Keyword Research – The Long Tail of Opportunities

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Keyword research and the long tail of search are as old as the web itself.

Keywords and the long tail of search describe the idea that people are using generic, descriptive and very specific language when searching on the internet.

The long-tail keyword research has opportunities for your businesses and potentially is a source of competitive advantage and a way to make more…well I am getting ahead of myself a bit.

First, let’s understand and dive into “Keyword Research the Long Tail Search for Opportunities”.

Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field. SEOMoz & Rand Fishkin

Savvy business owners and search marketers understand that long-tail keywords often convert better than ‘Fat Head’ or ‘Chunky Middle’ terms.

Considering that the long-tail keywords catch people later in the buying/conversion cycle.

Steak Restaurant vs. “Best Steak restaurant in *geo*”. Maybe a poor example as Google infers if you are typing steak restaurant you are more than likely hungry and looking for a restaurant.

Thinking about keywords for a moment there comes a realisation that keywords are the link between what people are searching for and your website. Mapping your list of keywords to the buying cycle/funnel can help understand/improve your conversations.

Keyword research is the practice of finding and researching actual search terms people enter into the search engines when they conduct a search. Search engine optimization professionals research keywords looking for words and topics that content can be created around. Wikipedia

What about the long tail of keywords, opportunity and earning money??? First backwards then forward…

1) Search Engine Results Pages and Money.

Search Engine Results Pages, SERPs, refers to the displayed page after you press the search button.

This ‘Results Page’ has links to page Google thinks are the answer to your search.

SlingshotSEO did a keyword / SEPR study recently and their SERP and keyword ranking study determined that the 1st position in Google’s SERP’s (see the red #1 above) received an 18.2% click-through rate, CTR; the second place gets 10.05% CTR, and third place gets 7.22% CTR.

A position higher in the rankings gets more clicks, more clicks equal more website traffic, more traffic means more opportunity to convert that traffic into leads and lead into paying customers.

Just so this is clear. The 1st, first place in the SERP gets 44.5% more click than second place and 60% more clicks than third place. Yes, 1^st place in the SERP’s is that important.

2) The Search Demand Curve

So keyword research is important, 1^st place in the SEPR’s is the most valuable.

How will the search demand curve help me?

It helps understanding where opportunity for ranking higher in the search results  is possible.

The search demand curve represents the total number of searches on one axis and all the keywords on the other axis. It is nominally divided into three sections, the fat head, chunky middle and long tail.

• The Fat Head’, has 18.5% of all searches for a term; these terms have the most competitive.
• The ‘Chunky Middle’, has 11.5% of all searches for that term, these terms have ‘medium’ competition.
• The ‘Long Tail’, contains 70% of all searches for that term, these terms have ‘medium to low’ levels of competition.

More on ‘competition’ in a moment and we are almost to the money bit, a little more explaining.

3) SERP’s and The Competition

Remember keyword research is über important; the 1^st place in the SERP’s is the most valuable because it gets the most clicks. The ‘Fat Head’ search terms have the largest search volume and the toughest competition.

Where is the opportunity? You probably have guessed correctly by now, it’s in the long tail.

But the ‘fat head’ gets all the search volume? Yes and all the competition.

4) The Long Tail of Opportunities

Using your detective skills and a few online tools you can uncover long tail keyword opportunities that have medium or low competition and have good levels of search volume.

These are gold nuggets of opportunity. Why? because of low competition.

As a general rule select keywords with 200-2000 monthly searches and competition levels between 0.35 – 0.7.

Ok, presto I have found my 10-15 candidates now what?

So Where is the Long Tail of Business Opportunities?

So what is a smart, creative, savvy Inbound Marketer to do with these newly found long tail keywords?

Create compelling, educational, remarkable content that your potential customers will find helpful and useful.

Your coworkers, friends and customers will help share this content, spread the word, it will naturally get links, rank higher, get more views, get more shares, get more links, rank higher and the cycle will continue.

And, and soon after lots of hard work and promotion your web page will climb the rankings and get more clicks and website visitors.

Actionable Marketing Takeaway –

Keyword research is the foundation and the driver of any successful website content marketing strategy.

Remember keyword research is über important; the 1st place in the SERP’s is the most valuable and it gets the most clicks, 18.2%; the opportunity exists in the long tail of keywords, mine for opportunities and discover keywords with 200-2000 monthly searches and competition levels between 0.35 – 0.7.

Inbound marketing has natural networking effects. Leverage this network effect with good keyword research and effective search engine optimization, and both will create tailwinds that will grow your business.

Additional reading

This post discusses Keywords for websites and some keyword research tools to use.
This Infographic visualizes the Keyword Research Proces

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