When Does A Keyword Become A Long Tail Keyword?

When the tail grows long. :rolleyes:

Just kidding. I think when the phrase is 3 or more words most folks would call it a long tail. That can be misleading though. Long tail typically signifies a less competitive keyword that is relatively easy to get a page or site ranked highly for. Some three-word key phrases wouldn't qualify under that stipulation.

Ken,

Most Long tails are 3 or more words, but it also has to do with generality of the word.

A short tail is a shorter phrase, one or more words but a less specific phrase.

Longtail would constitute an extra word or two and MORE specific in nature.

I hope that helps !

If you plan to promote these long tail keyword using ezine articles, pay attention to their guidelines. As far as I can remember, if you want to use more than 3 words in your keyword phrase in the resource box, you have to increase the word count in your article body

good question kenj, I think 3 or more words is in a keyword phrase is classed as a long tail keyword.

I would even consider a 2 word ultra low competition keyword a long tail, because I've been ranking great for 2 word keyword strings with under 1000 competition (believe it or not they are out there... =)

-Safe Travels

Hi Kenj,

You have a right bag of mixed answers - some people mistakenly think that more words = long tail.

This is obviously not the case and probably the reason you asked the question.

Hasan nailed it for you.

It's all about the area under the curve when you plot demand against products. The less in-demand products create a tail to the market. In the old days when you had to store things on shelves (take a record store or book store for example), the store owner would need to assess which products were most in demand and base their shelve space on that. Products which wouldn't sell enough to be worth taking up space would simply have to be ordered in when needed.

With the Internet changing all of that - you can advertise an almost unlimited number of items and you just need server space for your pages - which is as good as unlimited these days.

So - when people use the term long tail to refer to keywords you open up a can of worms because there is no set number of words - it depends what the words are and how you use them.

I could say "big cars that use lots of fuel and are comfortable" is my niche - but "Aston Martin DB5" is much more targeted and long tail. If I wanted to make that even longer tail I might add the word "black" to it in order to appeal to people after that particular colour. If I added the words "eye-catching" my phrase is bigger but it's no more long tail than before.

So - while in general (very general) terms, more words in a phrase is probably going to move it further down the long tail - it's not necessarily the case.

So - when it comes to IM and using these terms, you're probably better off just assessing your particular niche, looking at the demand and picking a point at which the demand and competition are at a place where it makes sense for you to put some effort.

Andy

Hi guys

i consider anything that has more than one word a long tail keyword as its a more specific keyword!!

kind regards


sam
X

I think it's a combination of both factors. For me to consider a keyword long-tail, it'd have to be at least 3 words or more. In addition to that, the competition level and number of searches would have to be fairly low. I wouldn't obsess too much over the definition of it - just try to find lots and lots of these relevant long-tails and you'll get plenty of targeted traffic to your site and/or offer!

I think it depends on how many keywords your website is targeting.

If you are only working with one keyword (no matter how many words that is) you are going short tail, but if you have 1000 articles about one subject, you are going long tail.

One article might only be read between two or ten times a month, but combined thay start to become powerfull.

Hey kenj. I've recently done my first web site and have just had the same dilema. Its a dieting site for moms. I chose keywords like 'lose weight fast' and 'easy weight loss'. I was told that it would take a good 6 months to make any impression on google because I'd be competing with so many established sites. Apparently I needed long tailed one. So ended up with 'how do I lose weight afterhaving a baby' and 'how can I lose my baby fat after having a baby' etc. I'm told that these will get u the google pages much quicker. We'll see!

excellent discussion I've always used the simple approach like others above keywords that are more then 3 words in length..then I narrow it down by search volume and competing google results to find the ones I want to target