There's a commonly held belief amongst those charged with the task of SEO for their business's web presence that you need to find your target keywords using targeted keyword research methods and canny competitive intelligence and then chase these terms to the exclusion of all others because they are targeted. Targeted is good right? It leads to a higher conversion rate right?
Well, yes and no. Generally you will find yourself targeting the terms that contain the most potential for driving traffic to your website - and that's fine - as a longer term plan it makes perfect sense to attempt search market domination in your niche for the most popular terms. But don't forget to pay a little attention to your 'long tail' because in fact, it converts better. And there's more of it.
The long tail are the 1000s of combinations of searches that different potential customers will use when looking for your product or service. People ask questions in different ways, they call things by different names and more often than not, they aren't sure what they want to ask or what they're looking for so 'targeted' goes right out the window.
How we discover, filter and leverage the long tail of search is a post for another day but I wanted to bring to your attention a fact that proves the case:
Udi Manber is one of Google's head engineering geeks. He recently informed us Google followers that 25% of searches performed in Google are completely unique. That is, they have never been searched for before. Consider that. 1 in every 4 searches made in Google has never been made before. It startled me and I'm on Google's case on a daily basis so it must be blowing your mind.
Still think you know what targeted is?