Local Search Engine Marketing Basics: Long Tail Keywords

Local Search Engine Marketing Basics is an occasional series of blogs providing definitions and basic guidance on search engine marketing concepts.

Defining “Long Tail Keywords“

In order to understand “long tail keywords”, you need to first understand the “long tail” concept.

The “long tail” is a concept introduced by Chris Anderson in 2004 in which he talked about a phenomenon in business where there is an initial large amount of purchases of a product or clicks on a website (called “the short head”) but those began to trail off (the “long tail”)… however, the amount of the combined trail was equal to or greater than the short head.

In other words, a movie might make $50 million at the box office during its initial theatrical run. But it might make another $50 million or more in “cheap seat” cinemas, DVD sales, and international sales.

Read more about the long tail at Wikipedia.

This “long tail” concept has been broadened to the search engine marketing world.

Common keywords, like “marketing” or “restaurants” are the short head. Millions of people type these into searches every day. Not surprisingly, large companies invest millions of dollars each year to appear at the top of Google searches for these terms.

The local business may have a very challenging time appearing at the top of those “short head” searches. But, for local businesses, the long tail provides some serious possibilities!

Short head keywords might be “marketing” or “restaurants”. Long tail keywords are very specific. On their own they might be searched as much as the short head keywords, but the cumulative amount of search for long tail keywords is dramatic.

So, a local Maryland-based marketing company might forgo the short head keyword “marketing” in favor of several “long tail” keywords like “Maryland marketing”, “Maryland advertising”, “Maryland marketing company”. A Boston-based restaurant might not have  a prayer of achieving a top Google ranking for “restaurant” but they have a much better chance of getting to the top of Google for a long tail keyword like “Boston restaurant”.

SEO Conundrum

As a business owner, you have two distinct actions you want your customers to take: You want them to find your website and then you want them to buy from you. You help them find your website with search engine marketing, which is a combination of off-site content distributed around the web and on-site content that attracts searchers. And you help them buy from you with on-site sales content.

How search engine optimization fits in

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a big part in the first step of this activity. You might incorporate SEO techniques into articles and press releases you distribute around the web; and at the same time, you might incorporate SEO techniques on your website so that it’s easier for search engines to find you.

The problem with SEO

Now here’s where the conundrum is: You need people to find you so it’s tempting to optimize your keywords to make it optimal for search engines. BUT, you need people to eventually buy so you want your content to make sense to them so that they are participating in your sales funnel. Unfortunately, these are not always congruent goals! Some experts pin optimal keyword density at 4%, which means that you need to have the same keyword appear 4 times in 100 words. That might be fine for search engines, and it might even be okay for some keywords, but a lot of keywords (especially long-tail keywords) start to seem excessive when written at that density. In a 500 word article, a keyword needs to appear 20 times. That’s excessive for any live reader. Your work might be search engine optimized but it is not human reader optimized!

When your reader finds your content annoying or difficult to understand, they will not buy from you. So, you might enjoy a lot of traffic (which accomplishes your first goal) but you won’t see as much sales (your second goal).

There are other techniques that you can use in your search engine marketing in order to reduce keyword density and improve readability while still creating search engine friendly content! That’s what this blog is all about!