Long Tail Keyword Targeting, it’s what you should be doing

Inspiration from SEOmoz, How Big is Your Long Tail? – Whiteboard Friday

A lot of times SEOs and companies alike can forget how important it is to target those long tail keywords simply because we seem to focus on keyword volume; if the keyword volume is less than 10 searches per month, we trash it.

However, with the many big and small SEO campaigns and companies I have personally worked on I have found that those low volume type search terms are generally highly qualified and convert at a much higher rate.

But how do I capitalize on those long tail terms?

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one that has asked this question in the past – with products and revenue on the mind, we forget about the “big picture” and neglect to target these type terms.

• Create a blog - Yes, the easiest way to target those low search volume, longer tail keywords is to create a blog and start creating quality, unique content around them (obviously with good inter-linking to your products). This not only helps you gain visibility for longer-tail terms but also more content. Content is still king.
• Consider every piece of the puzzle - It’s hard sometimes to get our mind off those big fat n’ juicy keywords but we when putting together your SEO strategy, consider every keyword and factor in your analysis. When optimizing titles, metas, content, headers, etc. be sure to consider all those longer tail type phrases along with the big ones.

There’s several more ‘ideas’ but those are the big ones for me. Whenever I’m optimizing I try to keep an open mind and think like a normal Googler by considering conversion, relevance, and qualified traffic along with keyword volume.