Long Tail vs Broad Based Keyword Phrase Marketing

I recently wrote an article that I intended to post but lost. So I decided it was worth recreating the meat of the subject.

Recent research supporting long-tail marketing showed that Internet marketers who ignore this sector are missing roughly half of their potential clients. For those of you who don't know what long tail is, let me give a brief example.

A website, for example, that sold electronics would have many keywords that could potentially be used by search engine traffic to find their products. Most searchers use broad phrases like "cheap electronics" or "wholesale computers." If you use PPC (pay-per-click) advertising on these broad phrases, than you will likely spend a lot of money getting traffic that is still researching, not buying. A searcher using specific phrases like "Apple MacBook Pro under $2000" or "cheapest HP toughbook notebooks" is likely to have already selected their item for purchase, now they're looking where to buy. If you focus only on specific phrases, you'll save exponentially on your advertising campaign, but you'll have a higher ROI (return on investment).

By the way, the reason this is called "long-tail" is because if you were to graph a websites traffic, it will start with visitors entering the website using a few very common keywords, then form a long tail of not frequently used, very specific keywords as points of entry.

The reason the few, common keywords are very expensive to advertise is because everybody wants them. The more specific you get, the more likely it is your competitor either overlooked the keyword or just didn't bother advertising under that many keywords. There is a way to optimize an advertising campaign to get the traffic from both sources.

I recommended using organic SEO (search engine optimization) to capture top rankings for common, broader keywords. Use PPC to capture visitors using specific keywords. It will take a much longer time and a lot of effort to obtain first page results for common keywords (depending on industry, if you are in a very specific niche industry - like custom fitted metal pipes for Howlwitzer Dobblekars - you won't have this problem), but once you have them, they're free - as long as you maintain and nurture them (if you don't know how hire an internet marketing consultant). The PPC campaign will be very inexpensive with a high ROI on your specific keyword phrases.

While most new business owners are not thinking about search engine optimization, the sooner you put a strategy in place, the sooner it will return results - it does take a long time to get first page Google results on broad keyword phrases, so start planning (or have someone who knows how do it for you) before your website is ever built.

This is the most optimized way to get maximum ROI on internet marketing dollars (or any advertising budget for that matter.) Internet is by far the cheapest form of marketing and offers results superior to any other form. Planned and implemented properly, it's definitely smart to capture ALL internet traffic who may be potential buyers, not just the most likely. This strategy will give you 100% market exposure on the Internet, then it's up to your website to draw in the buyer and create a desire to purchase (we can help with that, too).

- Mark Rogers

e-Profit-PRO$

Internet Marketing Consultant