Long Tail Logic

In trying to persuade people - especially newer marketers - that long tail is the way to go, I often see the "light bulb" moment when I explain things this way...

The crux of the matter is how search engines work. If you're a real go-getter and think you can conquer a top ranking for a keyword that gets a ton of searches and that has a ton of competing pages, you might be able to accomplish that goal eventually. If you do, you'll reap some big rewards.

But even if this rosy scenario pans out, there's still a good reason not to try it: all your eggs will be in one basket. If 90% of your organic search traffic is coming through the funnel of one major keyword, what happens if/when there's a ranking shake-up at Google and your link disappears for awhile (or maybe forever)? Rank shuffling happens fairly often. Don't think it's unlikely, because it's not only likely - it's probable. You'll wake up one morning, check your stats, and your heart will skip a beat when the numbers have dropped off a cliff.

If you develop and follow a long tail keyword strategy, this doesn't happen to you. Instead of one big popular keyword pulling in free search traffic, you'll have a bunch of small keywords doing the job. A good metaphor is fishing. You can use one rod & reel and try to land that big one; or you can fashion a large net and spread it out over a bigger portion of the sea to catch a lot of little fish. Both strategies give you the chance to haul in lots of fish (in terms of total pounds).

But here's the kicker and the reason why long tail is better... Time

To achieve a high ranking for a top keyword in your niche, you're looking at months of work. You'll need content and links. LOTS AND LOTS OF LINKS! We're talking about thousands of links, even tens of thousands for highly competitive keywords. Let's say you have some money you can spend outsourcing your link building. That's a good idea, but if you build links too fast to a new site, you run the risk of being de-indexed by Google. So there really isn't a viable shortcut to scoring a top ranking for one of these big-time keywords. At least, not a lasting top ranking.

Know how long it takes to get a Top 10 ranking for most long tail keywords you find and go after? Sometimes a few days, often just a few weeks, and only rarely more than 2 months. Every now and then you'll even find a long tail phrase that has been ignored by other marketers. I've gotten those ranked in the Top 10 in as little as 3 days!

In all seriousness, if you put in just a few hours/week, you can conquer several long tail keywords every month.

Then, what happens when Google inevitably shuffles things? You won't miss a beat, that's what. Your risk has been spread out over several keywords instead of investing it all in one big keyword. At worst you'll lose rankings for a few of the long tails you went after. But many of the others won't be affected at all. Instead of losing nearly all of your free search traffic, you'll only lose a fraction of it.

Meanwhile, you keep chugging along, finding more long tails in your niche and working your system to conquer them. Work at it diligently and in a few months you'll have built yourself a traffic monster! A bullet-proof monster.

I've used a lot of software tools to help me find long tail keywords to conquer. And you will not see me recommend anything other than Micro Niche Finder. This is easily the best tool I've ever bought for my online business - and I've been building sites and doing keyword research since 1996. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this amazing software. It's easy to use and will save you an incredible amount of time finding those golden long tails.