In the world of search rankings and pay per click marketing, what you rank for can make all the difference. Not only will it influence the amount of traffic you will be getting to your web site or landing pages, but also how much you will have to pay per click. It’s also going to influence the way you run your business online and how you market to your audience.
Let’s take a look at a few different generic and long tail (definition) search terms and see which would be the best for an online marketing agency.
make money online- buy advertising
- generate leads
- how to build ad campaigns
- ppc ads
You will see that all of the keywords are somewhat related and they all are focused on online marketing and driving leads, but if you had to build a web site around one of the topics, which would be the most targeted and likely give the user what they are looking for? (think of it from a paid cost basis too)
From the list above, “how to build ad campaigns” would be your best bet. “Make money online” is a great term, but it’s way too generic. “Buy advertising” and “generate leads” could be for any niche and even offline marketing. “Ppc ads”… while that would be great to rank for, it’s still very generic.
So the question is… are long tail keywords better than generic keywords? I would definitely say yes!
Long tail keywords are usually…
- cheaper to bid on
- have more targeted traffic
- are more commonly searched
- less competitive to rank for
Of course if you are talking about organic and free traffic, anyone would rather have the onslaught of free traffic for ranking for a term like “stocks”, “sports” or “news”… but those are likely to never happen.
For these reasons we should focus your content and seo efforts on going after the long tail keywords.
Even Google wants non-marketing types to use long tail keywords when using their search engine. The next time you are using Google, just take a look at the search box as you continue to type your phrase in. You will see they give you more options which span off your original keyword, giving you better search results.
So the next time you are writing a blog post or article on “make money online”, go the extra mile and see what people are searching for in the world of long tail keywords and you may end up ranking on the first page for a much more specific and valued keyword.
