SEO Long Tail

Long Tail SEO - What Is It?

By optimizing your Web page for longer, more specific, less obvious keyword phrases, you stand a better chance of having your blog or Webpage land on the first page of Google's SERPs

Long tail SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a strategy of optimizing a blog or a Web page for longer and/or more specific keyword phrases rather than shorter and more obvious ones. Keyword phrases are the words that someone searching the Web types into Google or any other search engine in order find the content they're interested in. To learn more about keyword phrases and SEO in general, please read my page on SEO titled What Is SEO - SEO Do's and Don'ts.

Landing on the first page of Google's Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is crucial for drawing traffic from search engines. This is because most people will not search beyond the first page of the SERPs. Short, obvious keywords and keyword phrases are often far too competitive to be of any use for small businesses, blogs and ordinary websites. This is because the larger, more established sites have these keywords and phrases tied up. That's where Long Tail SEO strategy comes into play. By optimizing your Web page for longer, more specific, less obvious keyword phrases, you stand a better chance of having your blog or Webpage land on the first page of Google's SERP when someone types that more specific phrase into Google.

Finding Long Tail Keyword Phrases

Choosing the most optimal keyword phrases to SEO your site for can be a little tricky. Naturally, the phrases you decide to SEO for must relate directly to the content on your page. You need to choose phrases that are not so common that the big, established sites are dominating them. But your phrases should be something people interested in your product or information might actually search for.

Fortunately, there are some tools to help you come up with ideas for accomplishing this. One good one is Google's Search-based Keyword Tool. Even though this tool is meant to be used with Google's AdWords, you can use it to find alternative keyword phrases. Just type a word or phrase in the box that reads "With words or phrases" and Google will show you a list of related words and phrases. The tool also shows you how many times per month someone types that phrase into Google and how competitive the phrase is.

Another way to get ideas for long tail keyword phrases is to use Google's search engine. Here's how to do that. First, do your best to describe your blog post's or Web pages's content in a very short phrase. Now, type that phrase into Google. Look at the bottom of Google's SERP that resulted from your search and you'll see about eight keyword phrases that are closely related to the phrase you searched for.

Long Tail SEO Strategy

Long Tail SEO Strategy relies on the fact that more so all the time people are typing longer, more specific search terms into Google and other search engines. If you sprinkle these phrases throughout your content in an intelligent way and you use the methods I've pointed out in my page titled What Is SEO - SEO Do's and Don'ts, you stand a good chance of landing on the first page of Google's SERPs.

Within the last few years Google has become more semantically aware. By that I mean Google is increasingly becoming better at parsing long keyword phrases and rendering results on its SERPs that are relevant to almost every word of the query. This is good news for Long Tail SEO strategy and the small businesses, websites and blogs that rely on Long Tail SEO to drive traffic to our sites. Below are some Long Tail SEO keyword phrases that when typed into Google will rank one of my Web pages number one on the first page of Google's SERPs.

Some Keyword Phrases for which Scoroncocolo Ranks Number One in Google

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All of these keyword phrases placed number one in Google as of the date of this pages' publication. Any or all of them may have slipped down Google's SERP by the time you get around to reading this. But more than likely, they will all be somewhere on the first page. O.K., that last one is a little over the top, but I am number one on the first page of Google's SERP for that weird 10 word phrase. And no, I didn't consciously SEO that page for that odd-looking phrase.

As I said earlier, Google has become much more semantically sophisticated in recent years and they are becoming better at it all the time. And most of the hundreds of millions of people who use Google daily are becoming increasingly aware of this change in Google's algorithms. It wasn't all that long ago that most tech savvy people used nothing but Boolean syntax when searching in Google. You may remember and or and not when Google was in its infancy. Nowadays, there's no reason to use Boolean syntax in Google when Google understands and responds so well to plain old English, or plain old Japanese or any number of other languages, for that matter. And that is very good news for Long Tail SEO strategy. Just look at the keyword phrases in the above list.

Long Tail SEO and Quality Content

Content Is Supremely Important in Long Tail SEO Strategy

Content is the most important element of any SEO strategy

Cleverly applying all the SEO techniques available will not do you a bit of good at driving traffic to your sight if you do not have high quality content. I've examined the importance of quality of content and SEO in my previous post on SEO entitled What Is SEO - SEO Do's and Don'ts, so you might want to take a look at that. While the quality of your content is supremely important for SEO in general, quantity of content (having a lot of it) is specifically important for Long Tail SEO. The reason for this is so obvious that it hardly warrants elaboration. But being the long-winded Twit that I am... The more content you have cached on Google's servers, the more likely you are to get a high ranking for a Long Tail phrase. Another important factor in the quantity category to consider is this: Don't try to put all of your content on one page.

At the same time, don't make the mistake a lot of people do of putting too little text on a page and then FTPing up another page with a tiny bit of content on it. Google doesn't like that. A page of text on a Web page should be about as long as a feature-length news paper article. Another factor to consider in SEO in general and Long Tail SEO in particular is how long a page has been sitting on Google's servers. I get more high SERP rankings to my older pages than I do to my newer ones. Once you have a page up, leave it there and don't move it without using a 301 redirect and even that is inadvisable. Just put it up and leave it there. Google bots (the Google spiders that crawl our sited) love familiarity. They love finding new things but they hate finding old things in new places.

If you haven't used Google's help in Seoing your site SEOing your pages I suggest you visit their Webmaster's Help page

Once you have decided on one or two long tail keyword phrases to optimize your Web page for, read my page called What Is SEO - SEO Do's and Don'ts and use the information there to SEO your site. Now, sit back and wait for Google to crawl your site. Once that happens, hits to your site will vastly increase - I guarantee!

Thanks For Visiting the Tech Pages

Questions? Comments? Did I get something wrong? Email me at sjh@scoroncocolo.com and I WILL get back to you.

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