Is It Smart To Use Long Tail Keyword?

Keyword invaluable part of Search Engine Optimization, everything the search engine optimizer does goes around the keyword. Keywords can be classified into two main categories, the short tail keywords and the long tail keywords. The term ‘long tail’ was coined by Chris Anderson. He used it to describe the strategy of targeting less-competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive short keywords. A long tail keyword is like targeting a keyword "Web Design in Los Angeles" while short tail keyword would target "Web Design" only.

The Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are offering. Short tail keywords are good, in fact they are great but market on short tail keyword is so saturated and the competition is very, very tough. If you were to target short tail keywords, you will be competing with websites who has years of conversion data, an older trusted site, tons of content, and thousands of organic inbound links. Try to beat them right from the start for the most potent high-value keywords and you will likely fail.

If you are newly launched website and try to compete on the competitive keyword first, you are likely to rank in page 2 or page 3 or farther. And it is a common knowledge that less 1% of internet users goes beyond the page 2 of the search result. The visitors you might get would not be self-sustaining and your online business will be sent into its natural death just like thousands of websites before you. Meanwhile, long tail keywords have less competition, and are thus far easier to rank to. For instance the keyword “web design” returns about 318,000,000 search results and you will be competing against sites like Wikipedia and sites that was "there" maybe before you born. But if you target "Web design in Los Angeles" you have less competition with barely 43,900,000 competitions. Plus you can rank for long tail keywords much faster, because you control your on page optimization.

Another benefit of long tail keywords is that the visitors that came in through long tail keywords have high conversion rates and ad clicks. According market research, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. In virtually every case, such very specific searches are far more likely to convert to sales than general generic searches that tend to be geared more toward the type of research that consumers typically do prior to making a buying decision. When your business becomes self-sufficient and you have build a revenue stream, you can eventually target for more competitive and more valuable keywords. By focusing on the second tier and third tier keywords first, you enable yourself an opportunity to earn the exposure needed to rank for the core keywords. It is long and tedious process, but eventually you could get there

source from http://claremontdesign.com/