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Is targeting long tail keywords worth it?

by richardharris36
29 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am just about to start a " small niche" article site and monetize it with google adsense and Amazon. I have heard that targeting a small niche, say 200 to 300 searches per month and dominating that niche pays of. Is this true?
#keywords #long #tail #targeting #worth
  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    It can be. Or it could be more work than it's worth.

    There is no yes or no answer.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeff Schuman
      Some small niches can be very profitable. It depends on the market.

      Does the Amazon affiliate program have quality products with decent margins you can make money selling?

      Same thing with Google. What is the average cost per click? How much will you earn per click?

      Things to consider.
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    • Profile picture of the author topofpage1
      As long as the keyword is highly relevant to your product of business it is a good keyword. Low search volume is okay. Your not gonna make waves here but you do want to show up for these money searches as often as posable!

      Good Luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    It depends on how much competition there is for it, whether its related topics are trending, its commercial value per click, among other factors. Some longtails also go a long way in helping build authority for your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author pintara3
      Longtail keywords will usually get less searches and are more targeted,usually less competition.
      So it depends on whether it can be profitable.If you are looking at adsense you would want to choose a category that pay a high ppc rate.
      I am sure you will work it out.
      Graeme
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  • Profile picture of the author ServicesForIM
    I have done it both ways in trying to go for long tail keywords and also going for keywords in huge niches.

    I have had more success in being a small fish in a large pond, than being a big fish in a small pond.

    However, until you test for your particular nice you will never know.

    Good luck!

    Kate
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim3
    Impossible to answer, but I will get off the fence and take the bull by horns.

    Are the Adsense keywords worth more than $2 a click?
    If so write until your fingers bleed for a month or two and see what happens.

    If not, test it with a few articles and buy some first tier PPC traffic, and see what results you get.

    If it doesn't work as well as anticipated, flip the site as is.
    Scope out the competition, check out the trafficked keywords, site traffic etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author lucidzfl
      Originally Posted by Tim3 View Post

      Impossible to answer, but I will get off the fence and take the bull by horns.

      Are the Adsense keywords worth more than $2 a click?
      If so write until your fingers bleed for a month or two and see what happens.

      If not, test it with a few articles and buy some first tier PPC traffic, and see what results you get.

      If it doesn't work as well as anticipated, flip the site as is.
      Scope out the competition, check out the trafficked keywords, site traffic etc.
      How do you flip the site? Just wait for someone to make an offer?
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      • Profile picture of the author Tim3
        Originally Posted by lucidzfl View Post

        How do you flip the site? Just wait for someone to make an offer?
        You may have rather a long wait if you go that route, you would need to advertise it for best results like here on the WF, Flippa, DP and many other places, and of course you may put a 'for sale' on the site itself.
        Or you could do some legwork and contact other webmasters with similar sites to ask if they would be interested in making an offer.
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  • Profile picture of the author easypr
    In my opinion its is the right way. Becoz when we choose high search volume keywords, they have high competition and it is hard to rank in the top position, and when not get top rank, we not aspect we get business from these keywords. So, long tail keywords is the best option, because we easily ranked these types of keywords and we get some business from these keywords too.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ettienne
    Originally Posted by richardharris36 View Post

    I am just about to start a " small niche" article site and monetize it with google adsense and Amazon. I have heard that targeting a small niche, say 200 to 300 searches per month and dominating that niche pays of. Is this true?
    It really depends on the product, target audience and your website's layout. But yes, it can be very profitable if done right
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  • Profile picture of the author linkassistant
    Usually, it is proportional. The longer the keyword is, the fewer searches it gets, and the fewer competition there would be for it.

    There are 2 drawbacks, though (in our experience):
    - Some of your competitors may be looking into long-tail as well (depending on your niche)
    - Trends for long-tail keywords tend to change more often, pushing you to perform keyword research more frequently.

    So, it may be worth it or it may be not. One should just try and see.
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  • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
    At a volume as low as 200-300 you need to be looking at buyer oriented KW's. People looking for an answer to a specific problem / question, people looking for reviews of specific products, etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author seophalanx
      When you are writing a SEO article, you have to make sure that you use the most searched keywords. The article that is to be written needs to be purely original and the keywords used must not be long tailed ones. If you have proper command on writing articles then it can be a lot beneficial for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Anton
    Bigger risk = bigger rewards

    It's an investment of course, but if you need it to be more "instant" income than passive future potential, you have to start small and work your way up. Just make sure you have a system in place and try to make it repeatable so you can scale up and make other websites without much thought or delay.
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  • Profile picture of the author promo87
    Banned
    yes targeting long tails keywords truly worth it, it is already said by Google that they are going to prefer long tail keywords !!
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    • Profile picture of the author rschmitz
      Depends on how you are monetizing, and whether it is a buy keyword. For instance, "best ugly stick" will have a higher CTR than "ugly stick".

      Assuming adsense, we can use some simple math. If you rank #1 you get something like 40% of clicks, and then down to 20% for #2, 10% for #3, etc.

      You get 69% of the CPC of a keyword

      So lets assume you target a keyword of 1,000 clicks per month with $1 CPC. You do a bang up job and rank #1 for your keyword, and have an awesome CTR of 10%. You would be making ~$28 a month. Is that worth it to you? There are lots of other factors, like additional long tails, etc.

      CPA's are generally much more profitable but harder to calculate.
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  • Profile picture of the author alexim
    It really depends on what your niche is about and what keywords you are targeting. If these 200 visitors are buyers and its a high value item / product, then it might be worth it. However if the niche targets a low dollar value item, then it might not be worth it.
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  • Profile picture of the author GyuMan82
    No "dominating" a keyword that only gets 2-300 searches a month won't do diddly squat for you.

