Targeting Long Tail Keyword Phrases
When choosing your top keywords, be sure to think in terms of phrases instead of single keywords. Searchers have become savvy enough to understand that broad, one-word searches, such as "pizza," will rarely yield the desired result except in a map-based search. Optimizing for keyword combinations or phrases is more realistic and enables you to narrow the number of companies that you are competing against for search engine rankings.
The Long Tail theory, popularized and described by Chris Anderson in the book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), can be applied to the keyword selection for your website. The model basically shows that in a market with a high freedom of choice, such as the Internet, 80% of your website traffic will come from very specific and descriptive "long-tail" terms, whereas only 20% will come from short, generic "head" or "short-tail" terms.
With this in mind, it is generally best to target two or three word phrases in your SEO. A good example of this strategy is a store that sells golf clubs in Miami. Instead of targeting "golf," this company should target keyword phrases such as "Miami golf shop," "golf store Miami," "Miami golf clubs," and so on. The natural benefit of targeting two- and three-word phrases is that when you start to rank and get traffic for the longer keyword phrases such as "golf store miami," you will also begin to rank better for shorter versions of the keyword phrases, such as "golf store," "golf shop," and "Miami golf."
In some cases, you might run into problems with words that have multiple meanings, such as "Miami golf club" or even "Miami golf clubs"; people could be searching for these terms when they are looking for a golf course but are not interested in finding a retail outlet for golf clubs. This might seem problematic, but it is actually a great opportunity for the retailer to garner more mobile Web traffic and gain visibility to their targeted audience. By creating a resource page on their site that lists the locations of golf courses, or "miami golf clubs," they can actually create search engine relevance for the keywords they are targeting, potentially get links from other websites that appreciate the resource, drive sales and awareness for their actual product offering, and help build creditability with their clientele.
It is a good idea to optimize for more specific keywords on pages that offer more specific information. "Miami golf shop" might be a good keyword for the home page of the store, but when specific products are offered online, those pages should be optimized with different variations of the product name and description—for example, "Nike Unitized Tiempo," "Nike 34 putter," and "stainless steel putter."
Continue reading here: Tracking Mobile SEO and Keyword Rankings
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