Tech Lover 9

Long tail keywords targeting or optimization has greater benefits than its counterpart broad ones or head-terms.

Long tail keywords search constitutes 70% of total search performed on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, and the so called head-terms the rest 30%.

Even a trend of ultra-long tail keywords optimization has emerged in recent times due to various advantages it offers.

Getting on the first page of Google for a long tail keyword is much easier than a broad keyword. That doesn’t mean you can’t rank higher in search engines for a single keyword related to your niche. It can be achieved, but with lot of effort.

History and Definition: Credit goes to Chris Anderson who coined the term long tail in year 2004.
Long tail keywords are multiword keywords that are highly specific and extremely narrow in focus.
Let’s checkout the top 5 benefits of long tail keywords optimization for your articles or content:

1. Higher conversion rate

Here the intention of the web-searcher is highly focused or specific.

By typing the targeted keywords in the search engine box – the query becomes either a transactional or informational-cum-transactional. With highly targeted traffic, the conversion rate is high.
On the other hand, broad terms (head-terms) attract raw traffic, which are mainly informational (queries) in nature.

2. Low competition

The competition is very less for long tail keywords search.
Although the overall search percentage is 70%, each long tail phrase attracts very less volume of traffic with less number of competing websites.
It’s wiser to rank at the first position on Google, with less traffic, targeting a log tail keywords; instead of ranking at 11th position (2nd page) for a broad and popular term with less-targeted traffic.
EXAMPLE: Checkout the below Google search for the term “WordPress themes” and “Premium WordPress Photography Themes.”
A Google search for the term WordPress Themes shows – 89 million+ competing websites. Despite a high competition, the traffic are usually raw, informational in nature and un-targeted.

A Google search for the the long tail phrase Premium WordPress Photography Themes shows only 7 million+ competing websites. Which is comparatively less with well-targeted traffic.

3. Easy content creation with expertise

Content creation becomes very easy when you focus on a specific topic within a niche. Not only it becomes in-depth, but also it shows the expertise level of the author.

As search engines love quality content – it ranks higher in search results. Long tail keywords targeting for content marketing has a tremendous potential in SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

4. Greater chances of getting back-links

As the topic becomes narrow and focused, more and more readers (targeted) like it. They (webmasters and bloggers) usually share the article with their readers by linking, if they find it valuable.

An in-depth article with well targeted long tail keywords acts like a link-bait. And it is used as a link building strategies by quite a lot of SEO practitioners.

5. Social media benefits

Targeted traffic means more Facebook likes, Tweets and Stumbles.

More number of social media sharing sends a +Ve ranking signal to search engines, resulting in higher ranks in coming days. There by sending more traffic and more sharing. It acts like a vicious cycle.