Short tail and Long tail SEO
When optimizing your dealership website for search engines, there are two primary focuses that should be considered in your meta info and in your web copy:
- Short tail search
- Long tail search
Short tail search refers to keywords and phrases specific to your dealership. For instance, if your dealership name is Chad’s Ford and you are in Omaha, NE then the words “chad”, “ford”, “omaha”, “ne”, & “nebraska” are all short tail keywords on which you should have authority on in the search engines. Of course, your authority will likely be specific to more distinct phrases such as “chad’s ford” or “omaha ford”.
With a properly optimized site, or web page, the “short tail” keywords such as the company name and your geo markets should be an inherent part of the information, thus you should not have to campaign specifically for them because the search engines will pick up on them naturally, especially if the domain name contains the company name.
Long tail search refers to the idea of what we call “relative search”, which is on the lines of products, services, and other keywords related to your dealership but not specific to it. For instance, “ford dealer” or “nebraska dealer” could be considered long tail key phrases because they are related to but not specific to your dealership. Technically speaking, long tail refers more to the idea of targeting numerous low-search volume markets versus fewer high-volume search markets. More information can be learned on that by going to this blog.
With long tail search, you need to dedicate individual web pages for select and related key phrases you wish to penetrate in search. Thus, “omaha ford dealer” and “new ford trucks” should not be combined onto a single web page because there are thousands of other web pages dedicated to those search markets alone that you will have a difficult time dominating. The more narrow your niche the better when it comes to long tail search, especially if you want to penetrate high-volume search markets.
These two search emphases cover the outer shell of search engine marketing. A well-optimized site distinguishes between the two and optimizes accordingly, while also drawing distinction between related and non-related long tail SEO on a page-by-page basis.
[tags]search marketing, search engine marketing, sem, search engine optimization, seo, long tail search, short tail search, dealership website marketing, chris anderson[/tags]
