Should You Dump The Long Tail SEO Strategy Due To Google Instant?

Long tail SEO is a great strategy to drive visitors to your website through search engines. Long tail SEO makes use of less popular keyword phrases and it's easier to get good search engine rankings with long tail than popular two word or even three word keyword phrases. In order to get decent traffic to your website, you will need several articles which focus on different long tail keyword phrases. While this technique has worked wonders for many internet marketers with Google, the introduction of Google Instant has affected several website owners as traffic took a dip since the latter was launched.

But what is Google Instant? Google Instant is a new way for Google to display search engine results in real time as the user is typing a keyword phrase and without the need to press enter or click on the "Search" button. To give you an example, say for instance the keyword you want to type is "Internet Marketing Strategies", after typing "Internet Marketing" and before even being able to type "Strategies", you will get the results displayed automatically below for the keyword "Internet Marketing". So what happen is the user can stop typing and just click on one of the listings for the keyword "Internet Marketing". What can you conclude? Say your website is ranked number 1 for the keyword phrase "Internet Marketing Strategies", you won't get traffic as you usually do.

According to my own experience, I've noticed that not all niches are affected the same way, some more some less. It also depends on other factors which need to be taken into consideration. One of the factors is Google Instant can be turned off. So some people who are searching on Google and who have Google Instant turned off will continue with their search on your specific keyword and press enter or click on the "Search" button like they would normally do. Another factor is although Google Instant is turned on, some people will just bypass it and continue with their search.

Some people are saying Google Instant will kill SEO as everyone will need to go after popular keywords only but that's not entirely true. For sure, it might affect some websites but long tail SEO is here to stay in my opinion. Going after popular keywords only is not a wise SEO strategy due to the competitive nature of the web nowadays. More and more websites and blogs are popping out every day and many are after the popular terms and you're competing against thousands of others. Being less greedy for traffic and still get a share of the Google search engine pie can be rewarding in the long run. It's better to land a number 1 spot in Google for a long tail keyword and receive some decent traffic than on page 4-5 for a popular keyword and practically zero traffic. As you might know, your chances in getting visitors from Google are higher if you're on the 1st page in the search engine result pages(SERPs).

I believe the long tail SEO strategy is still well worthwhile because usually the traffic is even more targeted as the user takes his or her time to type exactly what he or she is looking for. So if you're selling a product based on a particular highly targeted term and you get a website visitor, your conversion rate is higher. It also all depends on your niche as certain niches are more proned to have long tail keyword phrases being searched for. So before trying to get rid of the long tail SEO strategy due to Google Instant, you'd better think twice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jean Lam is a self-taught internet marketer and has been making a living online since 2004. He is the author of the popular eBook "Top Search Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed" which has helped many businesses get more traffic and sales from the search engines and other traffic generation methods. Click here to pick up your own copy