You may already have heard about the long tail keywords. They are the combination of a few words, typically heading towards the formation of queries that are entered in search engines to find content, products, and services.And there is a good reason to say that long tail keywords are generally less popular keywords.

Some myths about long tail keywords

A vast majority of people believe that long tail keywords are based on 3 – 4 keywords. It is entirely untrue. The most basic factor that brings a keyword into the category of long tail keywords is its rarity. The relative rarity of a keyword that tends to occur as a phrase in Google search is the factor that makes it a long tail keyword.

History of long tail

The concept of long tail keywords started with an article ‘The Long Tail’, which was published in the Wired magazine. The concept stated there says:

“…the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator… Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching—a market response to inefficient distribution.

…Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody.”

The notion here is that internet is a vaster realm as compared to the physical world. It is not restricted by the limited radio frequencies and limited spaces in the bookstores. Even if you search for something that has never been searched before, you are likely to get a result that might fulfill your needs. And if you are marketer or business, you can find an audience no matter how rare that audience is.

What’s good about long tail?

It is very difficult to optimize for the long tail keywords. According to the survey, about 15% search queries entered in Google are new; and so they care the long tail keywords. The question here is whether you can optimize for a keyword that has never been used before. Well, the chances are meager. But still this 15% of the search queries cannot be written off. The reason is that most of the search queries in those 15% are the ones that are meant to bring money to the businesses.

Now the thing is that you cannot do accurate optimization of those 15% search queries unless you get lucky. But you can stay close by avoiding ambiguity, being precise, avoiding going off topic, and answering the questions to meet the needs of the queries.

Long tail keywords and SEO

In general, you will want to get ranked against more common keywords because that’s how you can show up in the top of SERPs when people search for the types of service you offer. But the matter of fact is that working on long tail keywords is purely profitable because only the serious users, who get online for the purpose of getting converted, use those keywords. But since Google has gotten better in dealing with the phrases and it continues to get even better, you can presume that long tail keywords are going to get crucial.