Is Long-Tailing Overrated?

That’s the question that many folks have asked me in the past. I remember when I used to work in the financial industry. I was ridiculed for suggesting that we could go after the long-tail phrases to get more folks to sign up for our products. Obviously, it always does help to talk to folks who know what they are talking about, but people were vetoing my suggestions, claiming that most search marketers use long-tailing for pay per click, and it is not a technique useful for SEO purposes.

That can’t be further from the truth. It’s true that if you are big established public corporation, you probably have been enough in business to have an authority site in your niche. That means you can get ranked for highly general terms and get a lot of leads for free. But it’s also true that general terms do not convert as well as long-tail terms.

Competition is also lower for long-tail terms. Think about all the possibilities. You can optimize for 100s and thousands of long-tail terms, and get high conversion rate on those terms. Now, some folks believe that going after long-tail terms is just not worth the effort. That’s actually better for us folks who are going for long-tail terms. The less competitive these terms stay, the better off the rest of us will be.