Understanding relevance and the effect of short tail and long tail keywords

It's important to understand the distinction between short tail keywords and long tail keywords. The difference is simple: a short tail keyword is a short, one or two-word search phrase. A long tail keyword is a three, four, five-word, or longer keyphrase. An example of a short tail keyword would be Dallas restaurant, where an example of a long tail keyword would be Top-rated West Dallas pizza. As you might suspect, long tail keywords are almost always searched in much lower volumes than their short tail counterparts. However, long tail keywords possess important and valuable advantages over short tail keywords, as we will learn.

Examining user intent through keywords

To understand the value of long tail keywords, we need to think about how a chosen keyword reflects the intent, as well as the motivation of a web user. Let us examine a typical customer awareness cycle. First, a customer becomes aware of a product...