keyword:
jewellery

Related long-tail keywords: 
silver charms for bracelets

The above  longtail key phrase could be the phrase for a single page on a jewellery website– a page which features silver charms and silver charm bracelets.

Why use long-tail keywords?
There are good reasons to use longtail phrases in your seo strategy, including the fact that longtail phrases are targeted and easier to optimise for than short terms consisting of two or less words.

Longtail phrases are targeted
The fact that longtail phrases have a narrower focus means benefits for web users and you!

Benefits to web users:
A person searching with long-tail phrases is more likely to know what they want, because they are narrowing down their search. If they land on a page that offers exactly what they’re looking for, this provides a positive experience for them.

Benefits to website owners:
Satisfied web users are more likely to buy from you or feel positive towards your website.

People are often said to be further along in the buying process if they are using highly targeted longtail terms. Therefore, if they land on a page that matches their request, they are possibly already in a ‘buying’ frame of mind, rather than being in a ‘just browsing’ frame of mind. Which is good news for you!

 

Longtail phrases are often easier to optimise for
Although the keyword ‘jewellery’ is not targeted to any particular type of jewellery, it would be a highly sought after term because of the volume of searches each month for that term.

Example Australian search volumes: (Rough estimates only. Not actual search volumes.)

jewellery: 100,000

silver charm bracelet: 1000

silver charms for bracelets: 100

 

Terms consisting of two or less words often have the highest search volumes. Competition is fierce for those keywords terms. Established and authority websites are often up there dominating the first few search results positions. It can be a very long and time-consuming road to building your website up to become an authority website.  (Not to mention expensive if you are paying web optimisation experts!)

Optimising a longtail keyword can be like a backdoor into your website.

Note: Some longtail phrases also have hot competition, even with low search volumes (especially if they are for items with a high value.)

The 2 biggest mistakes you can make with longtail keywords

Mistake 1: Type the phrase into a search engine and then go by the amount of results returned as to how much competition there is for that phrase.In fact, for many longtail phrases, results past the first two pages are not even relevant– maybe even past the first page!

So if you see a figure like 108,965 results returned, don’t get scared! Actually look at the results and determine for yourself if there is decent competition for your chosen phrase.

With some simple and very basic search engine optimisation, you might be able to gain a page one position– even a number one position.

 

Mistake 2: Use a keyword finder (program that shows you the searches per month for a keyword) and get discouraged when you find that only 100 people search for your chosen term a month.

If you could gain the number one spot for that term, and gain even a small number of highly targeted customers/web users– isn’t that worth it?

The flip-side of longtail keywords is also this: Although 100 people may search per month using a particular search term, 500 a month may search for that same term, but use slightly different phrasing.

It is possible to gain thousands of web visitors to a web page per month, all searching for basically the same thing, but each using a unique phrase.

Staple that to your forehead! Many people new to website analytics don’t realise just how many people can arrive at a web page using a unique search phrase.

Of course, keywords consisting of three or less words remain the holy grail. But if you’re just starting out, or if your website is sinking more than swimming, you might want to look at expanding your keyword strategy.

And make sure you have great and targeted content to match your new longtail keywords!

Search engines want to return the most relevant results for people. You need to tell search engines what each and every page on your website is about (the pages you want visitors to land on that is.)  The way in which you optimise your website will differ according to the nature of your website.

This is a basic beginners guide to optimising your web pages:

Making your website crawlable
(If your website can’t crawled, a search engine will be left scratching its head, clueless as to what your pages are about!)

If a search engine cannot look through your pages and cannot follow your links, your pages won’t be indexed (won’t appear in search engine results).
Some kinds of Flash and Javascript code makes it difficult for your website to be crawled. If you’re using robots.txt on your pages, check that it’s only being used on the pages that you don’t want search engines to crawl (such as duplicate content.)

If you’re not sure about any of the above, a good place to go to check crawlability  is to register with Google Webmaster Tools.

(You’ll need to add their code to your website before you can begin.) In your Webmaster Tools dashboard, you’ll see if there have been any crawl errors or pages restricted by robots.txt. You can then look under diagnostics for further information.

Good title tags
(A title tag is the most important description for your website – in just one line!) Title tags are the clickable links you see in search engine results. So, if you’re searching for women’s boots, you’ll see a page of results with titles you can click on.

When you click on one of the results, you’ll see the title tag again– above the page in the tab. The title tage tells a search engine what your pages are about. A mistake beginners often make is to place the same title tag for every page of their website, or to not place any title tag at all on their pages.In Google, the length of title tags is 65 characters. You can make a title tag that is longer or shorter– but a longer title tag will not be shown in full in the search results.

Good domain name
A domain name that accurately describes the nature and place of your business tells a search engine what your business is and where it is. For example, camdencarpentry.com.au states what and where. Of course, if you’re trying to brand a business, often a domain name that states the ‘what and where’ either doesn’t ‘have a ring to it’ or isn’t available. But keeping the name easy to spell and as short as possible will help when people go to type your domain name into a search engine or address bar.

Good URLS
Some websites, particularly ecommerce and some content management system sites may have URLs that neither search engines or web visitors can decipher. If possible, have clear URLs that describe each page. For example:  chocolateheaven.com.au/dark-chocolate-bars.html

Use dashes between the words in your page URLs. They make it easier for web users to read, and also easier for search engines to parse. 

Here’s a silly example of a URL with no separating dashes:

Candi is a photographer who uploads a web page full of photos of people on a windy day. She wants to name her page Candi’s gusting wind. 

photowebsite/candisgustingwind.html

A web user or search engine could read this as:

‘Can disgusting wind’ — which sounds more like a web page offering a solution for flatulence!

Using dashes quickly solves this:

photowebsite/candis-gusting-wind.html

Special key words and phrases for your pages
(Yep, you get to select your own unique set of words and phrases that describe your website)

For each page of your website (that you want visitors to land on) — write down short phrases that describe each page. The phrases can be two, three, or four words in length– or longer. Now go back and craft these phrases so that they resemble the phrases that people would use when searching for your product or service. For example, if you sell women’s fashion accessories, you might be selling– handbags, scarves, belts and jewellery. For each of these, you can come up with a set of key phrases. that describe the products that you’re selling.

Good quality inbound links
Inbound links are links coming from other websites to yours.  If a link comes from an established, respected website, this is like a vote for your website. It tells a search engine that your web page (or pages) has content that another website found valuable or interesting in some way. Such links are particularly good if they come from a web page that concerns the same subject as the web page of yours it is linking to. For example, a link coming from a page about children’s health going to a page about children’s health on another website might be held in higher regard by a search engine than if that same inbound link was coming from a page about lawnmowers.

Good quality outbound links
Outbound links are links going from your website to other websites.  If you have links going to spammy, low-quality websites, this does not look good to a search engine. If you link to other sites, the links are best going to respected websites that will provide value to web visitors. Blogs will often have links in the comments area that go to spam websites. You can nofollow the links in your blog comments. If you nofollow a link, it means you are not giving a vote to the web page the link goes to.

Onsite links
Many people don’t realise they can also vote for their own pages by the way they link to pages within their website. Ensure that the most links on your site go to your most important pages.

Sitemap
A sitemap sets out your website structure clearly to a search engine. You can also specify your most important pages.