Long Tail Keywords – Incredible Free Traffic Secret
The majority of Internet marketers believe that the success is in getting the website ranked high for one or two primary keywords, and they put all the efforts to achieve this goal. This works, but not always.
If your market niche is too popular on the Internet and you have many competitors, it's very difficult to rank well for 1-2 best keywords. And even if you do this, your success is less likely to be long-lived. Expenses are maximal, output is minimal. Thus, it simply doesn't worth your effort and time.
Sometimes to achieve better results and convert your website visitors into customers, you need to think outside of the box, be original and unique.
No, I don't mean you need to create a totally new product. You can have one of the products of the kind but approach its marketing and promotion from a different angle.
One of the secrets for a stable success is to rank for long tail keywords (keyword phrases consisting in four, five or more words). It's much easier to rank for long tail keywords because they are more specific and are not as trite as primary one or two keywords.
Let me show you an example in order you could better understand what I am talking about. Our company sells G-Lock EasyMail software. The first keywords that come into my mind and that I might want to rank for are "email software", or "email sender", or "bulk sender" or the like. But there is an incredible number of email senders on the Internet. And if most of email software owners think like me, it will be extremely hard to be in top ten search results for any of those clichés. Thus, I will follow a bit different way. I will look after long tail keywords. To promote my email sender software, I may want to rank for such phrases like:
- Email marketing software solution
- Email sending and tracking solution
– Bulk email marketing services
- Software for permission-based email marketing
- Create and send HTML email newsletter
- Download bulk email marketing software
Got the idea?
Now make a list of long tail keywords relevant to your niche. Write both the singular and plural versions of each keyword phrase if applicable, for example: Bulk email marketing service – Bulk email marketing services, Email marketing software solution – Email marketing software solutions.
Write an article containing 500-1000 words and be sure to link one long tail keyword phrase to your website. You can include a link to your website with a long tail keyword phrase as the anchor text either in the article content or in the Resource box.
When the article is ready, submit it to article directories. Then write a new article, optimize it for another long tail keyword phrase and submit it to directories. Write as many articles as the number of long tail keywords phrases (relevant to your market niche) you can imagine. If you don't feel like a good writer, you can hire someone to write articles for you.
Together with article submission, you can use directory submission to rank for long tail keywords. When you submit a website to a directory, you need to provide a title that will be then used as the anchor text for your website URL. Just enter one of your long tail keyword phrases in the Title field and it will be linked to your site.
The key is to get ranked for many long tail keyword phrases. You won't generate much traffic from just one phrase. But if you rank for dozens of long tail keyword sets, the overall traffic can be high and can bring you many new customers.
Yes, copying/pasting a new long tail keyword phrase as the title in each directory can be a tedious and time-consuming work. But now we have a great time-saving solution – Fast Directory Submitter.
With this semi-automatic directory submission tool you can fill in the website profile form only once and enter as many titles (using long tail keywords) and descriptions as you want. When submitting your website to directories, Fast Directory Submitter will automatically fill in the submission form rotating your titles and descriptions from directory to directory. You just need to verify the suggested category, enter the verification code if required by the directory and click Submit button to go to the next directory.
Thus, your website will be submitted using different long tail keyword phrases. When your listings are approved, you will get hundreds of links to your website. After Google indexes those links, you'll be on the top positions in the search results for long tail keywords.
Please, share your thoughts in comments.
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Tags: New Link Building Methods, rank for long tail keywords, Search Engine Marketing, seo backlinks
Comments (70)
I love the idea of starting to rank by many long tail keywords to finally arrive to the main keyword. Once google gives us some love for some long tail, then it is easy to achieve ranking for more difficult keywords, so your strategy make sense.
Thanks for sharing.
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You can also use google’s free Keyword tool to find more long tail keywords: Just enter your main keyword and have a look at the suggestions.
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Great article, we have used this method with our clients for a while now, great results very quickly, nicely written
I have been using your software for a while now and love it. This article really helps me to keep focused on long tail keywords. It was also very well written. Thanks.
This is so right, when I started on the internet I used one or two keyword phrases in my articles and I couldn’t understand why my conversion rate was so poor. As I continued to educate myself I realised that I could get much higher conversions by including ‘long tail keyword phrases’ in my content.
