Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool – Monetize The Long Tail of Search

If you’ve tried to optimize for the search engines before, you’ve probably been frustrated to find that you can’t rank for the words you want. Say you sell windows. You will never be able to rank for “windows” or “window sales” unless you have a team of people doing search engine stuff for you. Sorry, it just isn’t going to happen.

What you need to do is to target “long tail keywords.” That means the 3-word or longer phrases that people enter that are far less popular, but which still have some traffic. If you were to do a bit of keyword research using your favorite free or paid keyword site/software, you might find (and I’m making these numbers up) that “windows” gets 300,000 searches a month and has high completion, and that “window sales” is similar.

But what about “buy double-paned windows online”?

Maybe that phrase only gets 500 searches a month. Maybe less. But if you really optimize for that keyword and build a few backlinks, you may find that it’s not too hard to rank for it.

Or what about “how do i buy windows on the internet”? Or “cheap double-paned windows”? These may also have low search numbers (maybe 100 or 200, even), but people ARE looking for them. The big window companies are busy optimizing for “windows.” You can sneak in underneath them and get a lot of the traffic for these long-tail keywords.

And if you optimize for a lot of them over time – maybe you do a lot of individual, interlinked posts on a blog, with each page targeting one long-tail – that can really add up to big traffic!