Targeting "Up the Tail" (long tail and short tail keywords)

[txshellie]

Here is an except from this wordtracker article

Targeting ‘up the tail’ is harder as such keywords are usually more popular and competitive. But again you are given a head start (pun intended) against the competition by the same factors that made your tail keyword successful. For example, an inbound link containing the keyword japanese corporate culture will help you be successful for corporate culture (and vice versa).

You can see the entire post here:

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/really-easy-seo

I have been intuitively operating under the assumption that if I optimize for a keyword like short red widgets that I'd get some credit for red widgets as well. Apparently, the folks at wordtracker, confirm this.

Have you seen that to be true on your sites as well?

If you haven't been taking advantage of the long tail marketing keywords in your industry, you are missing out on alot of traffic and possibly money.

What are some strategies that you are using to maximize long tail keywords in your work?

[johnmcevilly]

I highly agree that. Because when your targeting the long tail ones, you also include the short tail keywords in your Title tag, content, etc.

Long tail = short tail + modifiers

But that's just for your content. There's also a matter of authority, coming from backlinks. My question is, will "best search engine" anchor text would also help you rank for "search engine" anchor text?

those are just examples, btw.

[txshellie]

Originally Posted by johnmcevilly

But that's just for your content. There's also a matter of authority, coming from backlinks. My question is, will "best search engine" anchor text would also help you rank for "search engine" anchor text?

those are just examples, btw.

Though I can't scientifically quantify the results that I've seen, I have seen that I rank well for "search engine" if I am doing well for several long keyword phrases that contain that root phrase.

So you may need to do well for "biggest search engine", "most popular search engine", "cheapest search engine" etc. to do well for "search engine".