Although these phrases have far fewer searches per month, they are much more targeted and therefore result in a greater response. The intent of someone who searches using a long tail keyword phrase means that they are much further down the buying cycle than a general surfer. They’ve already done their research and know what they want.
John O’Hara
United Kingdom
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I am going to try this on my kids cooking site. It’s super hard to get traffic with one or two keywords such as recipes. It also makes it hard to get creative. The long keywords makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
You’ll want to be sure that each article has a different title and altered body text so that duplicates don’t get send to the duplicate content group in the serps.
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I think you should write another article listing a bunch of sources for longtail keywords, many people have a great resource with their server logs and dont even know it, as well as google zeitgeist (sp?)
Using long tail keywords has been preached by many “gurus” in the past year and it makes perfect sense. It really doesn’t matter the niche you are in if you decide to us the long tail keywords the chances are that there will not be anyone else that will think of the same keywords that you personally do. So this is a very good concept to get targeted traffic and boost you rankings with Google.
It is interesting reading this, I’ve always targeted more competitive keywords with limited results. I’ve had good results chasing the longer tail keywords as described here. It long tail keywords for me from now on. I also think if you start a new site then long tail words are best then build up to the more competitive words when the site ranks higher.
Daves last blog post.. Priming bottles
A lot of website owners just dont get the idea of longtail keywords. What they don’t understand is that people mostly use the SE’s to find things. Find answers to questions. Find answers to problems. So with that in mind long tail keywords with, why do, how can and how to are always great preterms for a longtail keyword.
So with that said “I love long tail keywords”
Cheers
Steve
Steves last blog post.. Aussie Home Loans Again.
Great post Julia. I’ve had great success using long-tail keywords. For most all niches now, long-tail keywords are the only way to go when shooting for a front-page listing on Google.
Yes, it works. But it’s better to use the long tail keywords for link exchange or article exchange with other good sites as for article directories.
Yes I think submit to directory is a lot better and more time efficient compare to write articles for anchor link. When it comes to write articles, I rather post it in my blog as my own content rather than giving it to articles directory for just “one link”.
Yes, I have tried long tail method. and its really work to bring more quality and targeted traffic.
Really good advice this, thanks. It’s always best not to aim high, and pick the low hanging fruit.
Yes I agree that focusing on long tail keywords in your article is the way to go. I’ve also found not only is it easier to rank but many times they convert better then the short tail phrases. I’ve read and experienced this due to the person being more ready to buy something with longer search phrases as opposed to just information gathering with the shorter phrases. Of course not that Google just implemented the drop down search or fill in the box (what ever it is called) when someone is entering their search phrases, who knows how that will change the long tail phrases. For example if someone was going to enter say a 7 word long tail phrase but then noticed Google as listing related but 3 word phrase in the search box, they may just click that instead of typing all there words out. Hopefully it doesn’t make people start using the defaults that show up.
Long tail keywords are amazing for a cumulative effect. If you have lots of long tail variations of short tail keywords your short tails also rank better. Short term you get traffic fast, and longer term your phrases are more solidly ranked and harder to beat.
This is very true and very well written… do you allow your readers to grab your article and place it on other sites? If so, can you send me a bio so I can add a proper link back for this?
I had one of my sites ranking very well for a very tough niche and I wondered why. After some time, I noticed that during my writing I had keywords in between very long words. Your article has now made me realize that I was using long tail keywords without knowing.
Yes they work and makes writing an article even easier than targeting two or three words. Great stuff.
Helpful post Julia,
I am giving it a try on my newest site, I have a list of 40 long tail phrases I will try to rank for. I used one of the different pieces of SEO software to find the 40 related long tail phrases. I am hoping to rank for several of long tail keyword groups, the traffic should be equal to one of the better short tail phrases. I’ll use article marketing and blog commenting with Fast Blog Finder to generate links.
Thanks again for the advice.
George
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I have always tried to use long tail keywords in my work. On my blog “Joint Venture The Blog”, I have filled my posts with key phrases and keywords that will bring in traffic. But, Long tail keywords don’t bring in a whole lot of traffic immediately when you use them, you need to be patient. They WILL work for you but you have to willing to wait for the results. But it pays off in the long run!
Thats a good idea, especially if your main keywords are featured in the anchor text of the link of the long tail key phrase. In essence, you are getting a link for the main keyword as well.
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Yes, it is truth; people always searching for with specific keywords, related to their own problem or question.
