The web has expanded exponentially for over a decade now and you no longer have a chance to own single keywords that are relevant to your industry unless you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars and invest hundreds of hours into getting them. If you honestly want to be a long term success story that is exactly what you will do.
The paragraph you just read is by the far the best advice you can get if you really want to be at the top of searches for power keywords related to your industry. As the web has gotten larger more SEO companies are encouraging their clients to put their efforts into long tail keywords or keywords with low search volumes. You can be at the top of Page One for many of those, but according to some of “the experts” you don’t have a shot at the more common keywords that everyone else wants.
My friends in the UK would describe that theory of marketing as absolute rubbish. If you don’t go after the major keywords that your target market is looking for you will not be successful. Advertising using low traffic keywords doesn’t get seen by anyone. Long tail keywords are very specific but the number of visitors you get from them is far less while the work level needed to get you to the top of Page One for them is still the same.
A friend of mine who runs an investment site was given the suggestion that he use the word “mullah” instead of money for a keyword PPC campaign. The reasoning behind that was that “mullah” only shows up in about three hundred searches where “money” shows up in tens of thousands. It’s easy to get to the top of a list of three hundred, but how much business will you get from that?
Long tail keywords offer the same allure and have the same problem. You can get to the top but there are very few people looking for those keyword phrases, so how much traffic will you get for the effort you put in? SEO is a time consuming process, no matter which keywords you’re using. If you’re going to put that time in, do it for something worthwhile. Go after the high traffic industry keywords. It might take longer but you’ll be more successful because of it.
Simplicity is the key to internet marketing. Don’t look for shortcuts because it takes hard work for anything to be successful. You can go after long tail keywords and low traffic keywords if you like, but don’t take away from efforts to get those power keywords that you need to be at the top of your industry.
