The Long Tail Strategy: The Pros and Cons of Short Head Keywords and Keyword Research

The classic foundation of on-page optimization is keyword research: High-traffic keywords are identified, compared with synonyms and related terms, and search volumes are evaluated. In the advanced version, a keyword potential analysis is also conducted, and the identified keywords are structured using mapping. This week, there was an article on seo-theory.com suggesting an interesting and somewhat unconventional approach to keyword optimization. In short, it suggests ignoring the hard keywords, not conducting keyword research but instead focusing on content and long-tail keywords. A proposal that, in our eyes, is not only exciting but also worth discussing.

Long Tail Drives the Majority of Traffic

Anyone who looks at the analytics numbers of various websites quickly realizes: The majority of the traffic does not come from short head keywords. Rather, it's the long tail that holds the major share of visits. Against this background, it seems a bit questionable that long-tail keywords are generally neglected and instead the focus is placed solely on high-traffic single keywords. The problem is: The long tail is hard to research. The Google Keyword Tool is practically of no help here, and only with a significant investment of time can at least some of the long-tail keywords be identified.

Is Keyword Research Even Beneficial?

Classical SEO theory states: Ideally, keyword research should be done before content creation. The researched keywords are then traditionally used for title tags, headlines, content, etc. However, if the long tail promises much more traffic, keyword research seems redundant. According to the thesis from seo-theory.com, research can be completely omitted, but we see this a bit more nuanced.

Of course, the mass of long-tail keywords constitutes most of the traffic, and of course, these keywords cannot be identified through research. It is still important, especially for strong pages like homepages, categories, and subcategories, to analyze the search volume of the most important keywords and determine what users are actually searching for. Even if no traffic from highly competitive keywords is expected initially, by optimizing a page for a specific single keyword, you simultaneously create good conditions for traffic from a whole range of related long-tail keywords. For overview pages, it also makes sense to optimize for generic terms. And these terms can indeed only be identified with the help of keyword research. Apart from that, research can also inspire topics worth writing about. The focus should be clearly on the added value for the user, and no content should be created solely for SEO purposes!

Long-term Keyword Strategies: How to Optimize for the Long Tail?

Basically, it can be stated: Anyone who only optimizes for generic keywords foregoes the large traffic potential of long-tail keywords. However, it is equally true: With a larger amount of text, it is practically impossible NOT to also optimize for the long tail. A content strategy always includes the identification of the most important high-traffic keywords within one's topic area. When creating articles, blog posts, and product descriptions, it is important to break away from the rigid idea of ​​optimizing content only for short head keywords. Texts should never be forcibly trimmed to a specific keyword anyway. A natural and varied language that is dedicated to a specific topic and written with a certain editorial quality meets the most important criteria to be found for relevant long-tail keywords in the search results.

An important aspect here is the competence of the editorial team: Only those who are reasonably knowledgeable about or have immersed themselves in a topic will intuitively use the most important terms and address the key questions that potential users can use to find the page. On seo-theory.com, the recommendation is to not worry about keywords and instead just start writing to produce helpful and relevant content. Everything else would come naturally. In principle, we can agree with this, albeit with the aforementioned caveat. It also doesn’t hurt to apply some simple SEO basics and, for example, ensure that headlines and title tags contain relevant keywords. The popular topic of "SEO copywriting" is thus always a mix of SEO skills, subject matter expertise, and a great deal of creativity. A little less obsession with keyword optimization can certainly do no harm!

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With over 10 years of experience in online marketing, we know the short- and long-term success chances of different keyword strategies. We are happy to also support you and your company with individual strategic consulting in all questions of online marketing. Contact us!