Study: does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?
The Rimm-Kaufman Group published a study about long tail keywords. Does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?

What are long tail keywords?

Long tail keywords are long and specific keyword phrases that generate little traffic and few conversions each.

Long tail keywords usually consist of several words and they have a low monthly search volume.

What did the study find out?

Google AdWords advertisers with monthly expenses ranking from $15K to $750K per month were analyzed in the study. All of these advertisers had well managed Google AdWords accounts.

Here are the key findings:

1.    The importance of long tail keywords varies. For one company, the long tail keywords generated only 8% of the sales. Another company received 83% of its sales through long tail keywords.

2.    It depends on the product. People search differently for different types of products. For one product group people might use more long tail keywords while they use fewer for another product group.

3.    The importance of long tail keywords does not depend on the paid search budget.

4.    Long tail keywords are most important for SKU-based commodity retailers.

5.    For some Google AdWords advertisers, long tail keywords are critically important. One company in the test generated more than 71% of its revenue from long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are important to all AdWords advertisers. Even the company that received only 8% of its sales through the long tail keywords made a significant amount of money with them.