SEO: short vs. long tail

I'd like to hear from you what your experience is on targeting long-tail keywords. Did you guys have more positive SEO-results when targeting long-tail but using short-tail anchor e.g. targeting 'blond hair extensions' or 'ginger hair extensions' but concentrating on 'hair extensions' or did you achieve better results when targeting 'blond hair extensions' and concentrating on 'blond hair extensions' etc. ignoring the short-tail completely?

I'd like to hear from you guys, who are running bigger sites where there are new KWs targeted on every new page. No EMD.

Many thanks!

Hello,

The best thing is to make a mix between long tails,exact matches,brand,lsi and generic keywords else you risk a penality.

Cheers

acotut said:

Hello,

The best thing is to make a mix between long tails,exact matches,brand,lsi and generic keywords else you risk a penality.

Cheers

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Thanks! I know what you mean but I'm not asking about the exact match anchor ratio but about the method. Do you get better results when concentrating on long-tail or short-tail when targeting long tail KWs?

When I target my main keyword "hair extensions" I would start my website off long tail, then gradually I would reduce from "blonde hair extensions for girls" to "blonde hair extensions" and so forth. I use long tail at first and then gradually get less, once search engines can see that I am giving people what they want for long tail keywords then i have a higher chance of ranking me for a shorter keyword. In regards to the anchor text, yes of course, I will use my anchor in 10 - 15 words "looking to get blonde hair extensions for girls? Click here and buy now with complete satisfaction" Then I might use just "blonde hair extensions" in some cases I don't even use anchor text I just use a link which is related to the page title
"My-site-name-Get-girls-hair-extensions"
I believe these look more natural and I have had better rests over the past few months with no anchor text.
The question you asked is quite hard to answer the best thing to do is just get 2 sites whipped up, and use a different method anchor text method on each one but keep the rest the same. This way you know for sure webmaster tools and analytics are the best people to ask for what you want to know because everybody's circumstances will be different.

But would your SEO-campaign concentrate on getting backlinks to your home page and a few other sites or all the sub-pages you have your long-tail KWs on?

Thanks!

parasitus84 said:

Thanks! I know what you mean but I'm not asking about the exact match anchor ratio but about the method. Do you get better results when concentrating on long-tail or short-tail when targeting long tail KWs?

Click to expand...

It depends a lot on your site,but going with long-tails is going to rank you faster in most cases.