Long Tail Keywords – can you put your hand on your heart and say, “Yes, I know all there is to know about long tail keywords and I implement all of it when I write articles and compose sales copy”?
No? Then this informative article will tell you what you need to know – just like your Mom.
First, let’s start with a definition. Simply put, Long Tail Keywords are three to five word phrases that are very, very niche specific. So as an example, you might go for “cheap blue suede shoes” rather than “suede shoes.” As you can see, the longer phrase tends to match very closely what a customer is likely to enter into a search engine. If you were working in the food niche, for example, “quick easy Thai chicken recipe” would be likely to match a search engine query than simply “chicken recipe”.
So why all the fuss? Why do long tail keywords (LTKs) seem to be the Holy Grail of internet marketing? How can they help me make money online?
There are three reasons: LTKs convert much better than single keywords; they attract (much) better qualified visitors; and they rank (much, much) higher.
Think about it. Let’s take the suede shoe example. If I Google “shoes: I get 293 million pages; if I search for “suede shoe” I get just over five million pages returned; enter “blue suede shoe” I get just over 900,000 entries; and if I type “cheap blue suede shoe” I get 500,000 pages. Now, if you were to look for the number of searches for “cheap blue suede shoe” you will discover that the LTK “cheap blue suede shoe” will bring a highly targeted potential customer to your web page. And as you Mom might have said, had she known, the more targeted the visitor, the more like he or she will convert into a customer.
So, where should you use these LTKs? Well, an obvious place is article titles, and blog headlines. Then, of course, you should consider your web pages. And, don’t forget your forum posts – I’m always surprised how quickly these get spidered by the search engines. And make sure your signature file carries your LTK as well.
If you think about it, long tail keywords can work really hard for you. If you have 10 web pages optimised for a phrase that gets 150 searches a day, that’s a daily total of 1,500. If you scale it up – which is extremely do-able – to, say, 30 pages, that’s 4,500 searches. And then you will see your pages moving up the search engine index pages. Which is exactly what you want.
I urge you to get to grips with mastering long tail keywords. Spend some time examining how they apply to your niche and begin implementing your strategy. It will be time well spent, I promise you.
