Bernie | 
05 13th, 2008| 
A concept that I find some clients have resisted is the use of long tail keywords and long tail copy in their website. The concept seemingly goes against common sense and intuitive interest in being found for some of the most desirable keywords.
But, effective SEO strategies are about creating winning strategies. In some cases (actually in many cases) optimizing for the most desirable keywords for a business can be quite challenging. Everyone wants to be on page one. But, often page one is filled with mature, keyword rich, link rich websites. Penetrating the page one list can be difficult at best and impossible in many cases. So, we must go after winning strategies.
How do we do that? Long tail keywords, that’s how…Consider this example in our industry.
If we want to be search engine optimized for “Internet marketing” there are more than 79 million results in Google! Considering the age of www.findandconvert.com and current content and link count, the reality of ranking even on the first three pages for “Internet marketing” is nill in the near future. Consider that we are an “Internet marketing company” and not everyone searching on “Internet marketing” is necessarily searching for an Internet marketing company like Find and Convert. So, if we optimize for “Internet marketing company” we’re still dealing with a very competitive keyword that has over 13 million results in Google. In fact, we rank on page 6 for “Internet marketing company” (at the time of this writing).
As I browse the results, there are many Internet marketing companies with geographic descriptors in their titles such as “Philadelphia Internet marketing company” and “Dallas Internet marketing company.” So, a winning strategy for us is to optimize for “Internet marketing company Florida.” There are only 635,000 results in Google for this phrase. Obviously, the search volume for “Internet marketing company Florida” is lower than the broader phrases mentioned above. But, the likelihood of someone who finds us for this phrase being a qualified opportunity for Find and Convert is pretty high.
If this “long tail keyword” stuff sounds a little like shooting with a rifle, or being laser focused (or whatever cliché you prefer) that’s exactly what it is. Consider that long tail keywords allow you to write copy to accommodate it with relative ease. It’s easier to write content about specific topics than it is about more general topics. It’s also easier to rank well for various combination of long tail keyword phrases such as “Florida Internet marketing company.”
Go for a winning strategy with long tail keywords supported with long tail keyword copy that will drive the most qualified traffic to your website.
