I wrote a recent article about what the long tail keywords are, their advantages and disadvantages, but now I would like to explain a little bit the process I use to find long tail keywords worth targeting. You’ll develop content that targets main keywords but the base of every website should be an enormous number of long tail keywords.

The Process of Finding Long Tail Keywords

Just like in the case of main keywords, long tail keywords have to offer a decent search volume/month and also be relevant. Once you decided that a main keyword is relevant to your website then almost all the long tail keywords that are derived from it should be relevant to your website.

Before I tell you the process of how to research for long tail keywords, here are the tools I’m using: Google Keyword External Tool (because it has information on any language or country), Google Sktool and two features from Google Search: Wonder Wheel and Related Searches.

And now, here are the 5 steps that I take in order to find long tail keywords:

1. I start with Google Keyword External. The first search is just using single words. For example for my market I start with words like: seo, keyword, keywords, content and so on. Is very important to let the tool suggest related terms that people are searching. These terms are really the starting point of my search. The same method can be applied using Google Sktool.  I choose one main keyword and then go to step 2.
2. I perform a search on Google for that main keyword. The things that I pay attention are the general competition and title competition. These numbers play an important role in deciding if a keyword is worth targeting or not. So write this down: you’ll have to compare it with the data for the long tail keywords.
3. I use the Wonder Wheel to see what other keywords people searched after the main keyword. Watch the competition and when you find something under 1 million or maximum 2 million you can go for it. Write it down.
4. I also use Related Searches to see what the search engine says that are the related keywords other people searched (these searches are not necessarily performed after searching for your keyword). Again look at the competition and make your own decision: is this keyword relevant and also have a decent competition.
5. I return to Google Keyword External Tool with the long tail keywords that I found. Keep in mind that these keywords were definitely searched by someone but this is not enough. So, you’re checking to see if the tool says it has Not Enough Data or shows you a number. Depending on your market you choose to target a long tail keyword or not. Sometimes a search volume of 100/month can be enough, other times you’ll need a few thousands. It’s relative and depends on the overall search volume trends from your market.

What Do You Think Of This?

Let me know if this info was useful to you and if you have questions. Or maybe you could share your experience. Also, please consider subscribing to this blog and receive my articles directly in your e-mail.

The concept of long tail keyword usually refers to keywords composed of more than 3 words. It can be something from 3 to 4, 5 or more words. Targeting this kind of keywords has its own advantages and in the case of many websites the long tail keywords deliver most of their traffic.

The downside of targeting long tail keywords is the fact that you really have to concentrate on large numbers of long tail keywords. The reason is because the number of monthly searches for a long tail keyword is usually much lower than the searches for a competitive keyword.

Here are some of the advantages of long tail keywords

1. The competition is much lower than in the case of main keywords. So it’s much easier to rank well and faster.
2. Higher conversion. The reason for higher conversion is because long tail keywords mean that people know exactly what are looking for.
3. Help with your rankings on main keywords. You usually use long tail keywords related to your main keywords. A good practice would be to use this additional content to link to your other articles. More articles on related themes will boost your ranking.

Major disadvantages

1. Low search volume. Because of the fact that a long tail keyword is so specific few people are searching for it and the more specific it gets the lower the search volume. So you’ll have to pay attention and decide what long tail keyword is worth the effort and what not
2. You need many. Because of the low search volume you’ll need to target many long tail keywords in order to see some benefits.

The Fact

You can’t do it without long tail keywords. Although it has their disadvantages you’ll have no other option. Why? How many main keywords do you think you can target? Not that many. Yes, it can deliver high volumes of traffic but to get that traffic you’ll need to rank well. And you can’t rank well with just one article.

So long tail keywords are not an option: it’s something you have to do. You already write 3 or 4 or maybe 7 times per week. Why not using long tail keywords in your articles?

What say you?

What is your opinion on this? How do you select your long tail keywords? Share your experience and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog and receive my articles in your e-mail.

Only one article with no other links pointing to it will not rank that well. External links are more powerful than internal links but at first you’ll use your own power to boost your content. So, if you’re interested in improving your internal linking to help your rankings, you should continue reading.

