The term you search on, be it a single word or a phrase is a keyword. We use keywords whenever we look for information. For example if you are looking for information on how to plan a wedding you may use the following keywords in your search engine.

“How to plan a wedding”

If you do the research using say Wordtracker or a similar product you would find that this is a popular search phrase. The competition is large and you would have a problem getting to the first page for this phrase. So with so many other competitors for this phrase you would need to do some smart marketing and probably spend a lot of effort to rank on the first page. Let us look at the term another way.

Let us target a smaller niche in the above market by using a longer tail keyword. After doing some research you would find a phrase like.

“How to plan a wedding on a tight budget”

You would see that there a smaller number of competitors for this niche and it would be easier to get to the first page and rank in the top ten for this keyword phrase.

Long tail keywords bring in more targeted traffic. The shorter keyword brings in a broad amount of traffic. The long tail keyword visitor has a specific problem that they want fixed or an answer to.

These long tail keyword visitors are more likely to be ready to either purchase a solution or some other action. They may also be ready to sign up to your email program and get information from you on a regular basis. This leads to the opportunity of back end sales. But that is a whole other subject.

Starting website research and finding long tail keywords can be difficult. When you write the content for the web pages you create long tail keyword phrases. The search engines find these and store this information.

Something to remember is that when you use an analytics package like Google Analytics you will be able to see the long tail keywords used to get to your site. You will see phrases that visitors have used to get to your site that you never have dreamed of.

Long tail keywords allow you to compete in a market with fewer other competitors. First research the market then look at the number of competitors then narrow down the market by using long tail keywords. After a period of time using analytics, you could find better long tail keywords to use on your web pages.