Keyword research case

Data on long tail keyword research

At Wordapp we are quite frankly obsessed about data. And even though we are in private beta, we currently write more than 500,000 words of text each week, so it can be said fairly we have lot of it. With this and future posts we want to share some data on questions we have been asking ourselves. Hopefully you will enjoy the post.

Method – How we did it

In order to answer the above question, we decided to track 140 four-hundred word texts for a fashion brand consisting of a main keyword. Additionally, we used the excellent tool keywordtool.io to find four to five relevant long tail keywords with various amount of traffic to include in each text. We then compared the data with 50 four-hundred word texts for similar fashion brands on the same site where no long tail keyword research had been made. The landing pages we used for the 140 long tail texts are about two months old, whereas the landing pages are over a year old. Text quality is close to identical with one writer and one editor on each text.

Data – We got the following results

The data shows us that long tail keyword research gives 10% more number one positions on the main keyword with a lot of top three search results. But strangely the effect is “only” a 20% boost.* One could argue that the pages with long tail research could climb or drop in the results, but we didn’t want to wait for an additional 12 months to write this post. If we see big differences we will do an update with the new data. *Google is obviously a winner-takes-all game where number one results “pay” double over the number two results.

Problem – Then we saw this

Wow, that is interesting! The spider is clearly confused when ranking words related to brand pages, on everything from other brand pages to product pages. Due to this, only 6.3% of the keywords on the “wrong pages” get the love they deserve, although the SEO-consultant working with this client is one of the best in the Nordic countries.

Conclusion – Google keyword research boosts the main keyword

Relevant long tail keywords research gives the main keyword approximately a 20% boost in its ranking and also has a positive side effect with a substantial number one to three listings on the selected long tail keywords. Maybe most importantly however, is having data on what keywords exist and rank on each landing page. We will look at at the effect of using Wordapp to create internal links with anchor texts in a future post.

ROI on SEO content is through the roof

We didn’t go into details about the ROI, simply because the return on investment if SEO content is done correctly, even without keyword research, is through the roof. On average, our clients using long tail keyword research get their investment back within three to four months depending on the market and industry.

The Keyword research tool we used

In this case we used Keywordtool.io for the keyword research, and Semrush.com and Wincher.com for tracking. All texts including this one were produced in Wordapp.io, by twenty or so writers and editors. In future posts we will cover internal links, rewriting of supplier product descriptions, and if writing unique meta title and meta description pays off, we will also cover how to do SEO translation and other subjects. Do you have feedback on this post or want to us to cover something specific? Let us know!