What to Do

Let’s say you want to target “body lotions” (201,000 monthly searches globally) and you see that the competition is 9,730,000 pages on Google, from which only 523,000 target those keywords in their titles. If you write only one article you won’t stand a chance to rank well.

The solution would be to write more than one article and to target related keywords. Here is how to find related keywords or other keywords that people searched after the keyword you wish to target, in an easy way.

The quickest way is to use two features from Google Search: Wonder Wheel and Related Keywords. Perform a search and you’ll have the option to display on the left side of your screen a tab with different features to improve your search.

Wonder Wheel shows you what other keywords were searched after a user typed a keyword and Related Keywords shows you keywords that Google consider it to be related with your keyword. So, here is a quick and efficient way to find other related keywords that you could use to develop more articles.

And now, for the grand finale: you don’t just go and create more articles on a related subject and just wait for miracles to happen. You link them so that you’ll add relevancy. For example you have an article that targets “body lotions” and you want to strongly state the fact that you really talk about “body lotions” in that article.

An easy way to achieve that would be develop more articles that target related keywords and link to the first one. Here are some ideas for some related keywords that I found just by using the Wonder Wheel:

-          Body bath lotion: 110,000 searches/month globally and a competition on Google of 2,500,000

-          Shower gel: 1,000,000 searches/month globally and a competition on Google of 3,240,000

-          Aloe vera lotion: 14,800 searches/month globally and a competition on Google of 1,490,000

What Not to Do

As a short tip: don’t link all the articles by using the same anchor text. That is why you use the Wonder Wheel and Related Keywords: to find other words that for the search engines are related. Using synonyms (or related keywords) to link to an article will look more natural to search engines rather than using the same text.

If you have more links on a page pointing to the same article, you should be aware of the fact that search engines only count one link.

What do you think of all this? Share your experience!

Usually people talk about SEO and SEM and sometimes they think it’s the same thing. Simply put SEO refers to optimizing your website for ranking on organic searches and SEM refers to getting traffic from PPC, CPC. The big difference between these two methods of getting traffic is this: SEO is more a mid and long term solution with long lasting results while SEM usually provides fast results that stay as long as you pay for the service.

Even if you prefer SEM solutions you should also invest in SEO because in time it could reduce your costs by provide your website with free traffic from organic searches. Another thing that you should know from start is that if you choose organic SEO then you should be aware of white hat techniques and black hat techniques.

Black hat techniques will not get you too far since search engines are better in spotting these things. Anything like hidden text, lots of links in the footer, fake backlinks from websites hosted on the same server or that have the same owner or IP, link farms, css styling that is meant to deceive, all these are black hat techniques.

White hat techniques mainly concentrate on the phrase “provide value to the web”. Usually, if you ask yourself this question you stay on the right track. Still, there are some things that might get you a penalty from search engines although it doesn’t seem that obvious:

-          all of your pages link to the main page of your website with the same keywords

-          many of your pages link to another page of your website with the same keyword

-          reciprocal links

-          too many links to other websites on the same page (might lead to the conclusion of payed links)

Other times you may think that you’re doing SEO when in fact you’re not (common mistakes):

-          all your pages have the same title

-          the keywords from the title are nowhere to be found on the page, anchor text, file names, alt property or subheadings

-          multiple links placed on a page that point to the same page: this might offer good functionality for readers but search engines will count only one link

-   target keywords that you don’t know anything about: competition, monthly searches, related long tail keywords

-   there is no sitemap or analytic software

-   pages have few text content

-   pages don’t have descriptive titles and are not keyword oriented

Here are some organic SEO techniques that any SEO campaign should contain:

-    Website Analysis. This task involves analyzing all the basic things of a website: internal linking architecture, generated code, text vs html, basic SEO rules for pages (titles, description metatags, first paragraphs, anchors, anchor text, file names, image alt property, subheadings, bold and italic text), pages indexed by search engines, titles for the menu pages and so on.

-    Keyword Research. When you think about building fresh content it should always be based on a list of keywords. This list should contain detailed information about the competition, monthly search volume and related long tail keywords.

-    Keyword Relevancy. Every keyword has to be checked for relevancy. For example, if you blog about photography it doesn’t necessary means that the keyword “wedding photography” is relevant to you.

