You hear some incredible numbers on long tail keywords from the SEO community, some say they account for over 90% of searches and this does sound feasible. It’s being approached with unbridled enthusiasm and spoken about as the ‘hidden treasure’ in web traffic with people are putting themselves up as experts in long tail keyword searches. A good look over the Analytics accounts of clients however, shows a more complex scenario.

It is also not as simple as a few higher level keywords bringing in X traffic and a long list of five, six or seven word phrases bringing in one or two searches each, it tapers off slowly. It also varies from site to site. If for instance, the company behind the website has good brand recognition in the market place, then quite probably 50% of searches will be variations of the company name or company name and location. For lesser known companies pulling generic keyword traffic, the top five keywords may be bringing only 20% of searches with the tail tapering down much more gradually.

But whatever the mix for your website, the same old SEO rules still hold true for long tail searches as they do for top level keywords. It is important to be credible to Google, to have quality links, a quality domain and good history without any link abuse or cloaking techniques.

Most importantly, content remains King. If you want to see how it works, but a completely unique keyword combination in a page you know will be indexed by Google. Then search that phrase once it has been indexed. You should come up in number 1 position. It’s how teachers check student papers for plagiarization and it’s how a site gets traffic from long tail keywords – that phrase or many of the words in it are in the content somewhere.

As with everything, there is no shortcut to getting traffic from long tail keywords, it is good content writing and careful, ethical SEO work.