SEO Recap: Keywords, Phrases and the Long Tail

After initial keyword research, brainstorming and analysis, you should have a long list of primary, secondary, popular and long tail keywords. You will need to prioritize these as you cannot optimize for every single keyword all at once – it is a gradual process, with content being added regularly.

Should you even attempt to optimize your website for all those keywords at all? Well, if you have a huge list of keywords them you will need to be careful – optimizing for all the keywords could dilute the effectiveness of your primary keywords. You’ll need to make sure that for every four or five pages optimized for secondary keywords, you need to go back and add another primary keyword page. This will keep your site fully in the spotlight for search engines for your primary keywords while allowing you to reach all the niche markets with specific long tail search.

The second step in the keyword analysis is short-listing the keywords you feel best describe your product or service, and finalizing your primary and secondary keywords. Don’t optimize any page for more than 5 to 6 keywords or key phrases, except possibly for your home page, which should have your primary keyword several times, and can have many secondary keywords once in the text.

Some websites optimize their web pages for too many keywords which is not considered as one of the industry’s best practices. Carefully filter your keywords and optimize individual pages with appropriate keyword and keyword phrase combinations. This lets you design your website effectively and logically, and makes interlinking your pages easier. SEO should start long before the website is designed with keywords being selected at that time and not after completion of your website design and development.

When SEO is incorporated at the development stage, it will blend well with your website. Artificial insertion of keywords after content is already supplied, or forced in keywords in places that really do not have a slot for them are painfully obvious to readers and can damage your website’s reputation.  However, if your website architecture takes into consideration keyword requirements ahead of time, you will be able develop an SEO friendly architecture with natural flowing copy and easy to navigate links.

Some of your keywords may have too heavy of competition, but you can tone down the rivalry by adding geographic qualifiers. This will often completely change the landscape of the battlefield, and remove heavy competitors that simply don’t operate much in your area.  This might not of course be applicable for all services or products, but if you have a brick and mortar location, prefer to work with locals, and the nature of your business allows the usage of geographic qualifiers, you should definitely take advantage of it.

Long tail keyword phrases tend to bring more targeted traffic than single word keywords. These can bring in people looking specifically for a certain service or product you offer, and can be invaluable – so don’t forget to rake in traffic from long tail phrases – they could be your ‘ready to by’ client base that is perfect for your niche!