I know that so much has been written by so-called SEO experts about the value of long-tail keywords and the need to optimise a website for them that even to suggest that the effort is a waste of time begins to sound like heresy begging for the organisation of a well-attended stoning.

If you are not sure what long-tail keywords are, for the record, they are three-or-more word combinations which reflect what your website does and is about which are, however, lowly contested and therefore easy to optimize a website for.

The rationale behind such a move was that by optimizing your website for these long-tail keywords you would start to appear on Google’s top pages for them (and gain traffic and hopefully sales this way) and you could then focus on the ones which are harder to get a little later along the way.

This, incidentally, is also the kind of argument which holds water when as an SEO provider you are looking at ways to milk a customer and still retain customer satisfaction. The customer sees results (most sites do get to Google’s first page for long-tail keywords) fast, the SEO provider gets paid, the work involved is not challenging and the money keeps flowing in.

Ok. Here’s the truth. While the rationale behind long-tail keyword optimization is sound, it is totally unnecessary. That’s right. You do not need to specifically optimize your website for long-tail keywords. Does this mean that those who insist you should do so, scam you? No. The strategy is sound, results are achieved and the money you pay for SEO does bring in results you can see and check. But it is not necessary because, if you had implemented a strategy which tackled the main keywords and some peripheral ones and had run it correctly then long-tail keywords would be a natural, welcome, by-product of this campaign.