Long-tail keywords are extremely useful for SEO. Basically long-tail keywords are opposite to head (or popular) keywords that more frequently searched by users. For example, “real estate” is a head term, but “affordable real estate in Brooklyn” is a long-tail keyword.

Long-tail keywords are especially effective in large ecommerce sites, where thousands of pages are indexed by Google and other search engines.

If you optimize your website pages for long-tail keywords, you should very quickly begin to see results from it in sales and traffic because this strategy is good for selling products. The important thing about long-tail that many niche products have a potential to generate a huge volume of sales. The long-tail keywords help to realize this potential for website owner.

Just take a look at Amazon or eBay. According to Chris Anderson’s research, Amazon.com makes 57% of sales from keywords outside of “head” terms. Search for some niche products and you will figure out that long tail keywords are really helpful for selling.

When you are choosing keywords for your website, keep in mind that it’s better to concentrate on long-tail keywords.

How to find long-tail keywords? I’ll give you some hints.

1. Usually Long tail keywords are 4-6 words in length.

2. In most cases they are directly related to niche product or some specific information.

3. Usually long-tail keywords are not competitive phrases. This is often a good advantage.

It’s important to find long-tail keywords that are highly relevant to your business. In that case you will get the most effect from using long-tail strategy. A long-tail strategy with relevant terms that pull visitors is a worthy goal for any search engine marketing tactic.

Well-written product descriptions and meta tags provide visitor benefits and help to generate traffic from search engines to your site. And another thing - a long article has much more chances for getting long-tail traffic than a short one.

Most webmasters tend to focus on most popular keywords instead of combining popular and long-tail strategies. Focusing only on the top 5-10 popular keywords may be missing the majority of your business. If you are not tracking sales generated by popular keywords that you are using for your website promotion, then it’s time to try long-tail keyword strategy.

So what’s the conclusion? Always analyze your website statistic and think about keywords that are bringing your site traffic. And what type of keywords are generating sales on your site? Maybe long-tail keyword strategy is exactly what your business needs?

Mike Shakin