-    Content Development and Planning. Once you have your keyword list you have to know how to use it in content and how to link between articles.

-    Internal Linking. Proper linking guarantees a complete indexing of your website by search engines and you can also push forward some of your content.

-    Competition Analysis. You have to know what your competition is doing, how they are targeting your keywords and why they’re ranking better.

-   Analysis of Google Analytics Reports. Having analytic software is crucial. You have to understand metrics, how to read reports and how to interpret it, how to make decisions based on that.

-   Stay in touch with your market. Using tools like Google Alerts, Google Insight for Search, Google Keyword External Tool, Google Search Based Keywords and Google Trends will help you pick your keywords and stay ahead of your competition by knowing the rising trends.

What would you add?

I would like you to write in comments what do you think about SEO and SEM, what other organic SEO techniques you use or know, what do you think about white hat SEO techniques, what other common mistakes do you know. Share your ideas or ask your questions.

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Every business has a start. It’s so obvious when we talk about brick and mortar businesses but many people see it differently when it comes about a web-based-business. In fact, when it comes to a web business I think it’s even harder. In real life you’ll open a business in a place where there are already shops and other businesses.

Starting a business on the web can be like opening a shop in the middle of nowhere: there are no roads to you, no buses, nobody knows you exist. SEO and Internet Marketing have to be your main tools: you either pay for ads to drive traffic or you pay for SEO and build optimized content for organic searches.

Don’t Do This Mistake

One of the biggest mistakes that you could do, when you are just starting, is invest time and money to rank well on organic searches for really competitive terms or keywords that are dominated on the first page by high-authority websites.

Some would argue that you should aim high from the first day and go for the big keywords because it will get you big traffic. I don’t want to get me wrong: the final goal will be to get traffic from big terms but, in my opinion, you have to start at the bottom in order to get to the top.

If you open a clothing business, do you think you can do it right next door from (or compete with) Armani, from the first day? Why is it so obvious in real life and people act so blindly when it comes to the web?

Planning and Goals

If you decide to invest in SEO you should think about two main things:

1. Optimizing the content that already exists
2. Building new optimized content

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting your business or not: having a plan and establishing some goals it’s common sense. So, when you start an SEO campaign you should think of some things that you want to improve: metrics like bounce rate, traffic, rankings, returning visitors.

If you want to build new content don’t just go and assume you know what people are searching just because you use those keywords to search for your business. Build a keyword list that has information on the volume of monthly searches, competition, main keywords and related long tail keywords, areas where those searches are being made and so on.

A keyword list should also come with a plan on how to use it: how to target keywords in content, how to link articles, what long tail keywords are related to what main keywords and so on. If you go and skip this step it’s like walking blind on the street: you can bang your head on a wall or you can safely get home – you never know what the next step will bring you.

What Do You Think?

How important is SEO for your business? Are you willing to invest in a keyword list before you start building new content? Do you know what your market is searching for, what are the rising trends and how to properly target the keywords in content? Share your ideas and thoughts in comments bellow.

If you find this article useful, please consider subscribing to this blog and receive my content directly in your e-mail.

I’ll show you how to plan your keywords in a practical way and also a short presentation of how to use your keywords. Basically you need to complete two tasks when it comes to keywords. You have to think very carefully at how to choose your keywords and to develop a plan or a strategy on how to use them.

My idea on how to use keywords is based on few easy steps:

1. Choose a main keyword. Main keywords are keywords with high competition, high number of monthly searches and made out of two or more words. Although ranking for main keywords is extremely difficult you should not overlook using it in your content.
2. Develop a list of long tail keywords for you main keyword. Long tail keywords are keywords with low competition, easy to rank for, usually with high conversion rate and made out of 3, 4, 5 or more words. This will be your primary concern: ranking for long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are derived from the main keyword or related to it.
3. Plan an article for each long tail keyword.
4. Plan logical links between articles that will help the reader and the search engine find more on your subject and also evaluate the relevancy of your pages for the subject.
5. Think it like a pyramid, where on top you have the article targeting the main keyword and on the lower floors you target the long tail keywords. And just like a brick and mortar structure plan links between floors and the elements of the same floor.

