June 6th, 2010 by Dan

The Benefits of Using Long Tail Keywords

Web professionals offering search engine optimization services know there is more to keyword research than just looking at the queries most people type into search engines. Understanding the significance of different types of keywords can dramatically improve the effectiveness of an SEO campaign.

Although a lot of attention is paid to those popular keywords which come up time after time in searches, with businesses competing with one another to rank highest in search results, these well-used words and phrases only make up a small percentage of the total searches made each day. What are called long tail keywords, which may only be used once or at most a few times a day, make up a larger proportion of all search queries, perhaps amounting to around seventy percent in all. Popular keywords, which are described as being at the head of the search curve, and which might be used in hundreds or thousands of searches each day, actually constitute only around thirty percent of the total queries made.

Obviously, managing to incorporate long tail keywords into web pages is an excellent strategy for capturing a larger proportion of search queries, but it can be hard to imagine exactly how this is done. Companies offering SEO services have methods which enable long tail keywords first to be recognised, and secondly to be inserted into page content, and although these techniques are often time-consuming they are well worth the hours invested.

If searches are conducted initially using those keywords which are popular and relevant to one’s own business, this will naturally bring up the top ranking pages for those particular words. Useful research can then be carried out by analysing the text from the first couple of dozen pages returned, in order to spot those useful and relevant words which are not already included in the list of the most popular keywords.

Another way of researching long tail keywords is to use one of the online tools provided by companies such as Google, which display data relating to various search terms. A list of less commonly used alternatives to a popular search query is usually viewable, and all the possible search variations can be noted down and analysed.

Although many of the phrases probably will not make grammatical sense and would be impossible to weave into page text as they stand, similar patterns of word usage generally show up throughout the list. Some words will often tend to appear at the beginning of a search query, while others will crop up repeatedly at the end, and useful key phrases can be constructed by distilling the essence of the list of phrases. This can be a complex task, and it makes sense to employ professionals specialising in SEO services to do the work as they will have the skills and experience needed to execute it well.

At SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk we are experts in keyword research and we can choose and utilise suitable long tail keywords as part of your website’s SEO strategy.

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