3 Tips Every Newbie Blogger Should Know to Improve SEO with Long Tail Keywords

If you have been searching for tips, hints and techniques to drive a ton of traffic to your website, the chances are that you have come across the term – SEO. SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing which involves a process of improving the visibility and prominence of your website in search engines, such as, Google, Bing and Yahoo.

The process of search results starts from a keyword you type in search engines. The more optimized your content is to that particular keyword, the probability of getting ranked on Google’s first page is magnified. Generally, keywords with one or two words are extremely hard to rank due to high competition. Established websites have been targeting these keywords a long time ago, hampering new websites to get high ranks. Therefore, the use of long tail keywords should be a viable alternative to get your website easily seen in search engines’ top pages. Ultimately, drive traffic to your website since they are likely to be less competitive.

Long Tail Keywords are generally key phrases with more than two words within a phrase, more specific and targeted to a refined audience. Unlike generic keywords, long tail keywords are less competitive and draw less traffic. However, the bottom line is, long tail keywords can bring your website with high quality traffic which leads to more conversions because when a reader searches for a specific term it gives the result of the exact thing he/she is looking for.

Behind all these, Google, the most popular search engine, released Panda Update and Google Penguin algorithm aiming to downrank websites using black hat SEO techniques, for instance, keyword stuffing, creating duplicate content and participating on peculiar link building strategies.

See also: 5 Quick SEO Tips (hints) From Google Webmaster Central

Getting high ranks on Google has never been as hard as it is today, that’s the reason why you should implement the right techniques that can turn this task into a simplistic mechanism by using long tail keywords to rank in search engine’s first pages where a massive amount of traffic resides.

1.    Choose the Right Long Tail Keywords

Before you jump into crafting your masterpiece content, one step you should consider is the choice of the right keyword phrase. This process is very crucial and determines the visibility of your website in search engines. You should go for less competitive keywords but still with a considerable amount of global searches per month. The best tool I recommend you to use, which is free, is Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool.

For example, the keyword ‘smartphone’ has over 5,000,000 global monthly searches, high competition displaying 415,000,000 results on Google. On the other hand, the keyword ‘top ten smartphones’ shows 33,100 global monthly searches, low competition with 3,600,000 results. Taking a deep analysis on these two keywords, the long tail keyword tends to be much easier to rank than the generic key phrase, which means, it would take you decades to be ranked in Google’s first page if you opted targeting the keyword ‘smartphone’.

Overall, the less competitive a keyword is, the more are the chances of easily getting seen on first pages. Obviously, a long tail keyword does not mean it has to be very big. In any event, Rand explains in this video just how long of a tail you should be optimizing for.

See also: Internet Marketers Top SEO, Keyword and Social Media Tools

2.    Set the Right Keyword Placement

The way you place your long tail keywords within your website plays an integral role on determining the prominence of your website in search engines. If your keywords placement is flabbily structured, your website will end up being rejected and lead your Internet business into a remarkable flop. The right keyword placement involves placing your long tail keywords in title tags, description tags, sub-heading tags, page addresses, link and anchor texts, 404 pages as well as the content of the page you are targeting for a specific keyword.

3.    Build Quality Relevant Backlinks

One of the most effective ways that search engines have been using to index your page in their top ten results of particular keywords is the amount of pages that links to your content. And, that means that readers trust you and find your content valuable, informative and worth linking to it. In elections, the amount of votes a politician gets, determines how people trust him and that leads to a win. The same concept is also applied by search engines.

First, you have to write valuable content, be interesting, convince readers and lastly acquire backlinks from several quality sources, including posting on other blogs of your niche.

See also: How To Evaluate Link Quality, Opportunities, and more

For instance, I intend to get high ranks of the keyword ‘top ten smartphones’. What I do next is prepare a pitch and write on a blog about smartphones. And, within the content or else on the byline, I place my long tail keyword to link the content to my very own website. Besides getting good ranks, what I get from this strategy is high targeted traffic, visibility and exposure on another audience.

Using long tail keywords is a very prospective option that you can opt for if you want to get high quality traffic and rank well on search engines which possess over 85% overall traffic in the internet. Generic keywords are very competitive; experts have already been applying sure-fire techniques to rank for those keywords. Therefore, you should consider long tail keywords not only because are they likely to be less competitive, but also because the traffic your website gets is destined from a refined and more targeted audience.