If you are in the business of Internet marketing, then you must have heard about the Long Tail at one time or another. There are even some search engine optimization specialists who claim that the usage of long tail keywords is one very effective method that you should consider employing. So, if you want to make the most of SEO, then you should learn the concept of the long tail.
The first thing you should do here is to conduct research on your niche market. You may think keywords are easy to pull from just about anywhere, but this is not the case at all. You have to do extensive research in harvesting your keywords. There are so many tools that you can try out. These keyword suggestion tools can be found all over the web, so you won't have to search far and wide for these. SEOBook.com is one great site you just might want to visit. And Google AdWords Traffic Estimator is also one application that you just might find useful in the search of quality keywords that fit your very niche market.
Let us just say, for the sake of discussion, that you are catering to the niche market of tennis. When you input the keyword ¡°tennis: into the keyword suggestion tool you can find at SEOBook.com, you will definitely yield back thousands upon thousands of results. You are not the only fan of tennis in your family, your whole neighborhood, your whole town, city, or state. So, you can just imagine how many thousands upon thousands of tennis fans are all over the world. And with the thousands of results that the keyword suggestion tool yields, this is then a clear indication that the keyword ¡°tennis is very competitive in the market. It would be so difficult to figure out just what websites would be included in the first few pages of search results brought about by the many search en
gines on the web. Being about tennis, it would make sense to include this keyword, even if it's too competitive for comfort. Still, you should not rely on just this keyword in garnering site traffic. You should look for keywords that are still related to tennis, specifically, those that are not too competitive in nature. When you use keywords that are less competitive, you actually stand a chance of getting better rankings. So, you should move down to the lower portion of the list and look for keywords that are not that competitive. But you have to be sure that the keywords are still related to the content of your website. Otherwise, the purpose of using such keyword suggestions tools would still be defeated.
With tennis as your main keyword, you might yield back resulting longer keywords, such as tennis players, best tennis players, and best tennis equipment. These are the keywords that are less competitive. When you employ the concept of the Long Tail here, you actually combine all of these less competitive keywords into one coherent keyword. With the choices above, you can go for ¡°tennis gear of best tennis players. If you employ this long-tail keyword and produce articles at 2% keyword density, you will definitely see significant results coming your way. People searching for tennis players, best tennis players, and best tennis equipment would find results that would lead back to your website. Thus, you will be catering to the needs of people who are in search of these three keywords. Wouldn't this be a more efficient method to use, considering that there are so many people inputting these keywords?
If you don't notice significant results immediately, do not worry that much. It takes time for such results to manifest. However, you will surely notice a steady increase in site traffic. And pretty soon, you just might find that the usage of the Long Tail concept is indeed of much benefit to your website.