    Say you do manage to get to #1, even being the top result you're only going to get about 40-45% clickthroughs, meaning only roughly 120 or so hits a month, breaking down to roughly 4 hits a day.

    Now say you have an affiliate link on your site, well then you typically can only expect maybe 10% of the people (maybe less, maybe more) that will click on your affiliate link. Then typically only a 1-3% conversion for most products.

    If you're using Adsense, you will probably get only 5-10 clicks a month. So again even in the highest paying niches you won't make jack squat.

    And this assumes you're #1. If you're not #1, well then it's way worse.

    So no, the math is against you.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by GyuMan82 View Post

      No "dominating" a keyword that only gets 2-300 searches a month won't do diddly squat for you.

      Say you do manage to get to #1, even being the top result you're only going to get about 40-45% clickthroughs, meaning only roughly 120 or so hits a month, breaking down to roughly 4 hits a day.

      Now say you have an affiliate link on your site, well then you typically can only expect maybe 10% of the people (maybe less, maybe more) that will click on your affiliate link. Then typically only a 1-3% conversion for most products.

      If you're using Adsense, you will probably get only 5-10 clicks a month. So again even in the highest paying niches you won't make jack squat.

      And this assumes you're #1. If you're not #1, well then it's way worse.

      So no, the math is against you.
      If we're looking purely at the math here, you are an optimist. This is right only if you assume that everyone who lands on that serp page clicks a result on that page. In actual practice, a lot of people scan the first page, especially with long tails, looking for something that catches their eye.

      On the other hand, if we look beyond Adsense, there is potential in long tails, even if you only get 5-10 clicks per month. If one of those clicks leads to a $500 referral, it's hardly "jack squat" is it? What if the site has a dozen pages doing that? Or 100?

      Edit: Just went back and saw the OP said "Adsense and Amazon". With Adsense, I agree with you. Hard to make anything serious with penny clicks. That's why advertisers love them. Amazon? Depends mostly on the products selected and the ability to funnel people to Amazon.

      Consider also that most people aren't dumb enough to think they'll make a reasonable income creating an entire site around a phrase that only gets searched for 2-300 times per month, especially one with inadequate payouts.

      Which leads me back to my original answer. Are long tails worth it? Maybe, maybe not.
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  • Profile picture of the author verial
    I've been doing SEO for both my clients and myself for nearly two years now. Here's the basic rule for long-tail keywords that works for me:

    Use Short-Tail if:
    You know you can beat your competition. My general rule is that if I see two PR 0 sites on the first page of my targeted search engine for a keyword, I fight for that keyword.

    Use Long-Tail if:
    Competition is fierce. Or if you're building a website for a local business.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr Lim
    Definately worth for investing on smaller keywords, since most warrior here have not experience it. I will be happy to share mine here.

    I knew that competition among niche sites raises, and what I did to avoid to invest on smaller niche, check out my signature and get it what's going on, I've post on of my successful sites using long tail keywords, with little searches like what you define, I have earn over $148 over 3 months time, definately auto-pilot. And yeah I had another sales from this mini niche which I'm so excited of it.

    Most marketer wouldl think that having at least 1,000 local exact searches a month is a must, but knowing that it happen to be something common on, everyone would did that. Unless you're targeting different level of keywords or niche, like buying keywords or niche that hasn't much been explore. What do you think?
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  • Profile picture of the author aytrading
    Yes its true but its for small niche....
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    Good long tail keywords also contain relevant short tail keywords, so what your really getting is an extra 300 people a month by using them. Assuming you were deemed as a relevant, high quality source. Most keywords should be long tail.

    Dominating a 300 visitor per month niche at a theoretical 1% click through rate on your ads which pay 10 cents a click, you would only be looking at 30 cents a month. You will have to do your own math on the payout, but it seems like too small a niche. If you niche pays $10 a click it might be Ok.

    You will have to do your own math.
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  • Profile picture of the author JRJWrites
    I was able to rank my blog on the first page for long-tail keywords within a relatively short period of time WITHOUT doing any sort of backlink building (guest posting exempt) and WITHOUT spending any real amount of time on SEO.

    And now, I get a passive stream of visitors from Google.

    Some LTK are worth it. Some aren't.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lena Williams
    I am always for long tail keywords. They are very specific and targeted. Whenever you get leads through those keywords, you can expect sales. More importantly, you can rank against long tail keywords more easily than others.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    I'm of the opinion that what's really important is that you become good at what you do - either way you go.

    In other words pick a direction and start working. Test it out. Think of new ways to work the process.

    I have had success in both directions, but these days I love just answering questions about big keywords. For instance, I'm doing this in the P/E niche now. I might produce 200 answers with the word penis enlargement in the title.

    Am I targeting that two-word keyword? When you have that much content about a keyword, it's a matter of opinion. I use to say no, but now I'm not so sure.

    I suppose the answer is if I'm evaluating the keyword based on 'exact searches' or 'board searches.'

    Really - the bigger issue I see is how you conduct your keyword research. Since hummingbird, I've come to see the light in conversional search and changed everything I do.

    Maybe I should do a WSO on it, lol.
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  • Profile picture of the author kindarthur
    Long tail keywords are less popular keywords because they have less search volume and less competition to rank. By targeting long tail keyword which helps to attain rank easier.
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  • Profile picture of the author DizenSounds
    I think so, here is why. You need to start somewhere. And by starting and focusing on smaller, longer tail keywords you can start getting traction sooner and then build your way up to the larger keywords.

    This also helps because you've built a foundation of links thats diversified for the longer tail keywords. That can build traffic and even natural links that can help you when you are ready to scale up.
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