Is targeting long tail keywords worth it?

It can be. Or it could be more work than it's worth.

There is no yes or no answer.

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.

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

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.

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.

It really depends on the product, target audience and your website's layout. But yes, it can be very profitable if done right

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.

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.

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.

yes targeting long tails keywords truly worth it, it is already said by Google that they are going to prefer long tail keywords !!

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.

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.

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.

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?

Yes its true but its for small niche....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.