Does it make sense to go after broad search with less competition vs. narrow search with very high competition?

[UrbanityStudios]

We are in the process of analyzing our current site structure, on-page optimization and keywords to form a new strategy around our site. What we are finding with the keyword research we’ve done thus far is keywords that are shorter-tail have less competition, but far more searches than some of the long-tail keywords. For purposes of illustration I will give an example. Let's say we sell Wedding Cakes and the keyword string  “Garden Wedding” has approximately 246,000 monthly local searches and medium competition, but “Garden Wedding Cakes” only has 880 searches and very high competition.

We believe that if we create a very effective landing page for "Garden Wedding" with all kinds of great content surrounding "Garden Wedding"  that we have a much better chance of ranking on page 1 than if we were to go after the term "Garden Wedding Cakes".  Furthermore, the volume of search far exceeds the "Garden Wedding Cakes" and hopefully will reach a much larger audience.  However, because "Garden Wedding" is such a broad term, we are concerned that we don't necessarily understand what folks are searching for vs, when someone types in "Garden Wedding Cakes" we know they are looking for a cake.

Here are the questions we have:

1. Targeting broader terms with higher search, has anyone implemented this type of strategy? We think in the long run, this will help us with exposure, but also with help our targeted page of "Garden Wedding Cakes" rank higher (if we can earn a great PR for the page "Garden Wedding".
2. Would we run the risk of creating a higher bounce rate with this strategy for people who are looking specifically for Garden Wedding items/supplies, etc..  Is this a major concern?
3. Could we monetize the effort put into new, rich content surrounding Garden Weddings, when we are in the business to sell Wedding Cakes?

Any insight that one can provide would be greatly appreciated.

[EGOL]

our short tail search has a lot less competition that our long tail

Yes, that makes this sound extra good!

Good luck!  Let us know how it works!

[UrbanityStudios]

Andrea,

Thanks so much for your response.  If I understand you correctly, this is something that you employ and that you have seen success with.  Do your competitors do the same?  One interesting thing that we are seeing is that our competitors don't play within this space---meaning they don't rank for (or don't appear to try to rank for) our short tail keywords.  We see that as an opportunity. Would you agree?

[UrbanityStudios]

Thank you so much for your incredibly fast response.  I think your answer helps us to affirm that we would not be shooting ourselves in the foot and is in fact, a good strategy to try.  I did want to clear up that our short tail search has a lot less competition that our long tail.  I would assume that this would suggest that we are definitely on the right track. Thanks again for your insight.

[josh-riley]

I think EGOL makes some great points, especially about content vs product/sales. And, given that I work on an incredibly complex site that often poses many SEO challenges, here's how I happen to look at it:

• Low volume words that are highly competitive you hope would mean a more targeted audience. (So, not throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.) One issue: if it's, let's say 100 searches a month, then the best you can hope for is a percentage of that.
• Fact is, not everyone who may be looking for a "lockout tagout custom procedure" may search for that long tail. They may just search for "LOTO" - so, I have selected to build a keyword/SEO strategy that build long tail into short tail/broad terms.
• Also, what I have noticed is that even with the short tail, our bounce rates haven't taken a hit, perhaps because the meta descriptions give enough info away so people can tell before the click if we may be right for them.
• And, our rankings for a section where we did a much better pyramid build with keywords/content/like subjects has steadily improved in visibility - giving me hope that if you can manage the technical with understanding what Google wants (good, relevant content), it works.

Good luck!

Andrea

[EGOL]

First, I agree that the traffic for "garden wedding" is going to be very different from the traffic for "garden wedding cakes".

If I owned a cake site I would want at least two special pages dedicated to "garden wedding cakes".  One would be my sales page... and another would be an informative page that has a lot of content about that topic.  How these cakes are different from others, why a person would want this type of cake, lots of sample photos, lots more sample photos.  I might even have a third page that explains how to make them.  These two informative pages would be built to be best-on-the-web content for their topic.  The hope would be that they would attract links, likes tweets, and traffic.  Each of these informative pages would have "house ads" with the goal of luring visitors into the sales page.  If you have these three pages and they are successful you might get ranked #1, #2, and #3 in the "garden wedding cake" SERPs.

I would also build pages for "garden wedding".  The goal would be to produce awesome content that will attract generic traffic.  These would be very long content pages with tons of words, lots of photos, maybe video.  I'd want substantive content because I think that it ranks better, gets shared more and attracts lots of long tail traffic.

As you mention, the "garden wedding" SERPs have a lot more competition and probably are more difficult to get rankings.  However, my philosophy is... "Do not fear competition" because where there is competition there is also lots of traffic and there is often some money changing hads.  My garden wedding page would have adsense on it to generate a bit of income and it would also have house ads that attempt to lure visitors to my cakes sales page.

Depending upon the topic and the amount of traffic and potential money I would not hesitate to create more than one page for the "garden wedding" theme.  As long as you are producing more diverse content that is high quality you can keep pulling in still more long tail traffic that is different from your other garden weddings page.

Lots of people would say... you are committing the huge sin of keyword cannibalization.  Yes, that is true - for the short tail terms but not for the long tail terms.  It is the opposite side of  the "archers dialog" from Braveheart that was horrifying in the film but applies perfectly here.