How To Choose The Right Keywords To Make Money—Pick the Long Tail

*Citation at the bottom of post

Keyword misconceptions
There seems to be a common misconception among inexperienced online marketers when it comes to identifying which keywords they feel will make them money the fastest when creating content for organic SEO purposes.

The reoccurring theme, among those who are not so online savvy, is that when targeting a market, the most obvious word or two (also known as a short tail keyword) will bring in the most traffic, and therefore, the most money. Although it is true that the more broader the term, the more traffic it will most likely receive, unfortunately, it simply isn’t reasonable to suspect an index anywhere even close to what’s considered a ‘good’ ranking, in a short amount of time.

For example, supposing you were to target the music industry for the purpose of selling advice on how to successfully enter the music biz, then you created a blog to write up some articles on the secrets to music career success. In doing so, the keywords music, music industry, and music career were targeted and articles were written up mentioning these keywords only.

The problem is, the keywords music, music industry, and music career are all too broad for the ‘how to successfully enter the music biz’ niche. In looking at the search engine index pages for these keywords, you could find results for perhaps a personal blog post about how much someone likes music, or where to buy music instruments, what the current music industry trends are, and even the music career of a famous artist, but nothing on how to break into the music biz.

If that’s not enough, another problem is the amount of time it would take to make it anywhere on the first three pages of the SERPs (search engine results pages). The music market is huge and so are the numbers of indexed pages for most of its short tail keywords. It could take years of targeting broad terms like music, music industry, or music career.

So what’s a marketer to do?
Fortunately, there’s hope for you when entering into a market or looking to revamp your current SEO efforts—the long tail keyword. The long tail is a more concise, descriptive keyword phrase that enables you to make a fair assumption as to what consumers using these phrases are looking for. For instance, in the event of selling advice on ‘how to successfully enter the music biz,’ the short tail keyword music career could actually also exist in a long tail form as perhaps inexpensive music career advice or maybe music career advice for beginners.

The beauty of the long tail is that due to its highly descriptive nature, consumers who use such phrases are indeed looking for a specific result and more likely to purchase, then consumers looking for short tails. The long tail inexpensive music career advice suggest that someone is looking to break out his/her wallet, soon, provided the offer is enticing enough.

It is important to know though, that most long tails often have a lot less traffic then short tails, therefore, you must keep in mind when dealing with long tails that there’s strength in numbers. Expect to target many long tails for the full benefit of these highly converting, quick indexing, and ultimately faster brand name building keyword phrases.

Where can I find long tails for my market?
Long tails exists for every market, as long as you know where to find them. There are many ways to find long tails, but perhaps the easiest way is to simply ask the experts. Google provides an excellent tool for finding the exact keywords phrases being searched for, by the very consumers using the search engine. Check out Google Adwords for some of the best long tails around. Another good place to go is Wordtracker.com, which is another platform for studying the actual keywords being sought after, from real life consumers.

Please note, this advice isn’t to steer you away from short tails, but rather, when waiting for your short tail targeting efforts to pay off, use the power of the long tail to get you noticed and start bringing in some money!

Google. (n.d.) Google Images. Retrieved on October 9, 2010 from http://www.jumpstartpro.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/real-estate-long-tail-keywords.jpg