Why Long Tail Keywords Are More Important Than Exact Match Keywords

Keywords are one of the most essential tools in your arsenal. Without keywords, you can’t focus on your copy, or work with your writers to target results from organic search to PPC campaigns. They are essential for the smooth functioning of any site or project online and should be something that everyone must know.

But long-tail keywords specifically can differentiate between a fantastic site and a mediocre one. There are several reasons, but we’ve targeted the top five, to give you insights.

Long Tail Keywords
  • Save

What are long-tail keywords anyway?

Long-tail keywords are the narrow focus keywords that typify the topic – they are keywords that talk about specific areas of your site. For example, if you sell websites, your long-tail keywords could be PHP (as you program in it – or offer support for it, Ruby, Web design, Fantastico, or even things as mundane as whether you host Windows or Linux only.

It’s these specific words that become your ‘long tail’ keywords.
The idea of ‘long tail’ keywords comes from the concept that as you look at a chart that shows people searching, you’ll get a tail of increasingly more focused, and increasingly more specialized words. But because these words are so specialized, they are far easier to monetize in any niche, as people are specifically searching for them.

TIP: When looking at your list of long-tail keywords, consider what your most focused customers are looking for. In the example above, the answer may be ‘WordPress’ or ‘Forum’ hosting. You should focus in on these for optimal success.

Long-tail keywords spread you out through your niche

If there are 1000 fans in your specific niche, and 400 are interested in the general stuff, or are beginners or are looking for information that’s ‘generally’ about the hobby, a well-adjusted and targeted site should by default catch these people. But what if you could interest the other 600 too?

Long tail keywords generally attract a more focused market, but in most cases, these 600 more focused readers are looking for something specific, something only YOU can provide. Catering to smaller, narrower subjects is precisely what long tail keywords are all about.

TIP: Generalization is great when you start a site, but have one or two areas, areas of expertise, or resource, where you can go deeper and attract specific searchers.

Use your knowledge wisely

When it comes to hobbies, we’re all experts at something. Long tail keywords play on this – and while it’s true that you’ll attract less general browsers this way, your expertise may help others.  It’s the major reason there are so many niche sites online, and there’s always room for one more. But in sharing your knowledge, you may also be able to monetize it – and that’s where long tail keywords come into their own. By monetizing your content, you’ll find that your income stream becomes more secure, especially if you expand your site in several directions of depth.

TIP: Consider offering some of your content for free, and using the deep keywords on the long tail to create a report, ebook or another piece of fee-generating download.  Not only will you establish yourself as an expert, but you’ll protect your keywords for longer.

Know what your clients really want

Knowing and understanding what your visitors are searching for can give you some solid keywords to work on. If you can’t access stats from your web hosting dashboard or don’t know what to do with the stats, consider using a program that is user friendly, such as analytics, or similar. Once you know what people are searching for you can target your content more effectively. Understanding search patterns will also help you plan for content, especially if your site is seasonal or has a busy period and a quieter period.

TIP: In most web hosting sites, you can see what people are searching for, along with any pages that are missing and more. Using this information, you can build content in case they search again in the future. WordPress and other sites also offer plugins to do exactly the same thing.

Don’t be too obscure

It’s important not to be too obscure with keywords – it takes a bit of practice, but focusing on providing content for one lone searcher isn’t going to be as cost-effective as providing material for five or ten searches. It’s important to keep perspective on your content – but equally important to follow your heart. Your passion should be reflected on your website, so if you’re interested in talking to that one person who shares exactly the same interests as you, go for it. While other people may not search for this content, anyone that sees it will see your content as more authentic.

TIP: When all is said and done, make sure your content is as comfortable and conversational as you are. Always share your passion, and make sure your passion has moderation of content that can pay for it!

Do you use long-tail keywords on your blog or use generic keywords? 

No matter what type of site you have, long-tail keywords can give you the answer, and the traffic you need. When used appropriately, they are one of the best weapons in any writer’s arsenal and can turn an underachieving site into a super one with ease.

