You say tomato I say tomahtoe sort of thing.

Anyway, Like Cronin says build the pages for short tail more general topics . Like he says”
“rather the unintended beneficial consequnce of massive amounts of content on your core topics.”

1.So you can let it occur naturally as Jim states.
2.However, if you wish to do it purposefully you can still go after your broader keywords on each page, then include your long tail words and specifics within that page. Its not that competitive so it doesn't need a title tag and h1's and the mix to get some SERP love.

Jim Marks- On the conversion issue let me take you down a path I ask clients often. And again I prefer specific vs long tail.
Which will convert better?
Los Angeles Real Estate
or Playa del Rey real estate?
or Playa del Rey Condos?
or Playa del Rey Condos for sale?'
or Beach port Village Condos for sale in Playa del Rey ?
The buyer who knows what they want and are not going to be going theru the internet 6 month wait to purchase is coming from the latter phrase.

Now technically all those words are long tail the minute we slap a location on it. But it isn't about traffic it is about conversion which comes from the word they found you by and the capture process on your site.

I still advocate going after the larger more competitive/generalized/short tail term because of the link juice you must create for this competitive of a term will help rise all the other terms up through the SERPS and the generalized term will get you your RELO traffic. Those relo buyers haven't a clue about neighborhoods or anything and they need to do something yesterday.

I'm reading this post with great interest and start to really understand short and long tails. And the discussion that followed sheds more light into the whole concept. I guess the best thing to do is try both of them and see what happens. Where the action comes from.

City homes, homes for sale city, moving to city, real estate in city, city foreclosures, city mls, city real estate listings, city properties for sale, city real estate mls, living in city, city properties, city condos and the list goes on. Obviously the BIG city real estate is the best and will drive the most traffic.

Out of the 22,000 visits from the serps every month only about 10% of my traffic comes through the 3 big CITY REAL ESTATE keywords the rest comes from many combinations like I listed. Those all seem to be keywords buyers and sellers would be searching for. At least I think they would.

I mean, really.. what better term is there than? city real estate, or city homes for sale? Kind of a directed search, yeah?

I believe you can target the long tail stuff if you know your analytics. It is much easier to rank for in most cases with not as much effort.

I hope that makes sense

One more quick thought:
Conversion also depends on if you have what they are looking for and y a way to convert them. You can get a boat load of traffic to a site, but if you aren't converting it into sales, what good is it any ways? I think most agents are in the business of selling homes.

By design, if you see a Long tail phrase that is converting at a high rate, you build a page campaign around, and it becomes short tail….

So, I agree with JC, design your site for the short tail ald let all of your content float it. (although I am not sure this is a discussion? How would you SEO for 1500 longtail phrases anyway?)

Long Tail traffic is either just the icing on the cake OR all you can get because you didnt short tail well… but either way content will create longtail traffic…