Now let’s get practical and think a little bit about “photography”. This market is huge, with lots of competitors and high number of searches each month. Aiming for a good ranking on the competitive terms will not be an easy task and you should expect some hard work.

When a market is that big a good thing would be to focus on a niche. Let’s say that your niche is “black and white photography”. This can easily be your main keyword because it has a huge competition of 161 million pages and a high number of monthly searches (246,000 only in US). Now, let’s start and see what other keywords we can derive from that:

-          “Black and white digital photography” with 41,900,000 competition and 2,400 searches/month in US

-          “Black and white portrait photography” with 14,200,000 competition and 1,900 searches/month in US

-          “Black and white nature photography” with 30,700,000 competition and 3,600 searches/month in US

-          “Black and white landscape photography” with 8,370,000 competition and 2,400 searches/month in US

The long tail keywords from above could also be main keyword because of the high competition but the number of searches per month doesn’t recommend it like this. So will consider these to be the first long tail keywords derived from our main one.

A thing about photography is that people are always looking for “tips”, “principles”, “fundamentals”, “techniques”, “lessons”, “free lessons”, “lighting”, “composition” and “composition techniques”. So, these are modifiers that you can add to the long tail keywords from above to go even more specific on the subject.

Remember that each time you add a modifier you should also be able to produce an article on the subject. So modifiers that mean the same thing should be used together (combine it).

You can get more ideas for keywords not only by using modifiers but also by thinking about related searches. You can think about it yourself or you can use the Wonder Wheel from Google Searches. NOTE: you can ignore words like “and”, “the”, “a”, “an” and so on, when searching for keywords. BUT be careful at singular and plural searches: it can make a big difference not only on the number of monthly searches but also on the competition.

Here are some ideas related to “black and white landscape photography”:

-          “black and white wildlife photography”

-          “black and white photography filters”

-          “black and white seascapes”

-          “black and white underwater photography”

Each of the long tail keywords from above can be used in articles together with the modifiers presented a few paragraphs before.

If you want to explore some more:

-          “black and white portrait photography”

• “black and white portrait lighting”
• “taking black white portraits”
• “black and white family portraits”
• “black and white baby portraits”
• “black and white photography kids”

-          “black and white wedding photography”

• “black white wedding theme photos”
• “black white wedding photos styles”
• “black white wedding photos invitations”

Your turn

What you think of all this? How useful do you find this kind of information? I was thinking that besides my usual articles to also write some practical ones in which to explore different markets and to show people how to apply some SEO principles. If you liked this article please consider subscribing and receive my blog in your e-mail.

Yesterday I started a small experiment related to SEO. It involved a very quick look at some websites to see how they target the keywords they say they target. The feedback was good and materialized not only in comments but in e-mails also.

After doing some of this quick analysis I concluded that people really need a complete guide on keywords. They need to know how to pick them, how to use keywords, what does it mean to target a keyword, how to check the status of their website, how to read Google Analytics reports about keywords and so much more.

So, I decided to develop an informational product only for keywords. I will keep it simple and it will be addressed to everyone: even if you know nothing about SEO you’ll still be able to understand what you need to do in terms of keywords. I’ll do my best and prepare this product until the end of January 2010.

If you have any questions, suggestions, opinions or ideas go for it and leave me a comment. You may also consider subscribing to my blog, so that you’ll be the first to know when I launch this product.

Do you know about this tool from Google? The Google search-based keyword tool can help you in more than one way. It’s good to get suggestions on what keywords to target but it also tells you what keywords would “attract” high paid Google Adsense ads.

So, these are the two main directions to use this tool:

1. Enter a keyword or a domain and see related searched keywords
2. Use it to plan your keywords for your adwords

Here is how it works

1. You can enter a domain (yours or the competition) and the tool will generate a list of keywords that are related to the content from that domain. You can specify a country and a language and the list will contain monthly searches, competition and the suggested bid. The really great thing about this tool is the ability to check your competition. You’ll know exactly what they’re doing because this tool is going to show related keywords to the keywords they already use. And this is what Google sees on their websites.
2. Or you can enter a basic keyword and you’ll receive suggestions related to that keyword.
3. Or you can just browse top keywords from different categories and subcategories such as: Beauty & Personal Care, Computers, Finance, Food, Health, Home & Garden, Sport & Fitness, Travel & Tourism and many more.