Another excellent article! But don’t forget to research how many times people search for the long tail keyword phrases so you can prioritise the best ones.
The long tails are the way to go. That is one of the corner stones of IM… One thing I like to do is use long tails, but also find ones that include my 2 work phrase within. Over time, as you build authority, you have a great chance of ranking for your 2 work phrase as well.
Unless you already have a major authority site, long tail keywords are definitely the way to go. I have a blog that covers a variety of topics, so I really have fun with these.
It really helps to do the keyword research beforehand if you’re writing articles and posting them to your site. The recent release of numerical totals for search volume data by Google has been a big help in this. If you combine “drill down” techniques and competition analysis by using the three major free keyword tools (Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Trellian Keyword Discovery, and WordTracker), you can come up with lots of long tail phrases for nearly any niche that do not have much competition. If you focus on optimizing for these kinds of keywords in your article, you can often obtain high rankings and start bringing in traffic right off the bat even before obtaining any backlinks to the page.
I definitely believe in long tail keywords. Our web site is quite large, over 1200 pages, but only two of them rate well in Google for a two keyword phrase. I decided to test one of the pages with a four, and five keyword phrase and it worked very well! But what was most interesting was that single words within the phrase began to rate well also. Of course the single keyword does need to be very relevant to the page content. Thanks.
I just read that with the launch of Google Suggest (Autocomplete on google homepage) that long tail keywords will have less importance and value. What do you guys think?
-Fred
I usually just optimize my index page for 2 of the main keywords since this isn’t going to be my sell page anyway and optimize the money pages for the longer tail keywords which are more relevant to what the customer is looking for.
Most people concentrate on getting their index page ranked but I would rather all my inner pages rank well for their long tailed keywords than the other way around.
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I agree on the importance of getting ranked for long tail keywords. I find that using the paid Wordtracker service is helpful in finding such keywords. I like to use Wordtracker’s suggestion tool for keywords, then to find those long tail terms – using Wordtracker’s Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) – that have less competition. I also like using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Thanks for the good ideas in this post.
Bentley Tolk
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Thanks again, Julia, for another very useful post. Just a point of clarification on the suggestion to submit to web directories using long tail keywords — I believe you’re referring to submitting to DIFFERENT directories using different keywords, rather than several submissions to each directory? As I think most directories don’t allow more than one submission for each website.
I believe they also tend not to allow deep-linking. Which means that even if there is a page within our website which is written around a particular long tail keyword (which we also use to submit to a web directory), we can’t link to that page as most directories only allow links to the home page.
I’d be very glad if someone can tell me that this is not the case!
@ Su from Niche Marketing Research
Yes, I meant submission using different keyword phrases to different directories. You’re right, the directories don’t accept more than one listing for a website. Neither they accept deep links. But deep links are allowed in the articles.
This is very true and it works well with me. I have been doing link campaign with this kind of method that you call “long tail keywords” and I got surprisingly great results for some 4 – 5 key phrase targeted keyword. So let say, would you want to end up to rank great with just 1 keyword with 2 key phrase or rank good with several long tail keywords?
I would go with the last option and that is why I totally agree with you.
Great article, many thanks.
Those knowledgeable in internet marketing know that niche marketing is the way to go. Niches are generally based on long tail keywords.
This strategy is a great idea. The free directory submitter that you provide works great and is a valuable tool to get directory listing.
Josh Spaulding suggests a slight wrinkle on the pure article submission strategy. He suggests writing articles about the really long tail keywords and pointing them back at some higher demand but still long tail keywords which will form the basis of a website.
I administer the statistics for a wide variety of sites, and i’d say up to 60% of there traffic is generated from long tails.
I also find the long tails produce much better conversions. someone searching ‘big pink baloons’ is alot more likely to buy if they land on that specific page than someone searching ‘baloons’. . . just my piece of the pie
Regards,
Chloe.
I agree with the above points on targeting long tail. In fact, most of my traffics came as a result of people searching for long tail specific terms. On using directory submitter, i am a bit wary of these tools as i was told that directories may bury the submissions, thus negating any benefits. Maybe i am wrong….i really would like to know how fastdirectory submitter handles this.
what i like about this article is how specific it is. i’ve read other articles about long tail keywords, but this is one of the few posts where i actually get to see the process in action. i like that you mention 4 or more keywords. i find myself usually shooting for 2 or 3, so i might adjust accordingly.
