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Confused With Long Tail Keywords...

by freedomv7
9 replies
Hey Warriors,

I'm a newbie to internet marketing and I'm quite confused with the concept of long tail keywords. I'm targeting certain long tail keywords to rank my site for these keywords but so far the process has been confusing and frustrating for me.

I've read advice around the web and did my keyword research with Google Keyword Tool. I based my number of searches of my keywords on the exact search function present in the Google Keyword Tool.

Some sites are recommending that I check for the competition using
intitle: my search term and inanchor: my search term.

This was going well till I discover that if I type,
intitle:"my search term' and inanchor:"my search term" the results differ from when I typed intitle:my search term.

Why is this so? Also, when I type my long tail keyword into the Google search box, there are so many pages listed. Who is my real competition? The number 1 website that appears when I type intitle: or the number 1 website that appears when I do not type intitle:

One last question would be: For a long tail keyword, what is a good monthly search volume?

I'd appreciate as much help as I can get on this. Thanks in advance!
#confused #keywords #long #tail
  • Profile picture of the author asimbawany
    using intitle: is ok in my opinion while researching competition. You dont necessarily need to do a search with inanchor:

    using the intitle: really only makes sense to me when you enclose it in ""s
    this way, you could know how many sites are targeting the exactly same search term.
    for long tail keywords, your real competition is really the top 5 most of the times. Mostly because traffic on these terms is low and you dont get any real traffic unless your in the top 3-5. Objective of course is to be #1... thats the reason you decided to go after long tail keywords to begin with

    a searcher does not type in title, so you need to be on top without the quotes or anything.

    I cant really give you a number for searches. google keyword tool reports that inaccurately anyways and sometimes by a huge difference.
    If your search term appears on the top 10 recommended by google while your typing it in, thats a very good bet that the term gets good searches even if it may not show a good number in the keyword tool.

    Hope that helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author freedomv7
      Thanks for your help! Just wondering: the number of competition I get when i type intitle:"my search term" versus the number of competition I get when I type intitle:my search term, what's the difference between the two?

      Also, since the searcher does not type their search terms in quotes, the number of competitors increases for me. But does this mean that it'll be easier for me to overtake them because the real competition is the ones which appear when I type intitle:"my search term"?
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Shook
      Those different searches have come about form people's personal preferences as tow hat works best for them. there is not a really hard and fast rule about which measurement to use to help your site be competitive.

      Some people use the phrase in quotes, some use the intitle or inurl. Inanchor is supposed to tell you the sites that are using the keyword phrase as an anchor text link to their site.

      All of these numbers are approximations and represent the output of some fairly lengthy equations in the search engine algorithms.

      Long tail keyword phrases perhaps have more approximation than simpler phrases because the longer the search term the more possibility exists of variation in user input into the search box.

      Mostly though, there aren't really any rules, just others' experience in getting pages to rank. For myself, I still use keyword in quotes for main phrase, and a lot fo other people go for intitle or inurl to determine competition.

      You will probably develop your own system as you go along about what works the best for you.
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      • Profile picture of the author asimbawany
        Originally Posted by JMichaelZ View Post

        Those different searches have come about form people's personal preferences as tow hat works best for them. there is not a really hard and fast rule about which measurement to use to help your site be competitive.

        Some people use the phrase in quotes, some use the intitle or inurl. Inanchor is supposed to tell you the sites that are using the keyword phrase as an anchor text link to their site.

        All of these numbers are approximations and represent the output of some fairly lengthy equations in the search engine algorithms.

        Long tail keyword phrases perhaps have more approximation than simpler phrases because the longer the search term the more possibility exists of variation in user input into the search box.

        Mostly though, there aren't really any rules, just others' experience in getting pages to rank. For myself, I still use keyword in quotes for main phrase, and a lot fo other people go for intitle or inurl to determine competition.

        You will probably develop your own system as you go along about what works the best for you.
        this pretty much explains it
        there really is no hard rule to keyword research.
        however, if your a complete newbie... tools like traffic travis and market samurai can really help.
        Traffic Travis is very newbie friendly and can be downloaded for free.
        Free SEO Software | The Best PPC & SEO Management Tool -Traffic Travis
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      • Profile picture of the author freedomv7
        Originally Posted by JMichaelZ View Post


        All of these numbers are approximations and represent the output of some fairly lengthy equations in the search engine algorithms.
        With regards to these numbers, since the searcher does not type their search terms in quotes, the number of pages increases.

        But does this mean that it'll be easier for me to overtake them because the real competition are the ones which appear when I type intitle:"my search term"?

        appreciate your help
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        • Profile picture of the author jmartinez
          Originally Posted by freedomv7 View Post

          With regards to these numbers, since the searcher does not type their search terms in quotes, the number of pages increases.

          But does this mean that it'll be easier for me to overtake them because the real competition are the ones which appear when I type intitle:"my search term"?

          appreciate your help
          Something like that. If you do a google search on a search term without quotes you will get many pages returned, but take a look at those pages, especially 2 or 3 pages down. Most sites won't be very relevant to the keyword (although it depends on how competitive the keyword is).

          When you search without quotes google is looking for pages with any sort of relevance to the keywords. Some pages may have those keywords on the page, but they may be scattered around, not in exact order. So, pages like that aren't very relevant usually. But, they are still listed in google's index if google thinks it has any sort of relevance. So, you probably don't need to worry about competing vs those sites too much since they are probably not optimized for your keyword. Your content should beat theirs. But again, it depends on how competitive the keyword is.
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        • Profile picture of the author Michael Shook
          Originally Posted by freedomv7 View Post

          With regards to these numbers, since the searcher does not type their search terms in quotes, the number of pages increases.

          But does this mean that it'll be easier for me to overtake them because the real competition are the ones which appear when I type intitle:"my search term"?

          appreciate your help
          It does not necessarily meant that it will be easier for you to overtake them. It is more like, you have a better chance of overtaking them. Intitle is a measurement, or an approximate measurement of how many people are specifically targeting that keyword phrase.

          But all it really is, is a measurement. Its like saying a person is six feet in height. If that person is 8 years old, they are really tall, but if that same person is trying to be on a professional basketball then they are really short.

          All those numbers are just measurements same as six feet is just a measurement

          It is also fairly likely that if there are a significant number of pages with your phrase intitle, that those folks will be stronger competitors. So the degree of difficulty to overtake them is likely to be greater.

          It would be cool if there were some hard and fast rules about numbers of comps and such but I have not really seen any of those.
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  • Profile picture of the author ginandtonic
    "my keyword phrase" returns all results with my keyword phrase exactly in that order. For example,

    how to my keyword phrase, or
    buy my keyword phrase

    might show up.
    my keyword phrase (without quotes) searches for each of the words individually. So you might get:

    keyword my and phrase for internet marketers
    dog training and phrase keyword
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  • Profile picture of the author asimbawany
    With regards to these numbers, since the searcher does not type their search terms in quotes, the number of pages increases.

    But does this mean that it'll be easier for me to overtake them because the real competition are the ones which appear when I type intitle:"my search term"?
    yes that would be correct.
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