Ranking for Long Tailed Keywords

Hey guys,

I'm hoping to understand how to rank for related long tail keywords in your niche. Let's say our niche is "weight loss" but we also want to rank for "how to lose weight" and "fastest way to lose weight".

I'm thinking there are two possible approaches.

1) Make a new page on your site and optimize it for that keyword and do your standard backlink strategy. We would do this for every related long tail keyword we want to rank for

2) Use the other keywords in our anchor text when we backlink.

I'm currently using the first strategy when the topic is different enough to warrant its own page without too much duplicate content.

The problem is when the keyword is referring to the exact same topic like "lose weight fast" and "fastest way to lose weight". If I were to make a new page for those keywords, the article would basically talk about the exact same thing. So in this situation would you use the anchor text strategy? The disadvantage would be that our page won't be completely optimized for that keyword because our on page SEO wouldn't match the keyword. Meaning, we can only put 1 title and have 1 URL for the page.

Anyone have any ideas to share on this topic?

I'm hoping to understand how to rank for related long tail keywords in your niche. Let's say our niche is "weight loss" but we also want to rank for "how to lose weight" and "fastest way to lose weight".

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I would rather buy a new domain with exact keyword in it and build a new mini site if the search count is decent enough to get more visitors if I rank #1 But there are few important things to consider:

1. Keyword in root domain - I won't go for it if the exact keyword domain is not available. Trust me, exact keyword in root domain is really a good sign for good SERP. I learned this from my own experience.

2. Exact search count - I won't go for it if the exact search count is less than 1000. If I rank #1 for a long tail keyword with exact search volume not less than 1000. I would get 500 - 700 visits per month which is pretty enough for me to earn good money from Ads@nse.

3. Keyword competition - It plays a vital role. If I see Yah00 answers and forums in top 10 I go for it because we can outrank them easily. Analyzing the keyword competition is where many people do mistake. Even I did, but you can master that after many failures

1) Make a new page on your site and optimize it for that keyword and do your standard backlink strategy. We would do this for every related long tail keyword we want to rank for

Click to expand...

I would do the same if the search volume is some what low.

2) Use the other keywords in our anchor text when we backlink.

Click to expand...

You can do that if you are targeting a couple of other long tail keywords, but you need to add the keywords inside the post. If you are targeting many long tail keywords in your niche, it's not possible for you add everything in a single post. It's very important to strike a good balance between Search engine and visitors.

Let's assume you are gonna target many long tail keywords. As i said earlier, it's better to create a separate page for each keywords, but you have to focus on SEO and visitors equally.

Instead of just putting title as "how to lose weight", you can use "how to lose weight-Are you in a right path?" That make sense right?

Sorry for the double post. Browser problem.

Keywords are essential to SEO. You simply cannot rank (high) without them. But then, you already know that. I am pretty sure you also know that ranking high for a particular keyword is often more difficult than logic suggests it should be. Those of you who have tried in vain for years to rank high for your head keyword of choice know what I am talking about. To those of you who are newly introduced to this wondrous world of SEO, I?ll say this: roll up your sleeves and prepare to wait. Or you can do the smart thing and just target long-tail keywords. You won?t have to deal with all that fierce competition for popular head keywords, and you will be a few steps closer to getting your site rank high.,..copied,..hi guys its useful,..

Check out the video and grab the keyword tool posted on the thread below:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/member-downloads/241803-get-keyword-research-secrets-adam-short.html

I think it will help you a lot.

Cheers! - "Wiz"

Im starting to believe that long tail keywords are of little use anymore with google,

my site is targeting a long tail keyword, which i rank 2nd with on yahoo, but im not ranking anywhere in google.

Maybe its a case of being sandboxed, but i think i remember matt cutts saying that more preference was going to be given to authority sites in that niche, rather than a site with long tail keywords.

will have a better idea the next time google does an index update, but as of now, my longtail keyword seems almost useless, at least with google anyway

Thanks for the response everyone. I think if the keyword is not different enough to warrant its own page, I may just add it as a paragraph to the current page along with its own heading then make sure to use the keyword in my anchor text.