Ok, the topic is a bit of a misnomer, but I made you open the thread didn't I? One of the hardest things to do for a new website is to get Google Rankings. Most often this is because new websites go after "head terms" immediately, which are typically dominated by older websites in the same niche/genre. For example if you tried to go after "buy xbox" your website would have to compete with gamestop, bestbuy, buy.com, xbox.com, amazon to get into the top 6 listings which would be no easy task. But what if you went for a really long tail, related key phrase? Something like "buy xbox 360 elite online" might do the trick. According to Google's AdWords Keyword Estimator Tool this phrase gets roughly 73 searches per month, not a gold mine but a number one ranking here could be a huge boon for you compared to anything after page one on "buy xbox" Checking the SERPs you can quickly see a Hubpage and Yahoo! answers page ranking towards the bottom of page one. So we have anecdotal evidence that Google doesn't have a lot of strong indicators on this SERP. If you have an SEOmoz PRO membership use this tool to get a better indicator of how difficult the keyword would be to rank on: http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty/ If you don't have a PRO membership you can go one by one and look at the pages that display in the SERPs using http://www.OpenSiteExplorer.com/ to get some basic link data and make your own judgement call. I would look at the page's "authority" and Google's Toolbar Page Rank, combined with the strength of the domain, on page copy and inbound links with anchor text. This may not have been the best example as it's hard to believe you could easily oust Xbox.com and XboxElite.com to get to the number on spot, but with some more investigation you would likely find a long tail term related to "buy xbox" that would be much easier to get a number one ranking on. As we've seen in experiments over the years a number one ranking will get you between 36%-54% of traffic that searches for the term. Here are the exact steps: 1. Go to Google AdWords's Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal 2. Type in a "head term" something like "black cars" or "buy iphone" (just use one for simplicity here) 3. Sort by "Local Monthly Searches" from lowest to highest 4. Find a low volume related key phrase and run a keyword difficulty check at http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty/ OR Gather data about the SERPs to identify the difficulty of ranking. 5. Estimate the most probable position you can gain by factoring your page and domain metrics versus the current page one rankings 6. If you have a high likelihood of ranking #1 begin building links with anchor text for this phrase.
Great tips! It's definitely easier to go after "long-tail" keywords in the beginning. This way, you can start driving traffic quickly and creating some income. Over time, you can start working on the more competitive keywords too. This will take some time... but at least you'll have some income from the long-tails to keep you going
Precisely. Also my own research has shown that a lot of long tail queries are 'research' related. Even though the blog boom is over there are still plenty of people looking for stuff to share on their social sites and in their blogs. It's a great way to promote natural link building while generating revenue.
try and get a backlink seo tool like this one! http://www.tlsubmit.com/product.php this is great as it posts backlinks to top level domains .edu etc
great tips!I guess this method is best for long tail keywords, since most important keywords are competitive.
Yes, long-tail keywords are really effective in getting an increase in your ranking in Google's search results pages. They would even work better if you make them location-based. For example, if you are selling flowers and serving the Melbourne area, then you can make use "buy Melbourne fresh flowers" for your keywords. Of course, using these keywords are not enough to increase your rankings. You would also need to do some link building through blog commenting, forum posting, social networking, social bookmarking and article marketing.
nice tip .. i was actually thinking about this the other day ... its prob better going to the less searched keywords to build you way up there ...
Yeah, it sucks such a nice tool cost so much to use. You can try to build your own model with metrics like page rank, authority, etc... and gauge how difficult a query is. The KDT focuses primarily on domain and page authority scores, which you can get for free from Open Site Explorer. Just put them all in a spreadsheet and average the numbers of each, then add those together to get a basic idea of how difficult it would be. add the domain authorities in a column and the page authorities in a column, 1,000 should be the highest possible score. then add those two numbers together and divide by 2. Multiply the resulting number by 0.1 to get your difficulty percentage. SEOmoz's tool is likely more complex than this, but it's a good gauge. A score of 1,000 would be impossible (100% difficult). I like to use my own equation and factor in the metrics for each link containing the keyphrase.
Wow ....... that was really Something helpful Tips .. some Would really love to have .. Thanks For Sharing ...