2010 May

Long Tail Keyword Choice for Niche Marketing

Long tail marketing consists of niche marketing to a great many niches, selling small quantities of many products or services to each. Customers are targeted with “long tail keywords.” What does the term “long tail” refer to?

Chris Anderson popularized the “long tail” in an October 2004 Wired magazine article. Long tail keywords and niche marketing go together on the Internet. To see the long tail, get a spreadsheet of related keywords with their monthly searches, sort the keywords in decreasing order by searches and make a graph of the searches. You should find a very few keywords with many searches and a long tail of the distribution with few.

Most of us can successfully compete only for keywords in the tail of the distribution. The questions are: Which keywords in the tail? And compete how?

You can divide the keywords four search bands: the super, the high, the medium, and the low search keywords. The border between low and medium searches can be set to somewhere around 500 searches per month; between medium and high around 1000; and between high and super around 10,000.

You can divide the keywords into four competition bands as well: the super, the high, the middle, and the low competition keywords. The border between low and medium competing pages — pages containing the exact keyword phrase — can be set to somewhere around 10,000 searches per month; between medium and high around 20,000; and between high and super around 35,000.

To use a metaphor, the number of searches is the quality of the fruit — the higher the number of searches, the more ripe, plump, and tasty it is. The level of competition is where the fruit is on the tree. The super competitive keywords are on the tip top branches. The low competition keywords don’t even require you stretch. There are two not perfectly consistent principles for harvesting the fruit: (1) harvest the best fruit you can, and (2) pick the low-lying fruit first. Here are some suggestions on how to do that:

1) Remove the super high competition keywords from your list. You will not get that traffic.

2) Remove keywords with too high a level of competition for the number of searches. Why bother competing for them?

3) Do not target the high competition keywords first. Devote your time where it will do more immediate good.

4) Usually it is worth optimizing web pages by hand only for middle- or higher-band keywords. An exception might be for selling products with a high profit per sale — provided also the searcher is intending to buy.

5) You can devote web pages to low search and competition keywords if you generate the pages. That way, you only have to create the template once, but you get to reuse it for many keywords. It would not be worth your effort to write each one individually.

6) You can use the high end of the low band keywords in alternative titles of ezine articles. When you submit the articles through a submission service such as Submit Your Article or Unique Article Wizard, those services submit randomized variations of a your article to hundreds or thousands of article directories and blogs. They permit many alternate titles. You can have many articles spread around the web with titles including the low band keywords, all with less than twice the effort of submitting a single article. All these articles invite interested people to come to your web site. For the low competition keywords, appearance in a page title and page name (both of which you typically get in an article directory) may be enough to get the article listed on page one of the search results. Many page-one listings with few searches apiece is in the spirit of long-tail marketing.

7) There are a lot of searches for phrases the search engines have not seen before. You can devote a page as a destination for these very low frequency keywords. Create a page with a couple of thousand words of text filled with words and phrases related to your topic. When the search engine encounters some semantically-related but not yet indexed query, your page would be a good recommendation. You can also drop low-competition keywords into the text. They will bring a few searches themselves as well as contribute to the semantic classification of the page.

Divide your keywords by search frequency and by numbers of competing pages. It will help you plan your long-tail marketing.

For more information on using long tail keywords for ezine article marketing or to improve web site traffic, visit the web site http://ezinearticleshow.com/ created by Dr. Thomas Christopher, a Colorado Front Range public speaker.

Posted May 27, 2010 | Tagged Long Tail Keywords, Long Tail Marketing, Niche Marketing | Leave a comment

SEO Article Writing: How To Write A Keyword Rich Title

Writing a keyword rich article title is beneficial to your article, but is it possible to balance SEO article writing with writing that also appeals to human readers?

Certainly!

If you follow the techniques and advice in this article, you will be creating titles that make sense, grab the reader’s attention, and accurately portray what your article is about.

Here’s where many people go wrong:

They write their article, then they say: “Now I need to figure out a way to get my keyword phrase into my title.”

Sometimes this afterthought approach works, but most of the time it doesn’t. When you create your article and title and then backtrack and try to get your keyword phrase in your headline, the result often looks unnatural and does not make sense.

