When you first start developing a new website, it makes sense to target the long tail keywords first. This may seem obvious, but I’ve seen many people pose the question on forums about how to rank their new website for a ridiculously difficult keyword.
I’ve just checked the stats for another website I own and note that approximately 50% of my visitors are using long tail keywords. These long tail keywords are all very easy to rank for and they are providing me with just as much search traffic as my major keywords. The major difference is that my long tail keywords require very little effort. In fact, apart from writing content I have not even tried to optimise my site for these keywords.
If you have a new website and you target these long tail keywords, you are laying down a good foundation for targetting more competitive keywords further down the line. It will also save you a lot of time and frustration because instead of labouring away for a few months trying to knock off powerful competition from the top spots, you should start to see results within weeks.
Another reason why I like long tail keywords is because they tend to convert better. Someone who types in “buy blue widgets” is going to be a much more targetted visitor than someone who simply types in “widgets”.
What you will also find with competitive keywords is that the results you see in Google’s keyword tool are not going to accurately reflect the amount of genuine searches from people who are interested in finding your product or services. A large proportion of these searches will be from webmasters anxious to check their rankings or evaluate the sites which are competing for these keywords.
It’s easy to overlook long tail keywords and extremely tempting to target the competitive terms with high monthly search volumes. But building the foundations first is a much better strategy and will pave the way for you to achieve more competitive rankings further down the line.
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