Understanding Long Tail Phrases

Keyword selection is essential when it comes to search engine marketing. Most businesses tend to initially opt for the most generic within their industry i.e. “Cars Edinburgh” might be the first choice for any car dealer in Edinburgh. On the face of it this is a perfect phrase, in the month of July 1.5 million people searched using this phrase in Google alone. However for most car dealers this phrase would be useless. As with all sales and marketing activity it is often the quality of the lead or enquiry as opposed to the quantity. If we consider the potential customer who is searching using the phrase “Cars Edinburgh” they are probably at the very early stages of their research and decision making. If they new exactly what they were looking for they would have searched for something like “BMW for sale Edinburgh” or “Cheap BMW 520 Edinburgh”.

Cars Edinburgh will bring lots of visitors to your web site but many will not be ready to buy now, many will be looking for something that you do not sell and so you will have to employ lots more people to handle lots of enquiries that will be useless. More specific (Long Tail Phrases) will generate fewer enquiries but much more qualified, closer to the buying decision and often much more profitable.

However buyer beware Long Tail Phrases have often been used by less scrupulous entry level search engine optimisation companies as easy pickings when it comes to dealing with small businesses.

If you select the correct Long Tail Phrases they are often the most profitable for your business however consider the following phrases:

“Cars Edinburgh” - 1.5 million searches last month - generic phrase - very competitive

“Cars for Sale Edinburgh” - 3600 searches last month - Long Tail Phrase - moderately competitive

“Cheap Cars Edinburgh” - Zero searches last month - Long Tail Phrase - Non Competitive

Cars Edinburgh - good phrase with lots of volume however it will cost a lot of money to optimise their will be a lot of wastage and will take a lot of staff to manage and filter enquiries.

Cheap Cars Edinburgh - on the face of it a perfect phrase however no one searched for this at all last month and so it is very easy for a search engine optimisation company to sell to a small business takes little effort to put them on the top of the search engines but again it is useless as no one is searching for it and therefore will not deliver any enquiries.

Cars for Sale Edinburgh - This is an ideal phrase - good search volumes (3600 last month) Long Tail so more targeted still fairly competitive so will need some expertise and link building to get to the top of the search engines however it will be relatively inexpensive in comparison to the results generated. If you select 15-20 phrases of this nature you will have significant volumes to your web site, the quality of the enquiry will be much better and closer to the buying decision and will be relatively inexpensive to optimise.

Employing a Search Engine Marketing Company is essential for most small businesses when it comes to implementing an effective SEO campaign but ensure they show you exactly how many people are searching for each phrase each month. This information is available to all for free on Google and with software like Wordtracker.