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Heads or Tails? - How to Profit From Long Tail Keywords that Don’t Exist

Heads or Tails? - How to Profit From Long Tail Keywords that Don’t Exist [1]

By Tom Demers [2] Posted In: Keyword Marketing [3] Comments: 6 [4]

 

 

 

 

 

This is the first in a three-part series on the types of keywords you should be targeting. Section two will follow tomorrow, and the final installment will be published on Monday, so stay tuned! Special thanks to Virginia Nussey [6], Lisa Barone [7], and Adam Viener [8] for editorial contributions.

 

 

 

 

 

By strategically targeting keywords of varying competition levels you will see more and better qualified streams of traffic.

At a high level, search engine keywords [9] will fit into three core traffic profiles:

  • “Head” – Popular, highly competitive, and broad keywords. These are typically one or two term keywords, such as “search marketing.”
  • Mid-Tier or “Torso” – These are basically what they sound like: slightly longer keywords that drive mid-level traffic volume and are roughly mid-level competition.
  • “Long Tail” – These are the longer, less popular keywords.

The long tail, in aggregate, actually drives more traffic and conversions than head keywords (again, in aggregate). The problem with the long tail [10] is that despite the fact that it drives a lot of traffic, it’s both difficult to manage, and nearly impossible to create a predictive model around. Let’s take a quick look at some interesting long tail stats:

What does all this mean? It means that while longer keywords have value (and that the value there is actually increasing), those terms are very difficult to manage. How do you target unique queries? The idea here is that no one has typed these queries before; how can we go about setting up a predictive model so that as these new queries come in, we are well positioned to rank for these “new” keywords?
 
The answer, strategically, is to aggressively target mid-tail keywords, while intelligently structuring your site such that you can acquire long tail keywords [15] traffic. In this series, we’ll walk through how, exactly, you can plan your:
To effectively rank for mid-tier keywords while being well-positioned to drive long tail traffic (and maybe even rank for the more popular keywords [18] over time).
 
Tune in tomorrow for the next installment, where we’ll discuss how to structure your site’s navigation and information architecture to successfully target the mid and eventually: the long tail of search.

The Heads or Tails? Series:

Looking for Long Tail Keywords?

Try our Long Tail Keyword Tool [21] or Long Tail Keyword Generator [22] to get tons of traffic-driving long tail keyword opportunites.

If you liked this post, subscribe to our RSS feed [23]


[24] [25] [26] [27] [28]

Related Posts

Buffalo Chicken Dip Wins the Search Engine Super Bowl by a Landslide! [29]
The 3 Types of Search Queries & How You Should Target Them [30]
How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps [31]
How to Find Long-Tail Keywords: 9 Ways to Discover Long-Tail Terms [32]
Source URL: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/04/08/how-to-profit-long-tail

Links:
[1] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/04/08/how-to-profit-long-tail
[2] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws-12
[3] http://www.wordstream.com/category/wordstream-blog-tags/keyword-marketing
[4] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/04/08/how-to-profit-long-tail#comments
[5] http://twitter.com/share
[6] http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/
[7] http://outspokenmedia.com/
[8] http://www.imwave.com/index.htm
[9] http://www.wordstream.com/search-engine-keywords
[10] http://www.wordstream.com/long-tail
[11] http://www.google.com/adwords/newsletters/q408/techb2b/page3.html
[12] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/udi_manber_search_is_a_hard_problem.php
[13] http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/02/googles_long_ta.html
[14] http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/searchers-using-longer-queries-in-2009/1651/
[15] http://www.wordstream.com/long-tail-keywords
[16] http://www.wordstream.com/category/wordstream-blog-tags/Link-Building-Tips-and-Info
[17] http://www.wordstream.com/seo
[18] http://www.wordstream.com/popular-keywords
[19] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/4/09/mid-long-tail-information-architecture
[20] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2009/04/10/off-page-seo-long-tail
[21] http://www.wordstream.com/long-tail-keyword-tool
[22] http://www.wordstream.com/keyword-generator
[23] http://feeds2.feedburner.com/WordStreamBlog
[24] http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=www.wordstream.com/print/335
[25] http://www.twitter.com/home?status=http://www.wordstream.com/print/335
[26] http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=http://www.wordstream.com/print/335
[27] http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://www.wordstream.com/print/335
[28] http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.wordstream.com/print/335
[29] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/01/30/keyword-trends
[30] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/12/10/three-types-of-search-queries
[31] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/11/14/how-to-rank-for-a-keyword
[32] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/11/07/how-to-find-long-tail-keywords