Long Tail Keywords, Back links & Redirects

Hi guys,
I browse this website often and find some very good information from many members so thank you for that. I tried searching the answer to my following question before posting but couldn't find the answer.

Is it better to create individual pages for long tail keywords optimizing the url and title and backlinking each or is it better to optimize the main page for the main keyword and backlink with main keyword and long tails as anchor. my competitor has a main keyword, 1 longtail and back links to only these two pages with about 4 different anchors. (they rank #1)

keeping in mind if a site has 5 main keywords and a possible 10 long tail keywords for each main, what would be better?

What I currently did was create a page for:

main keyword (does not rank well)
first long tail keyword (ranks #6)
second longer tail keyword (just created)
third even longer tail keyword (just created)

- the first, second and third long tail keywords are subpages of the main keyword

- was also thinking of redirecting the second and third to the first long tail and building links to these pages but not sure if this would be effective

if anyone can provide any insight it would be appreciated.. Thank you.

Great question chris.blair86,

You have it right that you should build individual pages for each keyword. By your "main" page do you mean your home page? This is where you have to be a little careful. Make sure that the pages you are using keywords on actually have content that have to do with those keywords. For example, if the main keyword you want to rank for is headphones and you optimize your home page for that, make sure most of the content on that page is relevant to headphones. Let the form or content of the page follow how you build it. In other words, choose the keywords you want to rank for and then build the pages from there.

Avoid using keywords on pages like about us, contact us, home, frequently asked questions, etc. unless you can make that page about the keyword. You will eventually be penalized if you have your keyword in the URI, meta tags and the title and the only thing on the page is contact form or content that is not helpful as related to the keyword.

Anchor variation is very important, which I am leaning toward 70/30, ie 80% of my anchors are for non-keyword terms. Also, use synonyms for your target keywords. Google is using software to recognize text that is synonymous with a user's query to offer even more relevant documents. Try to avoid always using exact match anchor text whether its onsite or offsite.

Check out this article that explains how long tail keywords can help increase ranking success,

http://searchenginewatch.com/articl...-Keywords-Increase-Rankings-Conversions-STUDY

This article hits the nail on the head when it talks about using keywords that will be the focus of the page,

https://www.yola.com/tutorials/arti...4435772/Promotion_SEO_Traffic_and_Advertising

Hope this helps,

Shawn

Thanks for the information Shawn,
by main page I meant a product page, the home page is the company brand. the main page is the product, and the first longtail is the product with city
I will read those pages you included.
Thanks

It really depends on the goal of the particular site and especially the layout of the theme - on the homepage and the subpages. If you click my sig, i have some videos about this question. But it's not too "cut and dry"