Most people assume that registering a domain is the first step to setting up a blog.  Hence they find a registrar of domains or head for a hosting company which provides both hosting and registration service. They select a name they think sounds nice for their blog, check its availability and register it and get hosting service.

It is after this that they start thinking of content, traffic and customers.

Problem is that this approach does not work anymore.

The Internet has been around now for some time and the mountains of content has already been created and indexed by the search engines. Hence, if you were to try and create a website or a blog now which promotes a single word such as a blog or Psoriasis, you are bound to create web content that is likely to lie buried underneath tons of content churned out daily by millions of websites and blogs that populate the Internet.

Thus, the most attractive option available to late entrants to the Internet, who want their websites to be visible amidst the clutter of information available on every subject imaginable, is to consider the possibility of using long tail keywords.

What is a Long Tail Keyword

Long tail keywords, also know as broad keywords, are a combination of two words or more words, which a surfer may key into to a search engine’s search box. Thus, an example of a long tail word would be the words, “how to blog”, “blog for money” or “how to blog for money” instead of just the narrow term “blog”.

Similarly, you would be using long tail keywords when you search for “money-making blog”, “blogging for money” “make money online” or “Seo keyword research”. On the contrary, you would be searching for short tail keywords when you for search for narrow keywords like blog, blogs, blogging, money or keyword.

Long tail keyword is the coinage of Chris Anderson. He first used it to describe the strategy used by market-savvy marketers for building websites on combination phrases which faced low competition and brought in limited amount of traffic.

Since these words had low competition, it became possible for you to rank your websites high on the search engine pages as compared to the time, effort and money you would need to get the same ranking with the more-competitive short tail keywords.

Advantages of Using a Long Tail Keyword

Long tail keywords have evolved as part of the development of the Internet. By definition, they are aimed at attracting small traffic flows rather than large ones. Some may wonder why one would like to attract smaller number of visitors, when it is possible to use narrow keywords to attract larger number of surfers.

The answer is simple. The competition for narrow tail words is severe. It would be near impossible for a new entrant with a small advertising budget and limited knowledge of the Internet to create visibility easily, if he were to build his web content on narrow keywords.

When websites are build on long tail keywords, the content is focused and is tailored to meet the requirements of those who visit your website rather than cover a wide broad array of topics.

Long tail keywords also carry an added advantage. They convert into sales far more easily as compared to short tail keywords. Hence, if your intent is to make money out of your blog, and that too with small investment over a short time frame, then it would be better to do so by building a website on a long tail keyword.

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Filed under: How to Blog for Money • Keyword Research

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