More General Keywords

Google introduced another algorithm update in May 2010 and many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long, known as long tail keywords.

Google is now able to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. It seems that Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases until recently based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages. The new Google patent indicates that Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases on web pages instead of guessing them.

What does this mean to business owners, webmasters and SEO companies? It means that those who have taken the time to anticipate the need of their customers and Google’s customers will be rewarded.

Whether in SEO terms or in pay per click advertising terms, long tail keywords are highly valuable. Think about what your search process is yourself and you will more than likely realize this.

The average person searching at the research phase will use a competitive generic keyword such as “party dress”. Not long after searching and seeing some high prices they will modify their search to something like “cheap party dress.” Now we are already into long tail keyword territory but it can go further. As the search deepens the searcher realizes that pink is the trendy color at the moment, or pink is what she fancies wearing on her next night out, so then she is using the long tail keyword “cheap pink party dress.”

The more experienced the searcher the more likely she will start off with this right at the beginning so as not to waste any time. And in general people are becoming far better at searching as the search engines continue to improve the results they show to us.

A long tail keyword means one of two things; either the person is close to making a buying decision or is an experienced searcher. Now with the Google algorithm update of May, combined with the buying profile of a long tail keyword searcher being stronger, and add in here the fact that a well optimized page for a long tail keyword has a far higher chance of getting to the first page of the SERPs then it is what they call a no brainer.

Think about it logically, when you want to find information online on products, services or for research reasons, you want to find it quickly, you want it to be as precise as possible and give you something extra that other information has not up until that moment.

Long tail keywords can be optimized in this way. The trick here is getting into the mindset of your customer and preempting all the possible things they would like to know about whatever the subject of the long tail keyword is and then going at least one step further. You will create a page which is resource, which means customers will like it and sites which see it as an authority may link to it.

On some of the search engine forums SEOs have stated that this algorithm which was named Mayday by some and Black Tuesday by others has had a disastrous effect on some well established sites which did not have enough content in deep pages.

Whether you are a small business owner, or a medium to large business owner, all the signs show that drilling down into your site with niche information across all aspects of your site based on long tail keywords is a good way to go. Long tail keywords are important both to your customers and the search engines; ignore them at your peril!

Long Tail Keywords for SEO There are many aspects of SEO that are important but even if you do every one of those things right, you may find that there is simply too much competition against others who have similar websites to your own. What are you to do in such a situation? One of the things you should focus on from the start is the use of long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are similar to any other type of keyword in that they are the words that a person is typing into a web search engine to look for your website or websites like your own. However, they are longer and more specific.

There are several key reasons why targeting these long tail keywords is important to building successful SEO. One of those reasons is the simple fact that your website will perform better in conversions when you use these words instead of the generic terms. For example, if you are trying to get your auto parts business online, building a website that targets words like auto parts is helpful, but it may be better to target actual locations. For example, you may want to choose keywords such as auto parts New York or auto parts Dallas. The difference here is that you are adding specification to the keywords which means that those in New York or Dallas who are looking for auto parts can find a local company to help them.

These types of keywords are long tail. They are made up of three or more words that relate to the keyword and provide the user with a more specialized search. Locations are not the only option for you to consider here. You may have a very specialized type of auto part that you sell. You may be building a website that discusses a specific type of vehicle.

Just like the research you do for traditional keywords, you also need to do the same type of research with long tail keywords. These keywords may not be used as much, but when you use them, you are likely to get a more specialized visitor to your website which may mean that you will turn a profit faster from that visitor than you would from a generic keyword. Long tail keywords should be included in your website to ensure that you are hitting your target market when it comes to visitors to your website.

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.