New SEO Data: Here are the keywords that will get you the most traffic and sales.

We decided to look at our database of 7.4 billion keywords and match it up to analytical data we have on over 1 million plus websites, to figure out what type of keywords are the best.

Because there are head terms that tend to get searched a lot but are competitive to rank for.

And then there are long tail terms that are easier to rank for but don’t have the volume.

Let’s dive into the data.

1. Keywords that are 10 to 15 words in length tend to get 2.18x more clicks on average than 1 or 2-word search terms.

2. If you remove brand queries, 77.91% of organic conversions come from search terms that are 3 or more words.

3. On average 82.53% of a website’s organic traffic comes from search terms that are 3 or more words (if you remove brand keywords).

4. Over the past year, there has been an increase in searches for phrases that are 10 or more words by 47.95%. Our assumption is people are getting used to tools like ChatGPT and are expecting search engines to also provide answers to their questions.

5. Click-through rates on search terms that are 2 or fewer words are down 9.44% when compared to 3 years ago.

6. Your rankings for 1 to 2-word search phrases are 18.26% more likely to shift up or down in the search rankings than long tail keywords.

7. Compared to 3 years ago, there has been a 19.58% shift in the type of results Google ranks for 1 to 2-word search phrases. In other words, 19.58% of the rankings for these short-tail keywords shifted from transactional to informational.

8. Keywords that are 6 plus words long convert on average 48.52% better than keywords that are 3 to 5 words in length. And 219.34% better than keywords that are 1 to 2 words in length.

You could make the argument that in an ideal world, you would want to rank for all types of keywords, both short and long tail.

But if you had to only pick one, pick long tail keywords.

The long tail is what really makes an SEO campaign work.