Article Marketing

Our word for the day is long-tail keyword.

The term long-tail, as used in Internet Marketing, originally was used to explain the theory that as the Internet became more accessible to the masses, that marketing would become much more specialized. A business that was limited in what it could sell offline could considerably broaden it's market online by offering related products.

Picture a comet.. the bright, large part of the comet is the main product or focus of a business, say for example bedroom furniture. A brick and mortar business may only be able to showcase a few bedroom sets at best along with some bedding.

As an online business, however, there expansion possibilities are endless. Picture now the tail of the comet. This represesnts the marketing niches that a business can add when they are Internet based.

Take the Bedroom Furniture store with limited space. By establishing an online counterpart, they can significantly increase their product offerings to include bedding, childrens bedding, pillows, draperies, bedroom accessories, rugs, pictures, lighting and the list goes on.

The bright central comet has gained a 'long-tail' of products and services. And, of course, the bottom line is that they have gained a much greater customer base which translates into more profit.

How does this relate to keyword research?

When we begin to look for keywords to center our articles around, we want to think long-tail. Not big, like the center of the comet, but smaller and more specific, like the tail.

Let's say you've found a great product at Clickbank that is all about Gardening. It's a good product with a good profit margin and it appears to be a popular product.

Do you want to write your article that will attract people to your sales page or site about gardening centered around keywords such as 'gardening' or 'gardening tips'. You don't if you want Google to ever rank your article. The competition for those words is fierce and the possibility of every getting on the first page of google, let alone the top 3, is almost impossible.

Remember, the main purpose of our articles is not to be found in the article directory and published in someone elses blog but to be picked up by google and ranked high enough so that people doing a search for your keywords see your article, read it and click over to your sales page.

So you look at the product.. the material.. the sales page and you find some more specific things that are addressed. Maybe things like 'gardening in a colder climate' or 'gardening as therapy' or 'raised bed gardening'. These are the long-tail keywords.. the keywords that you want to research.

The process of research then becomes quite easy. Check your resources using your long-tail keyword list and find what people are searching for. Then check out the competition at Google. Everyone has a different forumula for the ratio of how many searches vs how much competition makes a good keyword. Don't drive yourself crazy over this.

This isn't rocket science and common sense is your best resource. Obviously if there are 100's of thousands of competitors for your keyword, then I'd look for something different. Basically you want a fair amount of searchers, not tons, and relatively low competition.

There are also many research tools available both free and paid, software and online memberships. I've used them all and frankly, for me, many of the paid ones are too complicated. Oh I'm sure they provide a valuable service and at some point you may want to invest in one, but talk about your information overload.. not for me.

WordTracker is an online one that I would recommend if you didn't mind putting some cash out. You can even get a one day pass for very little which is great if you've planned ahead and can do a lot of your research in that one day.

I have a tool that does everything I need and want it to do and I'm making it available to you for free. It's called Quality Keyword and it will give you the search figures for your keyword while suggesting others as well and will also pull up the competition from 4 different sources including Google.

Quality Keyword

Ok.. so now we're getting somewhere.. almost ready to start writing! :)

Today you learned the right kind of keywords to target for your articles. Long-tail keywords give you the advantage of finding a prospective customer at just the right time in their buying process. They know what they want, are looking for it specifically and are ready to buy.

Next time we'll get into actually writing your article and discuss proper formatting including the MOST IMPORTANT part of the entire article.