Long Tails Versus Short Tails

What am I talking about? Horses have long tails. Goats have short tails. Dogs and cats have long and short tails.

Keywords also have long and short tails!! Keywords?

Short tail keywords are one or two words like Infusionsoft, Virtual Assistant, business coach, overwhelm, etc. On the contrary, long tail keywords would be Infusionsoft Virtual Assistant, how to overcome overwhelm, Virtual Assistant vs. Online Business Manager, and how do I hire a Virtual Assistant.

Some pros of using short tail keywords are:
• It drives traffic;
• You don’t have to be that organized; and
• Let’s face it; it looks cool to be ranked on the first page.

Some cons are:
• It’s highly competitive;
• It’s tough to stay number one;
• It can take months or years to get there; and
• You have poor conversion.

Alternatively, long tail keywords:
• Are less competitive;
• Can get you ranked pretty quick;
• Stay number one more easily;
• Are not affected by any Google changes in the rules; and
• Generally convert 2.5 times better.

Are there cons? Of course…
• They require more thorough keyword search and organization;
• They take more effort (did I say organization); and
• Yeah, it’s not as cool to be ranked on the first page because you don’t have as much competition.

So how do you figure out what keyword phrases to use? Google makes it easy! Have you ever done a Google search and it comes up with suggestions? Those suggestions are phrases that others are searching for. Google picks the most popular searches anticipating that it knows what you’re looking for.

There’s also the Google related searches. This shows up at the bottom of the page and says “Related searches to”.

And of course, there are websites that help you with this, too! Just Google “Keyword discovery tool” and see what comes up. One that was suggested at InfusionCon, although I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, is KeywordDiscover.com.

Try the options above and see what phrases or long tail keywords you come up with. To stay organized with the long tail keywords you use (or plan to use), create a spreadsheet. Then watch your analytics, see what’s working and adjust accordingly.