For as long as I’ve been doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization), at the beginning of each relationship, clients tend to focus on a few really big, killer keywords for their industry. They’ll say things like “why aren’t we attacking those keywords?” or “the traffic is too low for these other, less used keywords.” And, early in my career, I’d panic. I’d start to question myself. Was I steering them wrong by going after a larger number of long-tail keywords, which individually have less traffic potential? Hell no!

Each time I’d calm myself, knowing that I was helping them build a strong net that we could cast wide. I knew we’d bring in far more visitors with this approach than spending more effort, time, and money trying to win on the really popular keywords. The fact is the majority of traffic for any keyword will go to those in the Top 5 of a Google search result. So, getting 100 keywords into the top 5, will often bring considerably more traffic than getting two or three ultra-competitive keywords on the bottom of page one or on page two of the results. The other important fact is that people rarely conclude their research with their first click. They usually go back and refine their search with additional words. So, those long-tail keywords we focus on are typically searched by those getting closer to a purchase, and that’s what this is all about!