Long-Tail keywords compose those keywords that are not as common as the main keywords. Typically, they deliver results in much smaller numbers, but can also be an attractive way to lure people to your website and convert. Bunches of long-tail keywords can add up to steady flow of customers, lifting your site in ways you never dreamed of.
Your web strategy should include long-tail keyword implementation. Here are some tips to help you achieve that goal.
Sift Through Your Analytics
Your website’s analytics can reveal much about your visitors and how they find your website and what they do when on it. You’ll need to pull up the organic results to find what terms people are using.
In Google Analytics you would find your answer by going to Acquisition > Keywords > Organic. From there, you’ll see the top 10 results with further drilling down possible. Review the keywords that brought people to your site and consider writing titles to match these searches.
Build Your Content
In the last section we touched on building content based on your long-tail keywords. Even so, you may only have a few terms that have steady traffic. Once you complete and post these articles, now what?
One certain strategy is to visit the various question and answer sites on the web and sift through the user questions and related articles. There are several out there including Answers.com, Askville, Quora, and Yahoo Answers. Each site “learns” what questions people are asking to serve up a response. You can determine which pages are the most lucrative and build your content accordingly.
Ask Google for Help…Literally!
Google search is used by more Internet surfers than other sites combined. It is a powerful tool that can help you mine keywords and find what you want. Here, you have two choices: Google Suggest and Google Related Services.
With Google Suggest, keyword options begin to show the moment you type something in the key bar. You’ve done this yourself and may have been amazed by the results. Clearly, Google provides an easy way for you to find long-tail keywords. You can also get help from Google Related Services. When you perform a search, check the related searches that appear on the bottom of the search engine result page within a box. You’ll find bunches of long-tail keywords with ease.
Additional Strategies
Are there other strategies to employ for garnering long-tail keywords? Absolutely. And one such strategy is from the world’s largest online encyclopedia — none other than Wikipedia.
You can’t copy Wikipedia pages to your own site, but you can review how Wikipedia information is assembled and disseminated. Pay particularly close attention to the Contents area to learn what sections and subsections are featured. From that information you’ll have titles to work with as you consider your content.
It is also important to benchmark what your chief competitor is doing. Again, you won’t be swiping content, but you can take ideas that are working on those sites. Pay special attention to the headlines as well as to the sectional headers. Many sites also list article tags, providing additional information for you to mine.
Author Information
Jason Bayless is a professional blogger that gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice. He writes for BestSEOCompanies.com, a nationally recognized comparison website of the best SEO companies in the United States.