Many people feel like a retailer of tools would be incredibly wealthy if they could just rank for the word “tools”. Sure, it sends lots and lots of traffic, but is that traffic that means anything?
When looking at keywords to build traffic around, it is much better to come up with a huge list of less frequently searched terms than a list of a few hugely popular phrases. Or is it?
You see, SEO companies say things like this all the time. However, sometimes you can see some other odd effects when you rank for a head term. Things that you never expected begin to happen, and that’s what makes you scratch your head a bit and analyze data.
Take the word tools as an example. As the rankings started to go up for that word, so did searches with the site name in them. You see, not only does it attract people with that head phrase, but it also gets people searching for that company because of familiarity with them further down the buying cycle. Conversion rates initially drop like a rock, but sales don’t. The truth is, it could take a few weeks or even months to truly understand the effects of ranking for such a phrase.
Now, if you’re getting traffic for a tail term you’ll see immediate benefits in the terms of sales. But, combine the head terms and traffic jumps quite a bit initially, then grows even more as people become familiar with the brand. It truly seems that all the benefits come most to light when you’re ranking for both head and tail terms.
Tails may be easier to rank for and get some sales with, but nothing beats the traffic and branding capabilities of head terms. Conventional wisdom, meet the facts.
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