Keyword Research: Long Tail v/s Short Tail Keywords!

keyword research

Keyword Research: Long Tail v/s Short Tail Keywords!

Long tail keywords are any day better for your site’s exposure and hence for your online business. Firstly, it gives a converging view of what your potential buyer are looking for, secondly the relative amount of SEO competition would be less, and lastly if you are already ranking with some keywords, it will be easier for you to obtain guest posts from fellow bloggers.
To make this point clear, let’s take an example for both short tail and long tail keywords:
Short tail keywords include:

  1. Digital Camera
    1. LCD TV
    2. Desktop
    3. Mp3 Music player

Long tail keywords would be:

  1. Canon power shot digital camera 2MP
    1. 17 inch LCD TV free shipping
    2. dell coupons for inspiron desktop
    3. mp3 music player free download mobile

Due to refinement, the intent would be clearer in case of long tail keywords and hence the conversion would be high. Now there’s a very important point, which must not be neglected, users who search using these long tail keywords are actually the potential buyers.
There’s more to come, as per a report by Tancer of Hitwise (2008), long tail keywords account for more than 94% of website traffic. This clearly means, if you want to generate a chunk of targeted traffic, you need to work on long tail terms only.
Moral of the Long Tail Keywords:

  1. Rank higher in search engines
  2. Competition would be less
  3. Since the search volume is minimal, the keywords won’t be present in keyword database
  4. ROI would be high relatively

How can I find long tail keywords?

  1. Brainstorm: Sit with peers, friends, colleagues ask them what terms/phrases they would use if they had to look for a certain product over internet.
  2. Competitor Analysis: Looking over competitors’ product page can also be a source of generating long tail keywords.
  3. Log Files: Scanning your own website’s logs for the terms that users used for landing on your site could also be a gateway for having an idea of long tail keywords.

You can take these points as starting points for tweaking your website’s architecture and content pages.