Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Use "long-tail" Keywords To Get More Qualified Traffic

By Terry Stanfield

One of the problems that come with search engine marketing is having keywords or key phrases for your website that are very common and that many websites use. Since more and more companies are becoming aware of the need for search engine optimization and are starting to use search engine marketing any company that makes a product or sells a service similar to yours might end up using the exact same keywords or key phrases that you are using. After all, when you're coming up with keywords or key phrases you're trying to think of the most common words that you can so that you will pick words that a lot of other people associate with your product or service so it only makes sense that other companies would be using those words for their search engine marketing too.

But if you are using the same keywords and key phrases that a lot of other companies are using then your website might not rank as high on the search engine results pages because your keywords could be the same as a thousand other sites.

So how can you solve this problem? You can use long tail keywords to solve the problem of using the same keywords or key phrases as thousands of other web pages. Long tail keywords are clusters of keywords that are not common words individually but when put together they will point customers and clients to your site. By using long tail keywords you will rank higher in the search engine results pages because the words that you will be using will draw, in most cases more qualified customers who are interested in your product.

Using long tail keywords can be tricky and requires a good vocabulary. If you're not sure how to use long tail keywords and you are trying to promote a website that has a focus that is very popular and a lot of other websites have then you might want to consider hiring a company that specializes in search engine optimization and search engine marketing to figure out what long tail keywords would work best for your site. Driving traffic to your website can be tricky when there are millions of websites that are all competing with your website for traffic but using long tail keywords is one way that you can outsmart your competition.

If you are using long tail keywords in conjunction with an ad program like Google's Ad Sense then you save money on advertising because you will be using words that are less commonly and more focused and therefore less expensive but when you string those words together to make a key phrase that key phrase can be an effective search engine marketing tool that can drive customers to your website instead of to websites that are run by your competitors. - 16651

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