Long tail keyword phrases are typically 3-5 word phrases that are much more descriptive than one or two keyword phrases.
For example, the keywords ‘athletic shoes’ is much less descriptive than the long tail keyword phrase ‘womens red athletic shoes’
Our instincts might be to go after the keywords that get the most searches, but the truth is those popular keywords only make up about 30% of the searches on the web, the remaining 70% come from the more descriptive long tail keywords.
So researching and finding the long tail keywords and using those keyword phrases within your copy, you stand a much better chance of attracting more targeted visitors.
For you that means more traffic, more repeat traffic and more sales.
Finding the Long Tail Keywords
To find good long tail keywords, start by using your favorite keyword research tool. For purposes of this demonstration I’ll be using Wordtracker …you can follow along by using the Wordtracker free trial if you like.
Let’s take for example the keyword phrase ‘athletic shoes’. Using Wordtracker we can see If we look at each of these phrases in Wordtracker we see the following:
athletic shoes (short tail)
discount athletic shoes (long tail)
athletic shoes for women(long tail)
boys athletic shoes (long tail)
athletic shoes for flat feet (long tail)
toddler athletic shoes (long tail)
cheap athletic shoes for women (long tail)
steel toe athletic shoes (long tail)
best athletic shoes for plantar fasciitis (long tail)
boys athletic shoes clearance (long tail)
One of the big differences between the long tail and short tail keywords is that the short tail keywords have about 30% more competing web pages than the long tail keywords. That means a web page targeting the keywords ‘athletic shoes’ has less of a chance of ranking well than it would for the term ‘womens athletic shoes’ or ‘discount womens athletic shoes’.
The term ‘athletic shoes’ may get a lot more searches but you have to work a lot harder to get a decent ranking because the competition is greater. The long tail keywords give you a much better chance to rank well because there’s less competition.
I think of it like this, I’d rather rank on the first page of Google for a keyword phrase that gets only 100 searches a day versus rank on page 5 or 6 or beyond for a keyword phrase that gets 10,000 searches a day.
Keyword Research and Using Your Competitors
Competition is a good thing and you want to use your competitors to your advantage. That means checking out who your competitors are and taking a closer look how they are achieving their ranking.
Because inbound links are huge to ranking well, it makes sense to see who is linking to your competing sites.
To find the number of inbound links a web site has, I use backlink watch.
Simply go to http://www.backlinkwatch.com/index.php
Enter the URL of your competitor’s site and click check backlinks.
For example, the keyword phrase “rose scented candles”‘ gets roughly 210 searches. If I type into Google the keyword phrase “rose scented candles” (use the quotes) then select one of the first five search entries and type that address into backlinkwatch, I can see for example, that the #4 result on Google for that keyword phrase has less than 60 inbound links.
(at the time of this writing you may see different results.)
If I can get at least that many inbound links to my site for that keyword phrase, do proper on page keyword optimization, and get a few inbound links from other sites, I have a pretty good chance of ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase.
Now 60 links or even several hundred links may seem like a lot, but if you write and submit useful articles to article directories or write guest posts for blogs using your keyword phrase in your resource box that points back to your web page, you’ll have lots of inbound links to that page in just a few days.
Review writing articles for your online business.
Remember that search engines rank web pages, not websites, so optimize each of your web pages separately for your long tail keywords, don’t simply focus on your home page.
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