Short Tail Keywords and Long Tail Keywords for Business

The Internet today is in a league of its own. Not even your local library contains more information than what is available on the Internet. Heck, all of the information in the library is available online, if you do the proper research. But isn’t it annoying when you do hours of research and find a minimal amount of information regarding the topic you seek? Of course it is, but there are ways to navigate the World Wide Web in order to find exactly what you’re looking for, and it’s by using the right keywords.

Now to steer this related topic, using keywords towards a business standpoint to benefit your consumer is equally as important. It would be impossible for a consumer to find a company using keywords, if that company themselves did not include those keywords in and on their website. But what if you want to target a specific consumer? It becomes a two-way street.

Keywords are useful when searching anything imaginable, but for businesses, using correctly targeted keywords becomes crucial for increasing traffic. Just for sake of the example, let us use a car dealership. Their short tail keywords like cars, dealership, used, new, auto, etc., will be scattered throughout their website. Fighting to rank first with these short tail keywords can be rather hard because of how commonly used they are. Using services like AdWords can help, but you may have to pay a pretty penny.

This is where long tail keywords come into play. Long tail keywords, by definition, are longer than short tail. They are more specific than a general word. For example, if searching for a car, the consumer may type “new cars for sale in New York City.” You, being a car dealership in NYC, have a better chance to rank higher in the search engine than a company in Los Angeles. Why? Because your company is more relevant. To rank higher than your competitors in the area, you need to use long tail keywords in your content such as that. In order to find your company using long tail and short tail keywords, those keywords must be present on your site and in your content.

To incorporate this idea into social media, typically we look at blogs. A blog is where a majority of your creative content will derive from. Using short tail and long tail keywords in the body of the blog will increase the SEO for your article as well as your blog page. Also, it is a good idea to use those keywords when tagging your post. A blog can be a great way to help rank your company towards the top of a search engine results page because of your ability to use a lot of keywords throughout your articles.

Don’t forget that research is critical when deciding which keywords shall be used in your site and content.

There are wrong ways to go about creating long tail keywords. Never make them too long or too specific. Using “car dealerships in Brooklyn, NY that only sell Toyota to females,” is not an effective long tail. Of course, you will undoubtedly rank first for such a phrase, but the chances of someone searching that term is slim to none. “Car dealerships in Brooklyn, NY that sell Toyota” is shorter, yet still specific enough for your company and target consumer.

One of the greatest advantages of long tail keywords is that they are buyer specific. If you type in used cars for sale, thousands of companies will appear in the search results, and the searcher might just be browsing vehicles and prices. But if they type in used Hondas for sale in the Lower East Side, Manhattan, you know this person is in the area, and may very well be looking to buy a car if the price is right.

In order for businesses to successfully use long tail keywords to their advantage, they must know which short tail keywords people are currently searching for. Combining that keyword with a little extra flare can turn it into a long tail that brings in a monetary return.

Here at Progressive Media Concepts we understand the importance behind industry research. If you have any questions regarding keywords or any part of your marketing strategy