Because the World Wide Web and the search engines that help us make sense of what it offers are always changing, it can be difficult to develop websites that will be recognized by large or targeted audiences. According to WhaTech, a leading online technology journal, one of the top five ways to increase traffic to your website in 2015 is to research long-tail keywords and incorporate them into your content.
What Is Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing (SEM) has become increasingly popular for businesses of all types as more and more people begin to rely on the Internet as a form of media. SEM is a subset of marketing centered on website development and promotion through search engines, such as Google, and Bing too. One of the most important aspects of SEM is increasing the visibility of websites on search engine results pages (SERPs), and enhancing sites strictly for this purpose is known as search engine optimization (SEO).
A great number of SEO techniques are available to webmasters and SEM specialists, but the most efficient of these is the use of keywords, which are single words or strings of words likely to be entered in search engine queries.
How to Use Keywords
When SEM was still young, it was considered acceptable or even desirable to use single keywords or double-word key phrases. Users often entered only one or two words when performing searches, and search engines worked much differently at that time than they do today. Not anymore. Because so much information is available online, users are now entering longer strings of words to perform specific searches. “On a daily basis, 15 percent of queries submitted have never been seen before by Google’s search engine.”
The first use of the term long-tail keywords is credited to Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine. He noticed the new trend back in 2004, but it is has been slow to catch on. However, without optimizing your website with long-tail keywords it is nearly impossible to get it listed in the first page of search engine results.
To generate the most traffic, long-tail keywords should be inserted organically into the content of your Web pages. They should be distinct but fit in naturally with the flow of the text. The goal is to allow the website to speak to the reader as if it is a person and not as if it is optimized to be read by a computer.
Keyword Research
The secret to modern SEO is discovering the right long-tail keywords to incorporate into your content. This endeavor can take time and present some difficulty, but to help you get started, following are few tools and methods you can use to conduct your keyword research:
* Google Suggest – Google Suggest is an SEO tool that will match long-tail keywords to a primary keyword of your choice. These suggestions are based on terms that users actually enter in the Google search box.
* Google Related Searches – This tool finds keyword phrases that are similar to the one you enter. These searches are shown at the bottom of the page of Google search results.
* Third-party keyword applications – A number of third-party keyword applications are available at affordable prices.
* Website analysis – You can analyze your website to find which keywords are being used to bring in your traffic.