Here’s the trick:

Do the opposite. Instead of finishing by trying to force your keywords into your already constructed article and title, use your keywords as a beginning point. Take your keyword phrase and brainstorm some natural sounding titles that incorporate that phrase. Then, write an article to satisfy the title.

Let’s look at some examples of keyword rich titles (listing the keyphrase first, then the titles):

*Healthy Eating Habits*
10 Healthy Eating Habits That Will Help You Live Longer
Healthy Eating Habits For Children
*Short Track Speed Skating*
The History of Short Track Speed Skating
Short Track Speed Skating: A Beginner’s Guide

Each one of these titles makes sense, is comprehensible to a human reader, and is engaging enough to catch the attention of a reader interested in any of these topics. These titles are keyword rich, while still appealing to human readers. This is what you’re going for!

Notice that each of these phrases is a long tail keyword phrase (3-5 words long). When you are doing your keyword research you will come up with a list of long tail keyphrases and a list of 2 word keyword phrases. The long tail phrases are to be used in generating article titles and topics. The shorter main phrases are to be used in your resource boxes.

Does It Matter Where I Put My Keyphrase In My Title?

You may notice that some of the sample titles have the targeted phrase at the beginning of the title. If you can manage it in a natural sounding way, try to include the phrase at the beginning of the title. If not, don’t worry about it.

The point is not to use a strict title formula each time. Your goal is to generate quality titles that will attract readers, convey what the article is about, and also incorporate the keyphrase in a natural sounding way. If you come up with a great title that has the keyword phrase at the middle or the end of the title, then that’s fine. Focus on creating titles that are interesting and appealing to your target readers.

After you have gone through your list of long tail keywords and generated a few titles for each, then pick a title and write an article for it.

You see, this is the reverse of what many people do–take your key phrase, then brainstorm titles, then write an article that fulfills what the title promises. The result is a natural looking title and article. This is the type of article and title that readers, publishers, and search engines will love.

For more info on how you can use article marketing to reach thousands of potential prospects for your website, go now to http://www.submityourarticle.com/report . Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert and founder of the popular article distribution service http://www.submityourarticle.com used by thousands of business owners.

SEO article writing,keywords,article titles

Posted May 26, 2010 | Tagged article titles, keywords, SEO article writing | Leave a comment

The Truth About Keywords And Internet Mrketing Success

Keywords are phrases that people enter in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to find information, services, businesses or products. It’s how customers find us and buy. But, the Internet is a billion dollar industry and lots of businesses use various strategies to rank in the top 10 search results in these search engines. Statistics say that mostly people do not look beyond the first 20 search results. This data clearly shows how important it is to rank among the top 20 results or your business is not reaching your customers..

To find a pet shop in Los Angeles, we might type “pet shop in Los Angeles” in the search bar of a search engine. “Pet shop in Los Angeles” are keywords. The search engine will now crawl through millions of web sites and will bring up the most relevant results. The first 20 results are the ones to get the most business.

In order to get your web site ranked in the first 20 results, you need to perform a detailed keyword research. This research will help you find the most relevant keywords that people write to find the services you are providing. For example, if you own a “barber shop in San Jose, California,” just type the keywords in quotation marks and you will see the relevant results.

Now pull up a web site that ranks 1st and study it for the keywords. When you view the page source, you will see the different keywords. They are all highly relevant and that is what most people type to find a barber shop. After analyzing the various keywords on the page source, you should then read the text on home page and see as to how the keywords are being used in the text.

Keyword density is a very important aspect, as search engines mark high density keyword inclusion, in the text, as spam and those web sites are not included in the search results. When you are going through the text, you will find various keywords and how they are used. Now you can include them in your text as well as in the keyword meta tags that you saw by viewing page source.

Once you have added these specific keywords to your web site, it will take some time till the search engines crawls and registers them. After that, every time a person types, “Barber shop in San Jose, California,” your web site will be among the top results. The different keyword variations that can be used are “barbershop in San Jose,” “San Jose barbershop,” and other combinations.

Keyword research, analysis and inclusion in the web site is a professional’s job. This all comes under the bigger umbrella of search engine optimization. If you think you cannot give the time it needs, it is best that you consult a professional.

Get the professional help you need with keywords. Get a free coaching session. Call Carl Davidson at 716-580-3384. Visit http://www.Internet-Magic.biz