Internet Marketing Blog | Tom Duong

The vast majority of people who have their own website realize the importance of keywords and just how vital they are if you want your site picked up by the search engines. Unfortunately though, there are still scores of website owners who are not yet familiar with “long-tail” keywords. Essentially, they have the potential to drive a ton of targeted traffic to your site, which is why you should use long-tail keywords.

So what exactly are long-tail keywords? Perhaps the easiest way for me to explain, is by giving a few examples:

Niche – acne
Basic keywords – acne, pimples, zits
Long-tail keywords – types of acne, home remedies for pimples, how to get rid of zits

Niche – cars
Keywords – auto, car, motor vehicle
Long-tail keywords – buying a used car, second hand cars, how to change a car tire

Of course, these are just a few examples. I’m sure you could think of many more. However, the key benefits are:

• Long-tail keywords are much easier to rank for.
• People who search by using long-tail keywords are far more likely to become buyers!

How Long-Tail Keywords Can Benefit You

The purpose of any keyword is to get traffic to your site, but where long-tail keywords differ from regular keywords is, they allow you to reach quality targeted traffic. While they may not bring as much traffic as regular keywords, the traffic they bring will be more likely to convert. Why? Because the traffic from long-tail keywords, will be people who were searching for those specific terms in the first place. Ideally, if you want to take full advantage of long-tail keywords, you should use them on all the pages of your site because not only will they bring quality traffic, but they’ll also help with your search engine rankings.

The Ideal Way to Use Long-Tail Keywords

As I’ve said already, you’re best off if you place a couple of long-tail keywords on as many pages as you can and of course, use the most searched for words in your site’s title. Another recommendation I always make is, your long-tail keywords should be in bold, so visitors see the words they were searching for immediately. In fact, having them in bold also makes them more visible to search engines. Just remember not to overdo it. Another useful tactic is renaming your webpage files, using your long-tail keywords. Here’s an example: http://www.yoursite.com/types-of-acne.html.

How to Determine What Long-Tail Keywords to Use

If you’re looking for the most commonly “searched for” long-tail keywords then you’ll more than likely find Google Adwords Keyword Tool invaluable. Another outstanding tool which many Internet marketers are using is Micro Niche Finder, a tool specifically designed to help them with SEO.