Long Tail Keywords Concept

The principle of the Long Tail Keywords is one of the most important aspects of the world of search engine marketing and is one of the primary areas where it helps to get profitable business online with search engine optimization services for micro niches.

The "top most keywords" concept has traditionally been supported by Search Engine Optimization Companies that make their profits by gaining rankings for the top 5-10 keyword terms. So called SEO Gurus writing about getting good rankings but they haven't yet revealed their strategies. This phenomenon creates a sort of "herd mentality" amongst upstart website marketers where it is believed that the top terms provide 80% of the business, However this view has proven unsubstantiated, and in fact the opposite holds true.

Long Tail Keywords Concept might seem a little counter-intuitive at first glance because it seems to go against the grain of focusing on the top few keywords for optimizing a small business website. Its a natural tendency for people to focus on the thousands of visitors that top keywords tend to generate for the most popular keyword terms. Inexperienced webmasters who are unfamiliar with the Long tail Keyword concept are thrilled to see the numbers increase for top keywords, and even happier when those top keyword terms consistently rank well.

Reviewing stats from the major search engines that the actual convertible traffic generated by concentrating on the top 5-10 keyword terms is not as productive as was once been believed. What they have in fact discovered, is that Long tail keywords have been demonstrated to be the best in terms of conversions for calls to action. That is, getting the website visitor to make a purchase, click an adsense ad, fill out an opt-in form, take a poll - or whatever the desired goal.

The fact that the top 10 keyword terms provide a large amount of traffic data is mesmerizing, but the actual conversions - click through rates - are not nearly as high as a site optimized for long tail keywords. All recent studies have proven that a site optimized for 4-5 search terms outside the top terms for a given topic are consistently more productive than the top terms are for that topic. A close examination reveals that most sites will have the majority of their marketing responses generated from terms that are rarely tracked. Furthermore, long tail keywords are much, much easier to get natural search engine rankings for. This is the heart of the "long tail keyword" concept.

One test done which was significant was performed with a client whose main requirement was to rank for two terms. He was convinced that all of his customers focused on two terms. An initial report showed that his top 10 terms brought in over half of the site's overall search referrals. However, when looking at sales generated by search terms,18.8% of conversions were from top 10 keywords. Conversely, 81.2% of the conversions were from hundreds of other search terms outside of the top 10. The 80/20 rule works in reverse, providing a sweet spot of opportunity.

What types of terms are needed to bring visitors? You will see that the Long tail is the only means by which savvy internet marketers should tune their web sites. In the world of the upper level web marketing firms, where the smallest details are tracked, dollars are not won in the pool of super-popular terms, but rather the money is made in the thousands of dozens of keywords known as the long tail. These groups of keywords are highly optimized for what a searcher is looking for - the dozens of small market segments that search for specific needs, specific requirements and detailed terms by the efficient use of search engine filtering.