If you are doing search engine optimization or search engine marketing, it is possible that you have seen some advice pertaining to long tail keywords. It is quite possible that you may have asked yourself: what exactly is a long tail keyword? And what benefit does it bring to my site exactly?

To give you a quick answer, long tail keywords are those which have more than 2 words in the main keyword phrase. What makes them so powerful is that these keywords are often what people search for when they are ready to purchase a certain product or service online. By making your site rank high for these keywords, you increase the chance that a buyer will see your site and therefore make a purchase from you.

Targeting long tail keywords during your online marketing efforts has a lot of advantages. Here are some of them:

These keywords convert better than general ones

Traffic that comes from long tail keywords is more likely to convert than traffic which comes from general ones. This is a known fact throughout the internet marketing industry. The reason behind this is because these keywords are a lot more targeted and specific than general ones. People who are searching for more detailed keywords such as “buy iphone” or “iphone discount” or “used iphone New York” are more likely to buy a product rather than someone who is just seeking for “iphone”.

You can put in your product name in them

Basically, people who are looking for a specific product online can be in two categories. They either have already made a decision to buy a certain product or they are seriously considering to buy it but they are seeking more information about it. In both cases, what you need to do is to target the necessary keywords and have a landing page that will be able to convince visitors that your product is exactly what they have been looking for.

Don’t require as much efforts to rank higher

In the internet marketing world there is plenty of competition. Unless you have a product or service that is extremely unique with no competition (highly unlikely… chances are somebody will copy you sooner or later) or is in a very obscure and specific niche, you will see others online promoting the same product or service that you are.

If you are in the dog training niche, you will see, for example that keywords such as “dog training” or “dogs” are already dominated by your competitors. The problem is that many of these competitors are large businesses which have a large budget and staff that is making sure that they stay on top of search engine results. Therefore, going against them is not the best idea. However, if you target a more specific, long tail keyword, such as “make your dog stop barking”, you will find that there are far fewer pages with that keyword phrase. This means that you will not have to do as much SEO work if you want to rank high for it.

If you’re reading this site, you’re probably at least familiar with the terms SEO and SEM, but do you know the difference between the two? Let’s take a look at the two, and what circumstances you should be using each under.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is the process of organizing the content on your site, and tweaking the site itself so that it will appear higher up in search results. There are two basic steps to making a site SEO friendly. The first is to optimize the site itself by using the right keywords in the site’s code, and the site’s copy. Make sure the title of each page is relevant to the topic discussed on that page, and that the copy contains keywords relevant to the topic at hand. You should also be sure to give your images descriptive names, and take the time to fill out the alt tag for each image. Once your site is optimized, be sure to update it on a regular basis with relevant content. Search engines look at how often a site is updated, and how long it’s been since the last update when determining where that site shows up in search. Try to update your site with interesting, or entertaining content. The more incoming links you have, the better your search rank. The more entertaining the content on your site is, the more incoming links you’ll get.

SEM, or Search Engine Marketing is the “buy your way to the top” strategy. By buying pay per click ads on a search engine, you’re ensuring that a link to your site will show up in the “sponsored links” section of the search results, which usually appears at the top of the page. It’s important to do some keyword research before diving into SEM. Broad terms, like science tend to be very crowded, and as such, you will have to pay a higher CPC (cost per click) to get your ad to appear more often. By picking a more specific term to place your ad on, you can lower the amount of competition, and consequently, the CPC you’ll need to pay.

Now that you know how they work separately, it’s time to put the two strategies together. When you first launch a site, it’s a good idea to invest some money in SEM. A brand new site, even an SEO friendly one, probably isn’t going to show up on the first page of search results for your keyword of choice right away. By spending some money on SEM, you can ensure your site will receive traffic until the benefits of SEO kick in. By using the two together like this, you can get steady traffic to your site from day one.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a group of techniques to make any sort of content on your website appear higher on search engines such as Google or Bing, meaning more towards the first page of search results.  There are many different ways to achieve higher search engine rankings.  First off, the text of your webpage as well as your title will both bring your page into the search engine database.  Using a keyword or phrase multiple times on that webpage will easily boost the ranking of said page.  Usually, about an overall 4-6% keyword phrase density is recommended in the text of the page to receive maximum results of this technique.

Linking is another very popular SEO technique that is easy, yet effective.  All three types of links (inbound, outbound, and internal) can help boost your page rankings.  Links from sites that also specialize in the same keywords, as well as links from .gov and .edu websites are especially beneficial as far as links of the inbound type are concerned.  Your internal links’ anchor text can also make a huge difference.  Instead of using the word “here” as many webmasters tend to do, try using your keyword instead, as it can really make a difference, especially down the road.