I tried to keep the description as short as possible and offer you only the basic information about this tool. Now, tell me if you used it and how. Share your experience in comments bellow.

And if you find this information useful you may also want to subscribe to my blog and receive my daily articles in your e-mail.

This is a problem that every person that launched a website encountered. When you are just starting a new project you are basically creating a point of light in the dark. Eventually every light will draw some attention but it’s crucial to send the right message in the right way, so that the attention you get on your website will lead to conversion.

There are some things that you have to think about in terms of SEO, things that some times are overlooked for other more common SEO tasks. The thing is that when you are just launching a website, or a product, or a service, no one knows about it.

It will take some time before you’ll start receiving traffic from searches made for your brand name, or the name of your product, or service. What you have to do first is position your website in front of readers. Every day people are searching the web for solutions to their problems. If your website offers a solution you need to identify the problem.

It may sound odd that you know the solution but not the problem. Well … you do know the problem but it’s possible not to know it as a client, or better said you might not express it like the client. Why? The client doesn’t know that the answer to his problem is your product so he’s searching in consequence.

Identifying the main problems can also lead to some planning on initial keywords to target. I’m talking about long tail keywords (or keywords that have low competition) that are easy to rank well for, that are providing a decent amount of monthly searches and that will provide a starting point. The more traffic you’ll get and the more information you communicate you’ll be able to also target more technical terms.

So basically in time people will learn what you have to offer, will learn the language of the market, the name of the products. In time they’ll search for your brand name, or brand name plus the product/service. That is why you have to create a connection between the product and your brand, your website. And this connection, from an SEO stand of point, means targeting the right keywords, in the right order.

This initial keyword planning is extremely important. The first keywords that you’ll start to target are the foundation on which you’ll add more and more related keywords. So, initially you have to think more like a problem solver and identify the problems rather than a service provider.

If you are running a website and you don’t have a list of keywords that you want to generate traffic from then I think you are walking blind.

Now, let me know what you think about things that you need to do, related to SEO, when no one knows you.

-          How important do you think that an initial keyword planning is?

-          Before you launch a website do you do a keyword list?

It’s all about conversion. Everything that we do on our websites has to have one great goal: conversion. It really doesn’t matter what type of conversion, as long as it exists. For example you may aim to have comments (as conversion for a certain page), or have people on each page more than 5 minutes, ordering products/services, registering for your newsletter and so on. The thing is that you always have to think of what you want to achieve, when you make a modification: in other words, what is the aimed conversion for that modification.

When you work on your keywords, we’re talking about the same thing: conversion. What is the conversion when it comes to keywords: RELEVANT TRAFFIC. This means to optimize your content for keywords that are relevant to your website and that will send you traffic.

I think it’s good to work on all you’re keywords just as it’s good to have all your pages indexed by search engines. And just like the case of your pages, where you tend to improve your top landing pages, when it comes to keywords you should work some more on those that really send you traffic.

The thing that you have to do is to improve the rankings for the keywords that send you traffic.

What keywords send you traffic and from what page

The natural question is how you know what keywords send you traffic and from what page? (because just the keywords are already shown in your Google Analytics). I receive most of my traffic from Google so here is my solution for it: a Custom Filter in Google Analytics. What you do is set up a filter that will show you on what search result page you ranked for a certain keyword.

This way you’ll know if you need to work some more on a certain keyword. All you have to do is create a filter with these specifications and apply it to one of your profiles. It will take a while to gather all the data.

After you installed the filter here is how you see its results. You access it, just like any other profile and you can look for example to your Search Engine traffic from Google or Content -> Content by Title. Then you select the User Defined Value from the drop down menu and that’s it.

Your turn

Here is what I would like to know from you, in comments bellow:

• Do you think it’s good to concentrate more on keywords that really send you traffic?
• Do you check your rankings? If yes, how?
• Do you think about some sort of conversion for everything you do on your website?