Target the Long Tail

How to rank high on Google using SEO and having a game plan to target long tail keywords to beat local competition

You have to have a game plan in order to be able to reach people. There are billions of URLs listed by Google. You have to write your stories in such a way that you can get them listed where people will see them.

You can reach the whole world

You have the power to reach the whole world. It is amazing to think about. You can write up a post, hit publish, then your work goes out to be indexed by Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search engines.

You have to have a game plan in order to be able to reach people. There are billions of URLs listed by Google. You have to write your stories in such a way that you can get them listed where people will see them.

You do that by using the basics of search engine optimization.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

Google and other search engines rank every URL that they index in their system. Some entities have higher ranks when it comes time to decide what the display on Google’s search results.

Dot gov and dot edu domains usually rank higher than other domains on the internet. But, that isn’t always the case. It is up to you to do a little research if you are wanting to target a specific keyword or keyword phrase.

If you are using WordPress or other blogging software, there are programs that help with this — Yoast is one the comes to mind. I use another brand on my blogs, but it depends on your preferences.

This platform also has a way to optimize for SEO points. Click on the “…” option, select “more settings” and then “SEO options.”

If you sign up with Google’s webmaster tools, you keep an eye on search terms and use the information the huge search engine provides for future SEO efforts.

Now, even if you change the metadata information, Google sometimes picks what it wants to display, so while it will work most of the time, you can never tell what the algorithm thinks is best for display. Or, Google could test different displays and rankings of your search engine results to figure out which on works best for readers.

This platform also has a way to optimize for SEO points. Click on the “…” option, select “more settings” and then “SEO options.”

Keyword Competition

If you are aiming at competitive keywords, you will have a hard time battling against the established websites with lots of back links and search engine rank.

But, you can target longer tail keywords using a keyword phrase to target your readers better.

If you have a local business, instead of trying to rank high for “auto repair,” you would want to focus on the longer keyword phrase, “auto repair local neighborhood” or “auto repair city state” or a combination of various posts and pages designed to target various aspects of the business.

If you use a content management system like WordPress, you can interlink all of your pages highlighting the anchor text, which are the keywords you want Google or other search engines to associate with your keywords.

If you use a SEO plugin, it will train you to optimize your site for the specific keyword phrase by displaying indicators of how well it predicts you will do.

If you have a local business, instead of trying to rank high for “auto repair,” you would want to focus on the longer keyword phrase, “auto repair local neighborhood” or “auto repair city state” or a combination of various posts and pages designed to target various aspects of the business.

How many times to use keyword phrases / keyword research

I like to check the number of times my targeted keywords show up on competitive pages. I will search Google for my phrases and see whose pages show up at the top. If it is a huge multinational corporation, then you will need to rethink your keyword phrase until your site becomes big enough to compete.

In the meanwhile, you will want to target the smaller sites that show up at the top. This is where thinking about what people are search for online and what your business keywords are comes into play.

You will want to search for a keyword phrase and find a local or smaller business that you are competing against. Open their page by copying their link in a private browser. This makes sure that Google doesn’t record your search as having caused a click for their site, since it helps them.

Copy their text by selecting the page using “Control A.” Find a word counter program that can display keywords in groups so that you can discover what keyword phrases your competition or the number one site is using. I use wordcounter.net, but you can use whatever method works best for you. Your word processor might have this capability.

Write up your copy using the same and similar keywords a couple of times more and see what happens.

You should see your site start to climb in the rankings as you get more links to your site. These can come from your social media and other pages. You should be linking to your page using the keyword phrase as your anchor text.

For example, if you wanted to score high for the phrase: “Madeuptown, Wisconsin carpet installation”, you would want to search for your competition in the same industry, check their web pages using a word counter. See how many times certain phrases appear on their pages. Write your copy aiming to use those and similar phrases. Make sure to not copy their work. Google doesn’t like duplicate content and your competition might take action against you for copyright infringement.

You should see your site start to climb in the rankings as you get more links to your site. These can come from your social media and other pages. You should be linking to your page using the keyword phrase as your anchor text.

For fun, I checked a small town law firm in a small county and saw their site only had a few single keywords on their page. If you wanted to start up a firm in that town, you could write up a page that targets your practice area, include a lot of keyword phrases like “XYZ County Accident Injury Attorney” and “ABCtown Accident Injury Lawyer.”

I checked a nationwide accident and injury attorney who has set up shop in Chicagoland, but is all over the place. The nationwide place has “injury” showing up on their home page 22 times.

A local competitor personal injury attorney’s office used “injury” 14 times on his law office page.

A small town attorney a couple of counties outside of the market had attorney show up a three times, meaning their page was more of a business card, rather than SEO tool designed to capture clients. Practice areas didn’t show up at all in the keyword listings.

If you wanted to capture business, you could build out SEO pages for each local town in your area that you served and include the localized keyword phrases so that people searching for an attorney in their town would see your website appear high or at the top of the search results.

Tip: If you are doing a SEO campaign for your client, ask them for words to describe their business and use those in your SEO campaign since they will be able to capture search engine traffic for those terms after their site gets ranked by Google. It won’t happen overnight, but it can happen after a couple of weeks, especially if there isn’t a lot of competition.

Back links

Back links are sites that link to your page. You want to get back links from “good neighborhoods.” Don’t buy a bunch of back links because Google will probably catch up to them, if they don’t already know. Google will associate your site with that “bad neighborhood” and rank it accordingly.

What you want are naturally occurring links to your site.

If you are doing SEO for an attorney’s office, you would want to make sure all of your professional listings, as well as every legal directory you can get listed in for free points to your website.

You might also invest in blogging since Google still loves blogs since they provide new content. Set up a WordPress or other CMS and write up posts about practice area news. If court is holding hearings by telephone because of the current situation, write about that and make sure to link back to your practice area page with your anchor text as your keyword phrase. You can do this in your bio by writing up, Mr. John Doe, Esq., practices personal injury law in Anytown, AZ with the link using bold keywords as the anchor text for the URL. You might also want to use the attorney’s name as anchor text as well — maybe sending it to an about or contact page.

More SEO lessons:

🦄 Chris Hedges, BA, JD, is an editor and writer for ILLUMINATION.