How Many Keywords Make An Effective Query?
Let’s Learn About Short-Tail and Long-Tail Search String Queries
The following question always arises when new online marketing website owners are learning to implement keyword strategy, “How many keywords are best (or allowed, or OK to use, etc.) for my keyword phrases?” Two, three … five, six? Well, the fact of the matter is, nothing about keyword phrase length is set in cement!
Two and Three Word Queries are Used Most Often by Searchers
What is “set in cement” is the need to know what keywords and keyword phrases your customer base would most likely be typing into (or querying) the search engines. That’s what matters! So, first you’ve got to compile a keyword list or have one researched for you by a knowledgeable SEO consultant, such as the thorough one I offer: Keyword Research Report.
Keyword phrases that your customers are using to find you can be rather eye-opening when you start looking at the statistical information offered by your web host’s web tracker or hit-counter service. If you don’t have a means to see exactly what keyword phrases your website’s visitors are using to arrive at your website, then I highly suggest you go to StatCounter.com and take advantage of their free service.
I recommend StatCounter to many of my small business clients. They find it is pretty easy to understand and is invaluable in not only helping them to do a better job at targeting the right keywords for use in their content, but also to learn where their visitors are originating from and how many visitors are landing on their site. StatCounter does provide good statistical information.
An Interesting Break-Down of Short and Long-Tail Keyword Use
According to data collected in January 2007 from users of European Web analytics provider OneStat, most people use 2- or 3-word queries in search engines. The RankStat research was based on a sample of 2 million visitors, made up of 20,000 visitors in 100 countries each day. Here’s what they discovered:
- Two-word phrases — 28.38 percent
- Three-word phrases — 27.15 percent
- Four-word phrases — 16.42 percent
- One-word phrase — 13.48 percent
- Five-word phrases — 8.03 percent
- Six-word phrases — 3.67 percent
- Seven-word phrases — 1.63 percent
- Eight-word phrases — 0.73 percent
- Nine-word phrases — 0.34 percent
- Ten-word phrases — 0.16 percent
I find these statistics on keyword phrase length interesting. And yes, depending upon what statistical company is reporting the findings, there will be slight differences in the percentages. But even now, in 2009, these numbers are not too different as provided in reports from various statistical companies that come into my inbox.
What these stats tell us is that searchers are learning to use multi-word combinations to help zero in on what they are searching for. They’re learning that the more precise they are in providing search terms, the greater the chance they’ll get to the information they are searching for faster. This also means the information will more than likely be exactly what they want.
Long-tail keyword phrases are normally quite easily incorporated into our Title tag, Description meta tag and web page content. The better we are at narrowing our keyword terms for each page of content, the greater chance we have to not only rank higher in the search engines, but to also attract targeted traffic to our website.
Targeted Keyword Phrases = A Greater Chance for Targeted Website Traffic
Just in case you are not sure what all this means, I’ll use this example. Based on the above statistics, we’d see keywords being used such as:
- Two-word phrase — cake recipes
- Three-word phrase — chocolate cake recipe
- Four-word phrase — chocolate bundt cake recipe
- One-word phrase — recipes
- Five-word phrase — easy chocolate bundt cake recipe
I am sure this example shows how much sense the 2 or more word phrases make to your search engine optimization efforts. The more specific you are in each page of information you create, the better off you will be in all marketing and SEO respects.
For more information on researching and utilizing keywords, refer to this very informative FREE 75-page case study: Keyword Research Guide from WordTracker.
What’s The Benefit Of Long-Tail Keyword Phrases For Your Site’s Traffic?
I Have a Long-Tail Keyword Phrase Ranking #8 in Google – I’ll Take the Extra Traffic, Thank You!
Today during some research for my own site, and out of complete curiosity,I typed the search term
“seo consultant small business prices” into Google. Lo-and-behold, there was my SEO website’s home page, ranking #8 out of 348,000 SERPs!
Can I be honest with you? (“Yes Claudia … please be honest!” you say). I was surprised to see I hold a top-ten ranking position for this phrase. Why? Because I never optimized the home page for that long-tail keyword phrase. But, due to the actual content on the page, and the fact I had done a good job at optimizing the Title tag and meta tags, and the content for “seo consultant” and “small business”, the term “price” was also found by the Google spiders on that page, and with all the other factors taken into consideration, Google deemed my page was very relevant for that search term, and awarded me the #8 position.
So, as can often happen, you might discover that you rank very nicely for many long-tail keyword phrases that you never set out to specifically optimize a page of content for. And hey, that’s great! I won’t argue unplanned occurrences like that. And in addition, you may also find that you get a nice trickle of traffic from these “unplanned” keyword phrases, too. 
What Exactly are Long-Tail Keyword Phrases?
Long-Tail keywords are those 3 and 4-keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are promoting or selling. You see, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. In virtually every case, these very specific searches are far more likely to convert to sales than general generic searches that tend to be geared more toward the type of research that consumers typically do prior to making a buying decision.
Examples of more generalized searches in my particular situation would be along the lines of “seo consultant” or maybe “small business seo”.
Here’s another example that might make this long-tail concept even easier for you to understand:
Generalized term: mountain bikes
Long-tails:
–cross-country mountain bikes
–hardtail mountain bikes
–full-suspension mountain bikes
–freeride mountain bikes
–dirt jump mountain bikes
The beauty of taking advantage of using lots of long-tail phrases in your pages of content or blog articles, is that you not only broaden the opportunity to have more targeted keyword phrases that can be used for more pages of unique content, but you also increase the likelihood of attracting more visitors who are really more interested in what you have to offer.
They’re looking for specific information or products or services, and your very targeted information is at their disposal. If you’ve done an excellent job of over-delivering quality content as I always encourage people to do, then I’ll bet you will find that you are truly increasing the opportunity to make more sales.
To learn about the value of targeting long-tail keyword phrases to help grab more visitors for your site, I’d like to point you to this informative article: Three Good Reasons To Target Long-Tail Keywords!
