Surely Search Engines are there to connect sellers and buyers on line and for this they have been following some fool-proof methods.  They will show Mrs. Nancy your website about dog foods provided there are some ingredients.

First when Mrs. Nancy starts the search by typing the keywords for her search “Cooking home made dog foods”, the Google Search Engine will instantly show somewhere around 541,000 names of websites in a listing stretching around hundreds of pages, each containing about 10 or 20 items.  Mrs. Nancy will view the first page or at best the second page containing the information she wants. So your website should be there in the top 10 listings about home made dog foods or else Mrs. Nancy will not see your site, which is listed in the 45th page.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is putting your site within these first 10 listings in the first page. Choosing the right keywords is the key. “Easy to make home dog foods” will attract Mrs. Nancy rather than “How to make best home made dog foods”.  Likewise if you think from the viewer’s angle for adding appropriate keywords, your website will get prominence by its relevance in the Search Engines.

A quick view of the long tail phenomenon will help you understand the impact of this process on your website traffic.

Every month, over 10,000 visitors come to one of my sites. This search traffic is the result of over 6,500 varying search terms.
A few key terms are searched by about 10% of this traffic while the remaining 90% comes from different search terms, each bringing not more than 0.1% of traffic.

This is what we call the long tail. A large number of search terms that are not bringing significant traffic alone, but still have an important contribution to the overall search traffic. Among this wide array of search terms lie the opportunities you can take advantage of.
Let us see how…

Step #1 – Evaluation of Long Tail

by exporting search term data from your analytics package, you can make a graph of your site’s long tail in Excel. Take Traffic on the Y axis and Terms on the X axis.

A few long tail graphs that must be created for your site include:
a) The overall long tail graph

This graph includes all your search traffic and shows the terms driving it. In the ‘head‘ section, branded items will appear high.

b) The branded and non-branded long tail graphs

Considering the varying behavior of branded and non-branded terms, you should analyze them separately as well as in combination.
c) SEO and PPC long tail graphs

You need to separate the organic and paid traffic to know the source of traffic and optimize it. After this step has been completed, you can finally start analyzing the long tail.

Step # 2 – Analyze the Long Tail

now, you must start looking for patterns in your long tail. This involves asking a few questions like:

a) Do the smaller terms usually include your main terms? If so, this indicates effectiveness of SEO strategy with your long tail terms benefiting from the main SEO. Is it possible to replicate this to create other ‘free’ longtail campaigns? A good SEO strategy aims to increase the ranking of particular terms, which implies greater visibility for less popular but similar terms as well.

b) Are there any surprising common themes? A lot of long tail traffic obtained for a common theme in your website is a factor for considering whether there is a related ‘head’ term that can be included in your SEO or PPC strategy.

c) Which are the main themes? If there are a few main themes, try to build your SEO strategy for developing some ‘free’ long tail campaigns. You must also consider how to group these terms into a comprehensive PPC long tail campaign. The aim is to organize your long tail for better management.

d) Do branded items form the PPC head? If so, you must ask yourself whether this can be shifted to natural traffic to save money.
e) Do tail terms define most of your non-branded SEO traffic? For specific terms, this can prove to be an ineffective SEO plan. It is important to target high traffic terms and get head terms fromm SEO to reduce dependence on the fluctuations in PPC bidding market.

This list of questions can form part of your analysis of the long tail, supplemented by other questions and patterns.

Step # 3 – Deriving Terms for Your Long Tail

Keyword research can be conducted in several ways. The simplest way is to use your normal keyword tools to find more terms. Another option is to use Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool. Once you type your URL, it suggests terms for your site and links them to specific landing pages.

Your natural search term traffic report is also a good source of finding terms. Buy these cheap terms and test them to see if you can make your natural search performance better. The chosen natural tail terms can then be used to generate other terms with help of your normal keyword tools.

Instead of getting into long tail keyword research, several PPC marketers may consider using broad match in Adwords as a  better alternative. This can be done but won’t give optimal results in the long term. Most traffic will be brought in for terms that have your nominated search terms as stems. A harmless option is to make a long tail keyword list and see if anyone is searching for those terms before you pay.
For effective long tail PPC campaigning, you must ensure that your long tail terms are grouped properly so that your ads are targeted suitably and wasted clicks minimized.

In general, there are three types of backlinks: Reciprocal Linking, Three-Way Linking, and One-Way linking.  The difference between each type is the manner that links are placed on websites, but the result is the same.  All three methods are aimed at spreading your website link throughout the link so that search engine spiders view your website as an authority on your subject matter.

If you know the basics of SEO then you understand that when a search engine views you as an authority throughout the web on a certain topic your page rank rises.  Thus, the more authority you can make your website appear to have through excessive backlinks the higher your SEO ranking will be.

So what exactly is a backlink?  A simple backlink known as the one way linking would be a comment left on a website blog or page that is relevant to your topic and contains your website URL.  As you learn more about backlinking you can proceed to use many different backlinking services such as article submissions, directory submissions, RSS feeds, and virtually any other area of the Internet where is acceptable to leave a URL.

For backlinks to be truly effective, you want to make sure that your URL is placed on websites that are closely related to your website’s topic.  Thus, wherever you leave your backlinks you want to employ the same keyword SEO tactics that you would within the content of your own website.  For example, if you trying to increase the value of a party supplies website then you would want to make sure any comment you leave contains the keyword party supplies.

This is so the search engine spiders read your URL backlink in a place where it is associated with the same keyword target of your website.  They then assume that your website provides pertinent information to party supplies since you are an accredited source that often is mentioned along with the topic of party supplies.

Hence, as with any aspect of SEO before you begin to employ any of the methods of backlinking you need to decide what specific keywords to target on your website.  You need to make sure that t he keywords you choose are relevant and targeted to your intended audience.  If you take the time to do your research and narrow your text links down before you begin placing backlinks you will have much better results.  Better results mean a higher ranking and thus a higher level of visits per month so it is well worth your time to consider carefully all aspects of your website SEO before beginning backlinking.