In the old days, getting prime placement for your business meant choosing a name early in the alphabet, so phone books would put you first. Not so in today’s Internet age. Today, it doesn’t matter if you’re a New York cosmetic dentist or a Chicago electrician, your exposure is all about search engines—finding a way to be noticed and ranked high by them so that users (i.e., potential clients) can find you.
Keywords are crucial to good search engine optimization (SEO)—but what kind? Because search engines rely on complex algorithms and formulas to measure the relevance of sites and order of search results, there’s been a lot of research done on what keywords work best. Is it better to go after a few high-volume terms (aka, fat head search terms) or many low-volume terms (aka, long tail search terms)? Which boosts traffic best? Which gives the highest ROI?
Pros and Cons
To answer that question, let’s weigh the pros and cons of long tail and fat head keywords in different categories:
Category #1: Specificity
At the most basic level, the difference between long tail and fat head search terms is specificity. Fat head search terms are general, broad, some of the most popular search terms out there. A possible fat head keyword would be “dentist,” for example, on its own, without any terms suggesting location or type. Long tail keywords, on the other hand, are specific and focused, able to refine searches further—“New York cosmetic dentist,” for example.
And while the specificity of long tail terms can mean quality traffic, it’s also possible to take it too far and go too specific. If your keywords are too detailed, you run the risk of not tapping into a sufficient base of users who are hunting for that phrase. That’s why, in order to be most effective, long tail keywords require research into what specific terms are trending upward, either on your own or through the help of Internet search marketing specialists.
Category #2: Traffic
Because they target broad terms aimed at a large market, fat head keywords provide major exposure and high search volume—which means the highest levels of traffic. Yet the traffic fat head keywords offer is often less relevant than the kind brought by more specific long tail keywords. Compare searching for “dehydrator” with “Excalibur 3900 Deluxe Series 9 Tray Food dehydrator,” for example: the first search term could mean incredibly high numbers of visits, but the second would bring users with specific interest in a particular product. Though long tail keywords target smaller markets, they can attract high-quality traffic closer to the end of purchasing cycle.
Category #3: Cost
The difference in costs between long tail and fat head keywords goes back to the age-old principle of supply and demand: there’s great competition for fat head keywords, so they are more expensive; there’s less competition for long tail keywords, so they’re cheaper to achieve. To some companies, paying a premium for fat head search terms seems like a good idea, but in reality, this strategy delivers high numbers of visits from users who may not be interested in what you offer. In many cases, it makes much more sense to spread your budget across several niche keywords and reel in targeted users accordingly.
Category #4: Risk
When you achieve a high ranking for a fat head search term, it’s true that you’ll see big traffic numbers but, along with that, because of strong competition, there will also be a big chance that you could lose your position. With long tail keywords on the other hand, you face less risk because it’s cheap and easy to diversify your SEO across several terms, meaning if you lose your place for one, you still have many others bringing qualified traffic to your website.
Category #5: Conversions
To most small and mid-sized businesses, conversion is where the rubber meets the road with search terms. Is it long tail or fat head terms that best turns users into buyers or subscribers (or whatever your conversion goal may be)? While fat head terms will bring in great amounts of traffic, long tail can bring in highly qualified traffic—the kind that means conversions. Plus, because long tail keywords target users who are closer to making a decision, they are known to bring in a better return on investment for businesses.
In Conclusion
Based on the characteristics of these different search terms, it’s clear that both fat head and long tail keywords have pros and cons. Fat head terms bring in large amounts of traffic, but they are also costly, hard to stay on top of and less likely to lead to conversions. Long tail terms bring in less traffic in terms of numbers but more quality traffic in terms of relevance, so it’s more likely that the kind of readers they bring in will get converted. What’s more, long tail keywords make it possible to achieve high ranks for more terms because of their low cost, making it possible to expand and diversify your reach.
According to Stephen Mahaney of Wordtracker, understanding the differences between these two search strategies is simple. “It’s best to think of it this way,” he writes. “[W]ould you rather rank for one keyword which sent you 1000 visitors a day or 200 keyphrases, half of which sent you 1 buyer a day?”
Or another way of saying it is this: Which matters more, traffic or conversions?
What do you think?