For those of you who don’t know what “long tail keywords” are, it’s time to learn!  Long tail keywords basically are keywords that are 5 or so letters long with little to no competition in the search engines.  Take the keyword “toyota camry” for example, which has about 15 million results on Google.  Instead of tackling the massively competitve “toyota camry” keyword, why not make a bunch of sub-pages targeting “used 2007 toyota camry SE” and other related terms?  This is basically what long tail SEO is.  The goal is to get lots of “toyota camry” traffic from search engines without even bothering with the main keyword.

Too many people get lost in their quest for that #1 prized term and lose sight of the big picture.  And when they finally get ranked on the main page (after 2-3 years) for that one big keyword, they find out the traffic isn’t even that special.

And what if tomorrow Google changes their algorithm and for that one keyword you worked so hard to be ranked for you suddenly get pushed down to page 17?  You are done!  Using long tail keywords, your traffic sources will diversify… so even if your “toyota highlander repair work” keyword drops, your “toyota dealerships near newton mass” keyword might rise!  You will never have all your eggs in one basket.