Have you ever wondered what the term “long tail” really meant when used in reference to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? I will readily confess that I have. As a rule I can get a pretty good handle on the meaning of an unfamiliar word or phrase by studying the context in which it is used but that technique failed me miserably with “longtail.” Longtail is a favorite of Kevin Leland, one of Factoidz.Com most prolific writer on the subject of SEO. Kevin always provides quality information so I was sure that I was missing something important by not knowing the full meaning of the word “longtail.” What exactly did “climbing up the long tail of it” mean as he used it in his factoid “Progressive keyword ranking: Climbing up the long tail of search ranking”? What Kevin’s use of the term did for me was to prompt me into starting my own research on SEO techniques.
What the expression long tail actually refers to are the kind of searches that are quite specific in nature and consists of four or five more words. The kind of search that you would conduct using Google’s Advanced Search Option that allows you to search for “this exact wording or phrase.” Long tail items generally have low monthly hit rates and are generally not very competitive when it comes to search engine ranking.
Choosing your “Core Key Phrases” is by far more important than worrying about what long tail really means and is one of the most important steps in SEO.
When choosing Core Key Phrases you need to take the following things into consideration
· The number of monthly searches for those terms
· The competition for these term or how easy are they to rank by search engines
· The value of each of these terms. How easy do they convert to dollars and cents as Ad Words
On your own it could take months to determine what key word phrases are the best but Google takes much of the work out of this process with their Google Key Word Tool and the best part of all is that it’s free to use. I tried it out with five words that included tools, DIY, auto mechanics, and tune up and received over 200 suggestions along with their individual statistics-local monthly search volume and global monthly search volume.
I actually used this tool to generate the search terms for this article.
