Long tail keywords were the bread and butter of many SEOs. The MayDay update did have a major impact on that for many web sites. But why?

A new WebmasterWorld thread has discussion around how SEOs and webmasters no longer target the long tail as they did in the past.

Tedster explained that if you are targeting a specific long phrase, using it in your title tag with those exact words, in the exact order, may back fire. He said, “I’ve notice recently that exact phrase match in the title does not seem to work well. It does work if you put quotes around the query phrase, but clearly only geeks do that.”

MrFewkes at the forums added, “If however theres a high volume of searches but a low number of pages – quite rare – you may see the longer exact match strings in the serp without quotes.”

Some SEOs are now trying to figure out the how long, how exact and in what situations does this apply, if it applies at all.

Senior member, Witney said:

There is a lot of good discussion going on over there.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.