The Importance of Long-Tail Keywords

Those of you who have tried in vain for years to rank high for your head keyword of choice know what I am talking about. To those of you who are newly introduced to this wondrous world of SEO, I’ll say this: roll up your sleeves and prepare to wait. Or you can do the smart thing and just target long-tail keywords. You won’t have to deal with all that fierce competition for popular head keywords, and you will be a few steps closer to getting your site rank high.

It comes with one warning: the traffic volumes will be considerably lower than that from a head keyword.  But then, the probability of your ranking high for a head keyword is less than unlikely, so the traffic from that keyword will amount to, basically, nothing.

It’s a quantity vs. quality argument.  And when you do the math, you will find, the long-tailed keyword is the bird in the hand.

Consider this:

• Ease  When you try to rank for a head keyword, you essentially go into competition with millions of websites. And the odds of your ranking high for that term are very low. For example, if you try to rank for the head keyword “online learning” you’ll have to beat at least 36 million other sites to rank high. Instead, if you use a long-tail with niche terms relevant to your site, like, “online learning in South Carolina” the competition drastically drops to under three hundred thousand. And your odds of ranking high will improve too.
• Speed  Thanks to the diminished competition, you don’t have to spend nearly half your life optimizing your site and building links before you can see your site ranking high for long-tail keywords.
• Relevance  Since long-tail keywords are more often than not, specific strings of keywords with a niche term; the chances of then meeting the exact search needs of users are very high.  This aids the target marketing methods of your overall mix and ultimately drives…
• Conversion  The fact that search users will find sites targeting long-tail keywords more relevant contribute another point to chalk up in its favor. Reports attest to the fact that users with specific search queries know exactly what they are looking for and are more likely to turn into customers.
• Exposure  This is perhaps the least known advantage of targeting long-tail keywords. Using long tail keywords over a period of time will eventually help you rank higher for your head keywords as well. As your site gains authority and builds its trust quotient, the long-tail keywords will help provide enough targeted traffic and also enough ‘exposure’ to your head keywords that your attempt to target them alone won’t prove to be all that disastrous.

A great thing about targeting long-tail keywords is that you can play around with all the niche terms relevant to your site and try and rank for a series of long-tails. You don’t always have to target “online learning in South Carolina,” “online high school in South Carolina” can help send an entirely different set people swinging to your site. However, targeting keywords on your site alone won’t help you achieve all this, and I doubt if I have to reiterate the importance of building credible links with the right anchor test. Try to have your targeted keywords in as many incoming links (internal as well as external) as possible, combined with your on page optimization efforts, it will do wonders for your ranking.

What are some of your long-tail keyword success stories?

Google Instant Search and its impact on SEO

During Tuesday’s major search event in San Francisco Google announced a new search feature called Google Instant which will significantly change the way users search for information on Google Search.

Google Instant - Live updating search result page

This new interface updates as a user types in the search query. Not only will the regular search results update as a user types in letters in the search field, but elements from Universal Search (maps, news, shopping, etc) as well as AdWords ads will also update in real time. This results in a user seeing a much larger set of search results as the query is being typed in and refined. In addition, the query suggestions (Google Suggest) play a more central role in discovering possible queries and relevant websites.

Why Google Instant is cool?

• Dynamic Results  Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions  One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search  Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

To the Webmaster, Google Instant is cool because as users are shown a much larger set of search results, there is a higher chance of your pages being displayed in the SERPs.  In addition, users can now more easily modify their search which results in more specific query that will drive more relevant traffic to your website (See my post on The Importance of Longtail Keywords).  And relevant traffic means conversion!

Impact of Google Instant Search on SEO

In general this new feature won’t change the basic rules of SEO since Google’s algorithms will continue evaluating webpages in the same way as before. Webmasters should hence continue focusing on their content, traffic, and conversions.

What will change, however, is the way users will go about finding information, how they interact with search results as they learn to use more specific search queries, and how they review the results before making a choice.

• CTR  is the new ranking. The click-through rate for organic listings becomes more important than pure rankings since users will see many more search results in each session.
• Creating relevant content which better targets specific queries will drive more traffic as users learn to perform better searches.
• Experimenting with page titles and snippets and tracking the changes in CTR becomes even more important.
• Universal Search listings (images, video thumbnails, maps, shopping, etc) will attract more clicks since dense graphic elements will draw more attention in a fast updating interface.
• The traditional Golden Triangle theory regarding the users’ eye movements on search result pages is no longer true. Earlier you performed a search, sat back and studied the results and the ads before either clicking on a listing, or modifying your query. This will now be substantially different as the users’ eyes will wander up and down between the query field, listings, Universal Search entries, and AdWords ads. I’m looking forward to the first eye tracking study for the new search page.
• Searches with short queries will fall considerably since people usually come to Google with a very specific goal in mind. The now interactive search result page allows users to dig deeper into a subject until they’ve found a reasonable set of search results which better fits their intent.

For those proclaiming the death of SEO, I would actually argue the opposite.

This is definitely a game changer but it does not change the way serious SEOs have worked for a long period of time. That includes focusing on important Key Performance Indicator’s other than rankings. Instant Search is however a massive headache for those who still treat SEO as a magic formula and have been focusing on optimizing for mere nuances in Google’s search algorithm. They will continue wasting their time focusing on the petty details in the algorithms instead of working on improving the overall value of the sites they are promoting.

All in all, no matter what some people wrongly proclaim, SEO is certainly not dead - it just got more interesting.

How will you change your SEO strategy given Google Instant?