Building on yesterday’s report on the buzz surrounding Long Tail, today we will take a look at Long Tail keywords for search engine optimization.  Checking your analytics, you probably find 3 or 4 keywords that direct the majority of traffic from a search engine to
your site.

The first is most certainly the name of your company or leading brand. The others are most likely the most popular keywords for your product, service or industry.  These words are typically hotly contested by a large number of companies because of the large number of hits they can produce.

A Long Tail keyword is a search term that is further down the tail. Your analytics may show that it drives a smaller number of visitors to your site.  Does it make sense to focus resources on these less popular keywords?

In many cases, the answer is yes.

The easiest scenario to see the importance of long tail keywords is when you have smaller chances at ‘winning’ the most popular keywords.  The stark reality is most searchers do not go beyond the 3rd page or top 30 and many do not leave the first page or top 10.  If you fall outside of these areas, you will not see much traffic from the popular keywords.
Don’t be discouraged.  Continue you your optimization work.

It is also likely that an SEM or paid search program may be out of your budget for these terms as well.  Under this scenario then it makes sense to do the research and figure out the keywords lower down the tail to concentrate efforts towards.

Long Tail keywords will be seen by fewer searchers.  However, your conversion rates may improve as there is a strong possibility that you will drive more qualified traffic from these keywords.  This efficiency and the lower costs taken to achieve it, make long tail keywords attractive.

We have some examples for you, but as this post is long today, we figured we’d split it into two.  Tomorrow’s post will have a couple examples of putting Long Tail Keywords to use.