Optimize for one key phrase, get high rankings for many keywords

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become one of the most valuable forms of marketing available. If you are after top return on investment, you need to know the facts about keyword optimization. These days, it’s common for people to think they understand how to use keywords – but in fact, most have barely skimmed the basics on page SEO and how to best utilize it. This is a sophisticated marketing tool, and becoming more so every day.

You can achieve higher rankings than your competitors by optimizing your web pages for competitive search terms that consists of several words. A keyword that consists of many words is called a “key phrase”. This technique is unfortunately neglected by the bulk of novice marketers, who only consider single words in their keyword optimization.

Three Advantages to Using Key Phrase Optimization (Long Tail Key Phrases)

1. It’s much easier to get high rankings for targeted key phrases because the competition is not as fierce as the competition for single key words. Using Google’s free keyword analytics, you can see how many Google users have searched for a particular phrase during the last month, and you can also see what the competition is for that phrase and other similar key phrases. This is great tool, and is free and accessible to everyone. Add it to your marketing tool box if you haven’t already.
2. Key phrase optimization attracts far more targeted website visitors – the use of key phrases is more likely to attract buyers than researchers. For example, people who search for the keyword “website” might be interested in custom websites, website templates or even SEO. On the other hand, people who search for “custom design flash website” are far more specific and certain about what they are looking for and are therefore more likely to be ready to buy.
   It can be tempting to use more generic keyword optimization in order to boost your traffic. If you find yourself tempted, go back and look at your objectives. Are you looking for high levels of traffic, or are you looking for sales? Carefully considered key phrase optimization is more likely to convert traffic into sales – which would you prefer? 50 visits to your website with 5% conversion or 100 visits to your website with 1% conversion?
3. By optimizing your web page for a key phrase, you automatically optimize your web page for the parts of that key phrase. For example, if you optimize your page for “custom flash websites design”, your web page will automatically be optimized for “flash websites”, “flash websites design” and other keywords .

How to Find the Right Key Phrases

To come up with suitable key phrases, consider the phrases you might search for if you were seeking information on your product – and remember that you don’t always have to be as concise as possible, because people who search using a phrase or word within your key phrase will also find you. If you’re stuck for ideas, why not go to your current clients and ask THEM what they would search for to find you? You and your colleagues will often be too familiar with your subject or product to come up with the phrases that outsiders might use.

Variation is the Key

The best advice on page SEO is to optimize one web page for one key phrase and optimize as many pages of your website as possible for different but related key phrases. Using the previous example, you might optimize different pages of your website for “custom flash websites design”, “custom flash seo”, “consulting flash”, and “flash animation”.

By using this technique, you will maximize the amount of targeted traffic flowing in to your website.