Targeting the Keyword Long Tail for Search Engine Optimisation

While writing search engine optimised content for a web page people often concentrate on the targeted keywords alone. They follow a common norm which says that it is great to have one targeted keyword for a single page. Here, I am excluding those content writers who jumble up all keywords in a single page rather than following the umbrella structure in keyword positioning.

But do you really think that targeting one keyword per page is just enough for properly search engine optimised page? Do you think that primary keywords alone can generate the maximum amount of targeted visitors (bigger business) in your website through organic search?

Ok, let’s take a look at the whole matrix.

When you search for keywords, there should be at least two sets of keywords – the primary set and the secondary set of keywords. In the primary set of keywords there are normally the niche keywords that are supposed to get you targeted visitors to grow your business.

The secondary key phrases are normally those that are not so popular in your target market and do not often convert into business.

In the initial stage of content development, you naturally concentrate on the primary or targeted keywords and related words (LSI). But as the website starts growing and getting more and more visitors, your analytics would tell you that you are getting a lot of visitors for some key phrases that you never targeted. There is no need to think that, search engines would send you traffic for those targeted key phrases alone. They would send you traffic for anything they think you are good for.

So, is there any problem while search engines are sending you some extra visitor?

For some webmasters it is a problem but for a lot of them it is just some sweet bonus visitors they would love to receive.

But if you take a look at the figures provided by the analytics you would find that the numbers of visitors you are getting from these secondary key phrases are not very small. And often you would find the cumulative number of visitors you are getting for the long tail, is much more than the targeted key phrases are getting you. This mostly happens when your website grows big in volume and content. If you run a forum, you would often see this happening in you analytics report.

Now, here you would need to be extra attentive to make things better. You would need to segregate those key phrases that are getting you regular visitors and find out if the visitors are getting converted into business or not.

If you find that, the visitors from these keyword long tail is generating business for your website, it would be a wise decision to rewrite the target page with a bit more emphasis on those phrases. This should help you to grow your online business. And if even after optimisation, things do not turn up as expected or if they deteriorate, change it again or go back to your original content.

Here you must remember that developing content for a website and proper search engine optimisation is an ongoing process and you are as good a webmaster as your eyes for details and you may develop it as you get more experienced in SEO.