los angles" is a head term and "wedding bakery in los angles" is a long tail term. which would would a bride type in when trying to find a baker for her wedding? the longer and more specific the keyterm the more the user inputting the term is likely trying to find something and is prepared to purchase. in the example above the bride could type in "los angles bakery" but so could bakery shops, seos, someone looking for cupcakes, etc... by specifying WHY (wedding) she wants the bakery and WHERE (los angles) she wants it she had provided valuable insights into her purchase intent. So head terms are good for traffic long tail is good for highly qualified traffic its a delicate balancing act
Do not worry about the number of competing pages so much, worry about the strength of the the first page results. If the first page results has PR 3-5s with 1,000s of links, it is going to be tough. However, there can be lots of page matches, but if the PRs are 0 and 1s with less than 1,000 links, you can probably compete in that niche.
Long Tail Keywords Is the contact with your core keywords edge keyword competition is not particularly large, relatively easy access to top
Use Google adwords keyword tool to find other keyword ideas and variations. Find keywords that have more than 2000 global monthly searches Type the keyword into a google search enclosed in quotation marks, if the number of results (competition) is less than 75,000 (or thereabouts), this would be a good keyword for you. Market Samurai is an excellent tool that you may want to look into. Hope that helps
What you should be focusing on is long tail keywords which are buying terms instead of search terms as well. For example, "Cheapest SONY TV to buy online" is better than "What is the biggest SONY TV available". But of course generally, long tail keywords convert better than short tail.
You do also have to think about your competition on those pages as has already been suggested in this thread. I find I can rank on the first page amoung 100,000 plus sites on some topics, but that is for niches where obviously site owners have not put a lot of work into page rank and back linking etc. Using long tailed keywords does allow you to compete for traffic from a focused rather than a broad niche - dragon5 mentioned that in his response. When you think about it the information given out about niche marketing and using long tailed keywords can be confusing. You are told that you need to have XX number of minimum searches per month; with say less than 50,000 competing sites BUT you have also got to check out if people are buying in that targeted niche (checking adword ads) or if there is a lot of high PR rank pages in your niche already (which would make the chances of ranking in search engines quite slim). Oh and don't forget...well you get my drift. At the risk of getting shot down in flames I think in a lot of ways if you want to make good money then you do your research and you nail down a set of really focused keywords that you know you can rank for; but if you like the topic anyway then what is the harm in building a web presence on that niche? One example for me was ghost hunting - heaps for searches for my keyword phrase (can ghosts hurt you); I had written two books on the topic - put up hubpages, and squidoo pages and the rest of it - had a ball because it was a topic I was interested in - but didn't make a single sale - the number of searches in my niche were huge BUT my market was looking for free information, not paid stuff. If the keywords you are looking at have heaps of competing pages then try adding another word to your keyword phrase to focus it down a little bit more. I hope that helps Lisa
Long tail keyword are easy to optimized. but better to research the keywords that have small amount of competitors and has more search.. Try the market samurai for it
There's some great advice here already on this thread. I would just add that when you are doing your keyword research on the Google keyword tool or Market Samurai, you should have your settings for the 'exact' match, rather than 'broad' match to find out how many people are using your exact keyword search term rather than a combination of/different order of the keywords in your search term.