Target less competitive long tail keywords and get more traffic

Jun 14, 2007

Apart from targeting your niche keywords that might be highly competitive, you should also optimize your web page content and blog posts for less competitive keywords, especially if you have just started your search engine optimization drive. Your niche keywords are important and you should always continue optimizing your content for them, but along with that, it doesn’t harm if you also target partially related, or very specific keywords. For instance, if your business is “rental cars” you shouldn’t only focus on the phrase “rental cars”; you can also target “ac rental cars” or “finding rental cars in new delhi” (if you operate in New Delhi) or even “how much does it cost to rent a car in new delhi”. These are also called long tail keywords, as they get you lots of traffic, but in smaller quantities.

Focusing on long tail keywords will help you at three fronts:

Your website will start getting relevant traffic sooner for long tail keywords
You’ll have to pay less if you opt for pay-per-click search engine advertising for long tail
Conversion rate will be higher

YOUR WEBSITE WILL START GETTING RELEVANT TRAFFIC SOONER FOR LONG TAIL KEYWORDS

Your website gradually moves upwards as you optimize it for your main, primary keywords. It may take — depending on your competition — even more than a year for your website to start appearing at a respectable place. It makes no sense to delay your business for that long. It’s better to put some effort on those keywords that may get you some traffic sooner. It’s easier to rise up in the rankings if not many websites are competing for the same search phrase. It’s also easier to write SEO content for longer, a bit abstract phrases because you can be more flexible.

YOU’LL HAVE TO PAY LESS FOR YOUR LONG TAIL KEYWORDS IN PAY-PER-CLICK SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING

If you want to advertise on the Internet using the various pay-per-click programs without spending lots of money, you can start with less competitive, long tail keywords. Since not many people want them, or are aware of using them, the bids on them are generally not high. This way you can productively use pay-per-click advertising (combined with SEO), get some decent traffic, save money, and start doing business online.

YOUR CONVERSION RATE WILL BE HIGHER

People that conduct searches using elaborate phrases such as “rental cars new delhi” know precisely what they are looking for and they are more likely to do business with you if they find you for their phrase of choice.

The long tail traffic builds up slowly, but if you continue focusing on it, eventually it fetches you more traffic then your important, highly targeted keywords.

How to find your long tail keywords?

There are numerous free and commercial tools available on the Internet to research your keywords. Recently I’ve started using 103bees.com to analyze my traffic for Writing Cave since this is one of my blogs that have started making some money. 103bees.com lets you study what keywords fetch you most of the traffic and it also shows you the long tail keywords that send traffic to your website. You can use the program for free for a few days and after that you need to pay a small monthly amount.

Another program is Hittail that is being used by many bloggers and webmasters but I haven’t tried it. I also use Google Analytics and I find its data quite useful too.

The perfect tool, of course, is your common sense. I think no one knows what phrases and expressions are the best for your website more than you do.

4 Responses to “Target less competitive long tail keywords and get more traffic”

Mike Levin of HitTail
June 14th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Thanks for the mention!

> …lets you study what keywords fetch you most of the traffic and it also shows you the long tail keywords that send traffic to your website

Unfortunately, knowing what keywords fetch you most of the traffic doesn’t help you fetch the traffic you don’t get yet, but should. The real trick is to zero in on the underperforming terms that produce SOME traffic for you, but could be doing much better. HitTail not only zeros in on those, but uses all past traffic to filter all future traffic, so each time you see a keyword on HitTail, it’s likely to be the first time that keyword led to your site–ever! That turns it into a sort of keyword radar, which is much more valuable.
yacine
June 15th, 2007 at 11:42 am
You know Amrit that’s how I found your website. I was looking for a copywriter, but didn’t know the term copywriter so I search for web site writer and your article on web site writer was the first page on Google. How you were almost certain that your article was going to be on Google front page convinced me right away that this the the copywriter I’m looking. So I do believe this technique really works.
Amrit
June 16th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Hi Mike.

Thanks for the tip on HitTail. Next week I’ll give it a try.
Amrit
June 16th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Hi Yacine. Yes, that was a successful exercise. I’m going to try some more link that.