Understanding relevance and the effect of short-tail and long tail keywords

It's important to understand the distinction between short tail keywords and long tail keywords. The difference is simple: a short-tail keyword is a short, one- or two-word search phrase. A long tail keyword is a three-, four-, five-word, or longer keyphrase. An example of a short tail keyword would be "Dallas restaurant," where an example of a long tail keyword would be "Top-rated West Dallas pizza." As you might suspect, long tail keywords are almost always searched in much lower volumes than their short-tail counterparts. However, long tail keywords possess important and valuable advantages over short-tail keywords, as we will learn.

To understand the value of long tail keywords, we need to think about how a chosen keyword reflects the intent as well as the motivation of a web user. Let's examine a typical customer awareness cycle. First, a customer becomes aware of a product, or expresses interest in a product. Next, the customer seeks information about that product. In the final stages before a purchase decision, a consumer will evaluate choices and make a buying decision. That typical awareness cycle brings a customer closer to a purchase decision as they progress.

Ideally, you'll employ keywords that capture a customer when they are closest to a buying decision. In the two-keyword examples above, the customer who searched for "Top-rated West Dallas pizza" has expressed intent and motivation that the short-tail searcher did not. This user has most likely decided that he or she would like pizza. The user has also decided that he or she would like to eat in West Dallas, rather than some other part of the city. Finally, the user has tried to qualify his or her search even further by searching for "Top-rated" pizza. This customer is farther along in the customer awareness/purchase cycle and is overwhelmingly more likely to buy quality pizza in West Dallas than a person searching simply for "Dallas pizza."

The graph below illustrates long tail keywords at work; short-tail keywords are searched more often, but long tail keywords enjoy a higher conversion rate:

And so, the power of the long tail search comes into focus. The Internet searcher in the previous example is pure gold to a business owner. The long tail search expresses motivation, intent, and specificity. Sure, the search volumes will be lower, but it'll be much easier to convert a higher number of long tail search users into customers.

Now, here comes the bonus: most of your competitors are not going to do the extra work to capture long tail searches. While the competition is focused on the high-volume terms, you have the opportunity to secure high rankings for high value, easy-to-convert long tail searchers. Generally, the deeper you go in pursuit of long tail searches, the less search competition you'll encounter, both in natural search and pay-per-click. You'll need to know where to stop though; if you pursue search phrases that are too rare, you'll have no search traffic at all.