by Alessio Spinelli - February 28, 2020
If keywords have practically always been the cornerstone of any SEO optimization strategy , long tail keywords represent an extremely powerful (but still underestimated) weapon available to companies that do business online and want to climb the Google SERP.
What are long tail keywords, and where do they come from?
Long tail keywords owe their name to former Wired USA editor Chris Anderson, who first denmark telegram datatheorized this concept in an article in 2004. Regardless of authorship, what matters is that long tail keywords are really important for SEO. But first, let's see exactly what long tail keywords are . In essence, these are keywords made up of many terms (even 4 or more), with relatively low volume and low competition. But why is it better to focus on them, rather than on higher volume keywords?
Short tail keywords
Typically, user searches (queries) on search engines are based on a few fairly generic keywords, called broad keywords or short tail keywords. For example, "women's shoes" or "sports cars". The logical choice would therefore seem to be to optimize your site for these keywords. However, while it is true that classic generic keywords have a high search volume, it is also true that this popularity comes at the cost of broad , fierce competition and often unsatisfactory conversion rates. Furthermore, positioning yourself on extremely generic queries like "women's shoes" when you have to compete with online shopping giants and marketplaces on the web is not only very difficult, but can also prove to be extremely expensive.
Long tail keywords: what are the advantages
If we want to avoid wasting time and money on a strategy that risks being counterproductive and with a poor return on investment (ROI), we can narrow our scope by focusing on a more specific target. It will certainly be a smaller audience, but at the same time ready or almost ready to buy. And to be able to intercept this target, traditional keywords are useless. Instead, we can obtain better results by exploiting long tail keywords. It's all about offering them exactly what they are looking for. And to intercept this audience before and better than our competitors, we need longer and more complex queries. By focusing on long tail keywords like "tablet for office work", we would have many more chances of positioning ourselves among the very first results of search engines