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I am a huge believer in building traffic using long tail search terms. One of the best places to discover them is in your own referral logs- sometimes you may be surprised at what the people who actually come to your site first entered into Google as their keywords.
I totally agree with the idea of chasing long tail keywords.
My experience with building websites suggest that if you build trust with google with the easier long tail keywords you can then pick up the much more competitive terms at a later date. The sites I’ve done this with have stood through a lot of googles algo changes. Whereas if you start by chasing the shorter phrases to begin with, you bounce up and down in the rankings and then disappear into oblivion, which is not good for your stress levels.
Also your directory submitter is the best I’ve used. Others I’ve tried are clumsy and take forever to use.
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Wow!! I never thought about trying long tail keywords!! I always had difficulty for ranking a one-two word keyword, no wonder why I never get enough traffic…. I will download the software you mentioned for directories and try what you say.
Thanks for this advice
Great advice. I always concentrate on the long tails…. have got proven results form doing this. You can get quite steady traffic from these. If you have a popular niche then this technqiue is a must.
Long tails are the only realistic way for do-it-yourself internet marketers to be reasonbly successful. Trying to compete for high competition keywords is a battle best left for the big guys.
it is one of the best ways to get targeted traffic and show progress for websites. Trying to be number one for singular words or two words is tough, Pls, those are general phrases and unless you are a dictionary or Wikipedia you will be hard pressed to rank on top.
Good point and I agree that there is value in this approach, it is also easier than tackling the masses head on in the competition for the main keywords.
One point to consider is what long tail keywords. Ranking may be easier but you need to choose long tail phrases which will lead to an action that benefits you.
Yeah, you’re right!
I can’t stress enough the importance of SEO for long-tail key terms.
That’s why I always suggest my students keep SEO very simple.
Use the long-tail key terms in headline (title), at least once/twice throughout the body of the content, and once at the bottom.
It’s a smart to keep it simple, always!
very interesting article … it totally makes sense. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out exactly where to focus my time when I’m trying to increase the rankings for my sites, because sometimes it just looks everything I do has no effect. This technique seems like it would be pretty easy to fairly quickly get tangible results … which is what I need for some inspiration
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best method for long tail keywords is research our log file, yes this is need hard working. but with some tools we can filter that huge keywords and even compare which is better convert
I use the google suggestion search box to gain long tail keywords. Works well on my squidoo lenses.
For semi-automatic directory submission s/w, G-Lock’s FSD’s probably the best in the industry. I’d say Brad Callen’s Directory Submitter Gold comes in as a close 2nd, and is probably cheaper for folks needing to submit to multiple websites. Still, FSD seems to be superior in terms of speed, the overall organization and management of the campaign, the ability to suggest categories, and very importantly, I believe a cleaner and more updated database.
I have used this strategy and it really help me out. One of its principle for marketing your website is to focus on 15-20 keywords. This can give you more focused advantage, and of course a diverse long tail keyword would get more search hits than a specific word, lets say ‘design’.
An incredible article! I have never been very successful with SEO, but this article has given me one of the clearest roadmaps yet (and I’ve read a few). With our store, we have a very broad selection of potential key phrases to choose from, seeing as we deal in vintage eighties – nineties toys (LEGO sets, wooden trains, etc.) and model trains too. However, your clear-cut explanation might be the final straw to get me to narrow down the choices and just start writing. I’ll also consult whatever keyword suggestion tools can be found….. I suspect a Google API key will be needed now that Overture appears to be dead. Thanks again. -Ben
This is a great guide in long tail. I will have to try this out. For too long have people been targeting the same words and the same terms. However when people are just search for a site then a short keyword would be best? for example trying to build up a customer base and you need the heavy traffic? Well I guess it can be done just takes a lot more time! great post, really enjoyed reading it.
Alister
I like long tail keywords, but I also consider short 2-3 keyword phrases just as important. Your SEO campaign for shorter keywords just take longer, but I wouldn’t say it is a waste of time.
Yeah with all the argument on directory submission, its still more beneficial for new sites that have no backlinks yet and pages that are trying to rank well for long tail keywords.
Targeting many keywords gives you the chances of gaining more visitors and popularity because people search in different terms with more keywords and phrases.
