Optimizing your webpages for search engines is a skill which can be learned by anyone who is serious about acquiring such skills. We all know how critical visitors to our websites and blogs are to our success as online marketers, and one method of attracting that traffic is by optimizing each of our articles (webpages) using what are known as long tail keywords. This is accomplished through keyword research.
If you haven’t heard of the long tail keyword before, I’m sure you’re wondering what the heck that phrase means. Well, in short, long tails are the three or four (or more) word phrases that describe in detail what is being searched for when you enter a term in a search box.
One example of a long tail would be a phrase such as ‘make money affiliate marketing’. ‘Laser hair removal prices’ is another one. Typically, people who use such specific search phrases tend to know exactly what they’re looking for and are much more likely to spend money once they find it. This is not the case near as often with someone who searches using more general terms.
Long Tail Keyword Research
Let’s say you are doing research for an upcoming article on ‘cameras’. But your interest is in a specific digital model, and not just cameras in general. When you enter your search query into the search box, you will need to use a detailed one such as ‘Canon PowerShot S100 Digital’ rather than something as broad as, say, ‘cameras’. This detailed search query that defines more precisely what you’re looking for is your long tail keyword.
Keyword research helps you to find exactly what potential visitors to your site are searching for, and what words or phrases you will need to use in your content to make sure you have a chance of bringing them to your site. When you have this information, it will be easier to decide what subjects you need to address in future articles to get their attention.
Using longtail keywords in the text of your articles helps the search engines to discover your material. Competition is the name of the game here, and the use of long tails in your content narrows down the number of sites you will be competing against. Limiting your competition makes ranking near the top in the search engines much more doable.
So how do you go about finding long tail keywords, and thus, what your potential visitors are searching for? Start by going to the Google keyword research tool, or whatever tool you use for your research, and type in a seed keyword.
You can start with a broad term such as ‘cameras’ that we used in our previous example, and the keyword tool will return a list of keywords and phrases (long tails) related to your seed word. I like to narrow it down even further by re-entering a few of the terms that were returned in my search, and then choose the best fit out of the results I get on the second or third searches.
Use Long Tail Keywords In Articles To Get Links To Your Site
A good (and completely free) way to obtain backlinks to your website or blog is by submitting your long tail keyword content to article directories. This is known as article marketing. Often when you submit articles to directories, other website owners will pick your article up and post it on their site. Many site owners either don’t have the time (or just don’t want to) write their own content, which is a benefit to those of us who are willing to write the articles and submit them.
You get a backlink this way by having one or two links to your site inside the article (or resource box), preferably using one of your long tail keywords as anchor text. When it’s published on another webmaster’s site, you have a link pointing back to your site – a backlink.
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