SEO is changing constantly and even SEO pros can’t always make sense when search engines implement new search algorithms. But regardless of the changes, one technique you can implement is to use longtail keywords.

What are longtail keywords?

Basically, longtail keywords are 3-6 word keyword phrases that bring you few visitors per month per phrase, but very well targeted visitors. The power of longtail keywords comes from the amount of longtail keywords you’re using.

For instance if you are in the mortgage niche, most likely you know that the keyword ‘mortgage’ is very competitive both in terms of search volume, competition, and PPC costs. If you are a webmaster and you somehow manage to get to the first page on Google for ‘mortgage’ this will bring you lots of traffic. Alternatively, if you are an affiliate marketer and you run PPC campaigns, you probably hate when you have to pay $20+ per click.

In either case, ‘mortgage’ is too expensive and takes too much effort to target, though the revenue could be very rewarding. If we continue the example with the mortgage niche, most likely your site is targeted to a subset of mortgage terms, such as ‘mortgage for bad credit’ or ‘mortgage for second home’, or even ‘mortgage for second home bad credit’.

These keyword phrases could be a great choice of longtail keywords to optimize for because, unlike ‘mortgage’ only, these keywords are very specific and they won’t bring you visitors who are looking for general information about mortgages, or mortgage calculators, etc.

Considered separately, each of the longtail keywords might account for only a few visitors a month, but when considered collectively, longtail keywords build an impressive search volume of highly targeted traffic.

Why you should use longtail keywords

Some of the major benefits of longtail keywords are:

• Longtail keywords bring more targeted traffic. As the example in the previous section shows, longtail keywords bring targeted traffic – i.e. only the people who are interested exactly in mortgages for second homes or mortgages for bad credit.
• There is less competition for longtail keywords. Longtail keywords aren’t as easy to come by as one word or short keyword phrases, because it takes more research to find good ones. Also, many people won’t bother to do extended keyword research for their site. For these less competitive keywords your site will appear on the first pages in the SERPs (search engine result pages).
• With longtail keywords conversions are higher. This benefit of longtail keywords is especially important if you are running a PPC campaign with high per click values because in your case it is evident that what matters is not so much the quantity but the quality of visitors you attract. If you are promoting mortgages for bad credit for example, you won’t be interested in visitors who are just looking for basic mortgage info because these visitors are much less likely to convert. Since the visitors you are getting for longtail keywords are extremely well targeted, this generally leads to more conversions for you.

How to find longtail keywords to optimize for

Basically, there are two ways to find suitable longtail keywords to optimize for:

• Use keyword research tools: You could try keyword research tools, for instance Google External Keyword Tool but it is quite possible that the global/local volume of your longtail keywords is so low, that they are not listed at all. You can also try Wordtracker’s free keyword tool, or Keyword Discovery’s free version. (Or search for free keyword tools.)
• Analyze your logs. Look at your own website’s logs and look for long keywords phrases you get visitors for: Newly found keyword phrases can be used to implement new sections or pages, familiar keyword phrases can be used to expand your site’s focus or take it into a different direction.

Longtail keywords might be harder to identify than major keywords but if you manage to discover the longtail keywords that work for you, this could have a really positive impact on your search engine optimization efforts and will bring a continuous stream of targeted traffic.
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