Then targeting long tail keywords can bring in more targeted visitors, genuine customers and insure conversion
Good article. I would just like to add that long tail keywords are also more likely to convert. The term “cars” may get millions of searches a month, but it is so vague that more than likely if you do receive millions of visitors a month under that term, they will not convert to sales or clicks for advertising sales. Are they looking for the movie “Cars”? Or maybe the history of cars? Or car parts? New cars, old cars? Or… well I could go on and on. If a searcher finds your site under the search term “old used Buick cars for sale”, that searcher very well will find what he is looking for and convert for you.
What would you rather have? A million visitors a month with no or very few conversions, or a much lower traffic rate that actually converts at a decent rate? I’ll take the money on the long tail conversions….
Great article and ideas. Long tail keywords can bring small loads of traffic but if you have dozens of them, the overall traffic can dramatically increase. The traffic are also targeted. Also having keyword rich content in itself generates traffic from several long tail keywords you wouldn’t even imagine getting traffic from. People type all sorts of keywords, even very long obscure keyword phrases. You will be surprised how people find you when checking your web hosting traffic stats and logs. Building a powerful internal link structure in your site also gives you a solid internal inbound link benefits. Using a method like SSI will ensure you get your long tail keywords on every page of your site for internal link popularity, link reputation and link relevance.
New website should definitely target long keywords in the beginning for fast result. But you can only go so far with long keyword, especially for ecommerce sites.
Long tail words are definitely the way to go in terms of SEO. Most website owners get stuck on the 1-2 phrase words, but the long tail is where you are going to get more targeted traffic from anyhow.
Long Tail keywords are more effective now than ever. The reason is the search suggestion in google and other search engines, all the user has to do is start typing something and it gives them suggestions on what to search for. So they dont have to go through the trouble of typing long tails in the box.
Thanks for writing this up. I’ve been doing a lot of research on backlinks and how to improve site rankings. I’ve actually started to see this trend myself … I don’t try to rank for specific long tails, but that’s what people end up using to find my site. It’s good to get confirmation about how this works, and how to use it to gradually improve rankings for ‘shorter long tails’.
This is great information for SEO work. I have always wanted to rank for long tail keywords although I was not sure how. I always believed that it was much better to go for shorter more distinct keywords to improve a websites rank.
Hello,
this was my interpretation of how keywords should be used. Long tailed keywords should be used with a new site so there is less competition, but there are also less views. With a site with a higher pr and better reputation, shorter more popular keywords can be used! Thanks for all the information!
Here’s a good way to find long tail keyword ideas … use the Keyword Questions tool at wordtracker labs … http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions/
I stumbled upon long tail quite by accident and now a year and a half later I am absolutely sold on long tail as a way to compete and win. Trying to compete with one or two word keywords is simply insane unless you are in a niche that has NO competition. I noticed when looking at the keywords that were converting that the few that were 5-7 keywords were simply doing much, much better so I took five underperforming products and used keywords that were descriptive and strong in my market from the consumers perspective, not what the manufacturer described them as in their catalogs. The results were NOT magic, but within 2-4 weeks all of the ten were performing better, a few substantially better. Depending on how good the keywords you choose determines if and when you can use shorter keyword strands successfully.
Hi i am so pleased I found your blog, I really found you by mistake, while I was searching Yahoo for something else, At Any Rate I am here now and would just like to say thank you for a wonderful blog posting and a all round intriguing blog (I also love the theme/design), I do not have time to read it all at the right now but I have bookmarked it and also added your RSS feeds.
I believe there are a few deep-digging specific tools out there that you can buy and yet I consider most of them using up a great deal of time to pick real good keywords with regard to niches. Shouldn´t we far better rely on something more proficient?
I always went for two word phrases until I discovered that 3 and four were easier to get and still people searched them. Now my wife and I use them all the time and we are getting better results. I think you are spot on in your article. Will keep checking here for more valuable information.
Thanks,
Dwayne
Have had some different experience with long tail keywords; my statistics show that my two main single word keywords actually attract more buyers than long tail keywords..
Thanks for this useful information, long key word tails is not something you read about every day, so very helpful to have some original content here.
Has anyone else noticed a real trend toward encouraging posters to submit articles as opposed to just posting comments on blogs and forums?
Personally, I think this is great because it gets more and more useful and original content our there online for the benefit fo everyone. It takes time to write an article and if this is a piece of work you are prepared to put your name to then you know there will have been some significant level of effort on the part of the author, making for better information available online.