Long Tail Keywords Vs Short Tail Keywords in ROI Perspective [Infographic]

It’s the age of social interaction, and people are sick of seeing generic ad after generic ad. If you can be the advertiser who understands your audience using search query analysis, if you can cater t their individual needs with relevant ads and landing pages, if you can be the one who makes a mark in your industry, customers will reward you with their wallet. It’s your opportunity to stand out from the competition. So take it.

The searches done per month for a generic (short-tail) keyword (like “AdWords reports”) would be much greater than that of a long tail keyword (like “google AdWords reporting tool for clients”). But, long-tail keywords are more specific in their requirements, so you can write a more targeted and relevant ad to encourage the searcher to click. So, what type of keyword to use in what kind of situation? Here’s an infographic to help you decide.

Search engines aren’t the only source of targeted visitors, but effectively targeting long tail keywords in your content can greatly increase your monthly search visitors.

Here, we came up with a detailed analysis of Long tail keywords and Short tail keywords with respect to 8 ROI metrics like Impressions, Click Through Rate, Cost Per Click, Average Position, Cost Per Acquisition, Conversion Rate, Return On Investment on Content and Page Rankings. Dive in.

Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, and high return activities in the search marketing field. Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website. Keyword intent is one of the most crucial aspects of paid search. Without a keen understanding of the intent behind visitors’ searches, even the most well-funded PPC campaign will almost certainly fail. Here are the best keyword research tools to begin a well-rounded keyword foundation for SEO.

Prospects:

1) Impressions (Search Volume)

i) Long Tail

It is a fact that as the number of words in a search query increases beyond 3, the number of searches made using that that number of words falls. It is also true that search volume drops as searches start becoming obscure and lengthy. However, the true power of these long-tail keywords lies in en masse. Added together, searches of 5 words or more account for almost 70% of all impressions. While long-tail keywords may be individually insignificant, a PPC campaign with thousands of long-tails can be a serious source of additional traffic.

Fact: Long-tail searches have significant search volume.

ii) Short Tail

Typical broad keywords or short-tail keywords are generic keywords (for example, shoes) and have the advantage of driving a lot of traffic. It would be of immense benefit for a business to rank for these high volume generic terms since they would drive a lot of traffic to the website.

2) Click-Through Rate (CTR)

“While searches of 1, 2 and 3 words have a relatively low CTR, CTR appears to be increasing significantly for searches of at least 4 words. CTR, it seems, is considerably stronger for long-tail keywords. Their reason being:Long-tail keywords have less competition, so there is a higher chance someone will click your ad.

Fact: Long-tail keywords can achieve a higher CTR, as long as ads are tailored to the search query”

3) Cost Per Click (CPC)

“Long-tail keywords have less competition, fewer people bidding on them to drive up their prices, so CPCs will be kept relatively low.

Fact: Long-tail keywords are cheaper for the same ad ranking or the same price for a higher ad ranking”

4) Average Position

“For 1, 2 and 3-word searches, ad ranking is relatively low, and ads appear near the bottom of the first page. As word length increases, however, ads are shown significantly higher. They are appearing in the top positions.

Fact: Long-tail keywords are cheaper for the same ad ranking or the same price for a higher ad ranking”

5) Conversion Rate

“Clicks are no good if people don’t engage with your site or part with their cash. It’s often conversion that really matters. Long Tail keywords have high conversion rates:

The reasoning being that people who make longer, more specific searches have already done their research and know exactly what they want. They are further along in the buying cycle so are more likely to open their wallet.

It’s a pretty convincing trend. As the number of words increases, so does conversion rate.

Long-tail keywords are phrases that people enter when they are closer to making a final decision. The increase in conversion rates helps to compensate for a decrease in web traffic.This means that your website being relevant to these queries will reduce bounce rate and increase conversions.

Fact: Long-tail keywords have a higher conversion rate”

6) Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

“Finally, what does this mean for CPA, profitability, return on investment (ROI)? Is it cheaper to acquire a customer through the long-tail?

Again, there appears to be a clear trend between word count and CPA. Conversions from long-tail searches seem to be cheaper than conversions from generic, short-tail searches.

Fact: Long-tail keywords have a lower cost per acquisition and can be extremely profitable”

7) ROI on Content

i) Long Tail

“If you write good original content that is genuinely helpful to your target market, you’ll automatically weave in long tail keywords without even trying. As your page content grows, visitors will get to your site through more and more of these long tail phrases. In other words, the tail will grow longer and longer.

In fact, you’ll find visitors getting to your site using search phrases that you would have never thought of yourself. This is the value of focusing each of your content pages on a specific topic that provides valuable information to a narrow target audience.

Fact: If you are investing on content you are automatically optimizing it for Long-tail”

ii) Short Tail

“They’re also easy to write about.

When creating web content, it is important to make sure that the keywords used flow with the rest of the text. Fitting the word “”bed”” into a sentence is pretty easy. Making sure your keywords fit your content isn’t difficult, but it will pay off multi-fold due to Google’s recent focus on quality and relevant content.

While making web content, it is imperative to make certain that the keywords utilized run well with the totality of the text. Making certain your keywords fit your content isn’t complicated and it will have a great impact on your quality score.”

8) Page Ranking

“Most companies do not use long-tail keywords when they are creating their websites or when they are formulating AdWords campaigns. So an additional benefit to long-tail keywords is that your company won’t have a lot of competition. This helps you achieve a higher search engine ranking with less effort, decrease CPC for ad campaigns and increase the relevancy of your campaigns-which can positively impact your Quality Score.”

9) Branding

“Short-tail are the broad search terms that people use when they are researching information on the Internet. For example, they can start with a simple one-word term such as beds. This one word, when entered into the search box, will bring up many different websites for the person to review.

Using these keywords can help drive large amounts of traffic to a company website.

They are extremely useful in building awareness the very first step to conversion.”
This post is a part of a blog series on Marketing Success by ReportGarden, an ad agency client reports & dashboards automation software.

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