It is important to use what are called long-tail keyword phrases. By using long- tail keyword phrases you face less competition from similar businesses, making it easier to get ranked in search engines. Long-tail keyword phrases also give you higher conversion rates as they pull in more relevant traffic to your website, with visitors more likely to follow-through and become your customers.
By focusing on long-tail keyword phrases, relevant people who have specifically searched for what you have on offer will be visiting your website, rather than people stumbling upon your website by chance. Not only are visitors from long- tail, more relevant keyword phrases more likely to stick around and purchase from you. They’ll be more likely to bookmark your website and come back later.

There is a myth that the best scenario is to appear at the top of Google’s search results for a really popular word that relates to your industry. However, this is a mistake because if you’re doing this then the chances are that you are focusing on your competitors instead of your own prospective customers. The keywords that you need to focus on are the ones that provide great conversion rates for your website in addition to a reasonable amount of website visitors (traffic).
Conversion rates are measured by calculating the number of visitors to your website divided by those that go on to undertake the action required in order to reach your ultimate goal.
If you’re a college or university you may think, ‘Oh, it would be fantastic just to appear at the top of Google for the keyword search ‘college’. Not necessarily. For instance you might offer very specific courses. You obviously cover just a specific locality – and a specific price bracket. Therefore, you are not likely to get very good conversion rates from just that one word.

Another example is you may think, ‘If I offer a business articles website, wouldn’t it be fantastic just to get thousands of visitors for the keyword ‘business’? However, in this instance as well your conversion rates will suffer as the keyword ‘business’ can have a very generic meaning and as a result it is more likely that these visitors will have reached your website and not found what they were looking for.
Rather than think about single term keywords you should be focusing on succeeding with longer keywords, which are easier to rank highly in search engines and lead to better conversion rates.