While many argue that meta tags are one of the most important factors in SEO, they are still secondary to content.  Remember, content is king!  Sure, meta tags can help you out initially, but keeping your pages updated with fresh content and proper keyword density will help you out much more in the long run.  Unique content that is updated frequently, combined with the proper meta tags, will be able to outs higher ranking sites that never have their content updated, no matter how well the meta tags are done for the previously higher ranked website.

Finally, file names as well as URLs are also fairly important.  Using key words in both of these will also easily boost your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).  This might seem like common sense, but think about how many broken links you encounter when browsing, or how many pages are simply named “1” or “2”, and think about how search engines index websites.  They go through every page and file, and record what it’s called.  If a page is called “2” it won’t be entered for the keyword that it is aimed at, same with broken links.  So, remember to name your pages and files appropriately, and to double check all of your links.

The first thing you need to do is make sure your website has been optimised making sure you have the following (if you have bought a website from us then you can skip this section):

Website Optimisation Tips

1.) Making sure you have meta tags on your homepage
2.) All your pages have titles with your keywords
3.) Page names with your keywords (example – www.domain.com/keyword.htm )
4.) Very good content on all your pages matching the keywords on your title and page name
5.) Having your main keyword on your pages in H1 font style towards the top of the page
6.) Having some of your keywords as anchor text (hyperlinks) that link to inner pages within your site
7.) Having a xml sitemap accessible from your homepage for search engines to find and crawl (helps with indexing your pages)
8.) Making sure your website is updated on a regular basis (ideally everyday). Best ways to do this is by having a blog, free directory, free article submission, forum as added features to your site

Marketing Your Website

The most recommend method for marketing your website is the organic method to get high rankings on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.

Google will determine your rankings on searches by how many back links you have to your site, which means how many other websites have your link on. This lets google know that your website is very popular. If you can try to make sure that the sites that you have a back link on match the niche of your website. For example if you are an electronics website selling electronics try to have back links on other shopping websites selling similar products and services. This will make it easier for Google to understand what your website is all about.

Even better is if you can have keyword anchor text as your back links from other sites. For example instead of just putting your domain URL as a back link you could have your chosen keyword for example – cheap ipods – and when someone clicks on this they are directed to your website. This lets google know your website has cheap ipods and to place your rankings high up when someone uses this search term on google.

The HTML code to create a keyword anchor back link text is:

<a href=http://www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com>YOUR KEYWORD TEXT</a>

Another good trick is to look at your competitors and find out how many back links they have and what other websites they have their links on. This will give you some idea of how they have achieve page 1 listings on google. To find out what back links your competition has you can do the following:

1.) On google get their domain name and search using their full domain name ( example – http://www.establishedwebsiteforsale.co.uk = over 1000 back links)

2.) On Yahoo.com get your competitors URL and do the following entering the following in the search bar:

Linkdomain:www.yourcompetitorsurl.com

This will tell you how many back links they have and what websites they are on. A good theory is if you put your link on all the websites your competitor has, you will over time be next to them on top of Google.

A number of good ways to get back links is to try some of the following:

1.) Writing up articles about your products or services that you offer with your back links within your articles using the anchor text back link
2.) Writing in blogs leaving your links (e.g commenting on other peoples blogs)
3.) Exchanging links with other similar websites. Usually if you look towards to the bottom of most websites they have a Links page that allows you to exchange links with each other
4.) Submit your URL to free directories
5.) Submit your URL to DMOZ. Google loves this directory, altougth it can take months to get lising on there
6.) Submit your URL to social networking sites, forums
7.) Use Yahoo answers and other forums to answer peoples questions with a link to your website.
8.) Use a very good forum called (forums.digitalpoint.com) and look for individuals offering the following services which will help with building your backlinks dramatically:

# Article submission service
# Free directory submission service
# Sponsoring wordpress themes that match the niche of your website (highly recommended)
# Sponsoring joomla themes that match the niche of your website
# Buying high PR (Pagerank) links of similar websites to yours
# Buying blogroll links on blogs

List of websites to submit your website to

http://www.bestcatalog.net/seo_tips/directories.htm

Another method which you can use is setting up a pay per click campaign with Google adwords.

This works by paying Google everytime someone clicks on your link in Googles network of websites and search engine. You can set a budget for example 0.20p per click to your site. You can set a daily budget so you can pay for example 1,000 hits aday to your website.

Another very good way to promote your website and build back links to your site is to write in forums, blogs and social bookmarking sites. For example the following:

1) Yahoo answers

2) Forums and blogs that match your niche. For example if you have a finance website, look for forums to do with finance and people looking for loans etc..

3) Facebook. You can create a group on facebook with a link to your website and email this group to all your friends

4) Set up an email campaign and email several people your services

5) If you have a blog, write very good articles and Digg them on Digg.com and if people like your article it will become very popular within the Digg.com community and help with your rankings dramatically and popularity

Another option is to pay for an advert in your local paper telling them about your services and a link to your website

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