Was this helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!
  • Save
Authored By
Roderick has been writing articles for nearly 4 years. Come visit his latest website over at http://www.queryads.com/ which helps people find the best information on pay per click traffic they are looking for when doing internet marketing.

15 thoughts on “Why Long Tail Keywords Are More Important Than Exact Match Keywords”

  1. Ravi Dagar

    Hello Sir,
    I didn’t understand how to make a long tail keyword. If I’m looking for a keyword and found one but it is not a long keyword. For example I found a keyword ‘bicep workout’. What should I do now?

  2. Gaurav Verma

    People search long tail keyword in diffrent keyword. So , we can focus on long tail keyword than exact match keyword

  3. Sekhar

    Again one more great post at SML, being a newbie I am always learning something new from your posts. Now the importance of long tail keyword.

  4. Blog the bank

    Thanks for the info I really didn’t know what long tail keywords were until now I’m updating my blogs now.

  5. Arijit Das

    What i think that Facebook messages system will be used by the younger users a lot because it is fast & easy and can be accessible at any place with any mobile device.. And i even agree that the files too can be shared over Facebook Messages but It can’t KILL Gmail because Gmail is a place which is used by everyone as a Back Up of their important emails.

    Just think, that you’ve saved your important emails over the Facebook Messages and you soon got reported by other users & banned over facebook! Now, how can you get back those emails back…?? tell me!

  6. Roderick Coleman

    Hello Everyone,

    Thanks for reading our article we submitted here. I wanted to share with UMA and your others who wanted to know how to find these keywords.

    A good way to find long tail keywords is go to Google.com and put in your main keywords you are trying to target. Example: chicago website hosting.

    Our company has a technique where we seek keywords that have less than 1 million competition pages. But the key is with google, they have a unique tool called related searches. Here you will find many many keywords with less competition.

    Example:
    chicago website hosting-519,000
    illinois website hosting-490,000
    detroit website hosting-376,000

    When marketing our site and optimizing it for search engine, we use this technique with google and it works really good. All you need is a spreadsheet to drop them down. Its much easier to go after keywords with less than a million results than going after the keywords that return a billion results.

    Also our company website provide many of these long tail keywords to our advertisers which are extracted from publishers in our network. You can see them in our search tool, http://www.queryads.com/search_keywords.php

    If you have any questions about long tail keywords, we are here to explain as much information as we can provide.

    Thanks

  7. Rahul (Price In India)

    One of my hub has crossed 15,000 visitors when i checked the stats. I found only few people coming from the 20 keywords. means people is coming from unpredictable keywords. It has benefits.

  8. Uma

    Hi long tail keyword’s are great for seo.Can u plese give me idea’s how we can get long tail keyword’s in our niche.Any free tools to create long tail keyword’s

  9. Michael R. Douglas

    This blog is amazing!!! shout me out loud!!!!

  10. Rahul @ MazaKaro

    yes i agree with your ideas and i found thme very useful for people who need better traffic ! thank you for sharing this

  11. ashish

    Very nice niche..
    I believe strongly in this..

  12. Business Proposal Writer

    Another way of looking at this is to see what ‘phrases’ people use to find your core content.

    Then write articles about those phrases.

    The problem with LT keywords is that this is how search engines think, ie indexing keywords.

    Users, however, use phrases when typing into the search box.

    Another suggestion is to drop these phrases into the meta desc tag and the opening paragraph and this will increase keyword density.

    Ivan

  13. Nihar

    Great post!

    Thanks for giving the insight.

    I always go for long tail keywords as it is hard to compete in short tail keywords except if we have something very unique.

  14. Michael R. Douglas

    Long tail keywords generally attract a more focused market, but in most cases these 600 more focused readers are actually looking for something specific, something YOU can provide. Catering to smaller, narrower subjects is exactly what long tail keywords is all about.

    Totality agree great amazing post!

  15. Samir@Indihow

    Well..no one can make me realize the importance of long tail keywords more than I already do! I wrote just 1 long tail keyword based post, and it gets me around 450 visits a month from Google and Google Images!
    Eespecially if you have a blog with a lot of long tail keywords based posts, you can always monetize the posts individually with links and/or banners!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top