What are long tail keywords How to backlink long tail keywords

A short post (Edit: not really short) today as one of my reader (out of 2? LOL) emailed me some questions on long tail keywords which I thought would be better answered via a post that can benefit anybody who might stumble upon my blog.

The question was "I read your blog on targetting long tail keywords which can potentially get more traffic into my website way more quickly and was wondering if you can share more on what are your traffic getting methods and giving so many different variations of long tails, how you backlink them."

So the topic at hand: long tail keywords. I have briefly mentioned them in my previous articles on how to select keywords for your blog and how to pick keywords that generates passive income, but I am not done so in a thoughtful and systematic way so here we go.

What are long tail keywords?
If you have read Chris Andersen's book on the longtail, you will know about this concept. Basically, it says that aggregating your longtail demand can add up to quite a substantial revenue given that the cost of generating these long tail demand is low in the digital age. This concept holds true for online marketing. While the main phase keyword will always generate more traffic, they are not enough to give you the 800 to 1000 visitors a day that is needed to make a significant income for any site. These numbers can only be achieved by generating lots of long tail keywords that surrounds your main keywords.

Importance of long tail keywords
Besides giving you more traffic, why is long tail keywords important? One of the main reason is that long tail keywords are usually buying keywords. For example, people searching for 'ebook reader' are not necessary buyers as they can be people looking for information about ebook readers in general. However, someone who types in "where to buy cheap ebook reader" is going to serious in buying one. So, if your site generates lots of longtail keyword searches that contains buying intentions, your income will most likely increase as well.

Another benefit is that long tail keywords are easier to rank. That will give you two bonuses. Firstly, the more pages you have that are ranked, the more trust Google has in your site, which increases your overall authority. Once you have become an authority, going for more competitive keywords will be a much simpler task. The second bonus is that you might hit upon something that brings you significant traffic even though it is a long tail. I have had instances where a 5 word long tail produces about 40-50 hits on my site.

How to generate long tail keywords
Now that you understand the importance of long tail keywords, the next thing is to generate them. This is where a lot of different strategies can be used. This is how I do it but there lots of different ways. If you have a unique approach and will like to share them, please leave a comment.

Keyword tools: I used all the usual google keywords tools: including google adword tool, google suggest and google insight. Among the three, google suggest is really useful. I like to add these operators to get more longtail keywords that have buying intention:

"for": this to get a list of keywords that tells you who is the receiving user of the keywords e.g. "ebook readers for kids"

"under": this will give you a list of prices that users are willing to buy

"in": this is a location based keyword that is really important if you targeting geo based ads

"w": this is a funny one. by adding a w and a space between the w and your keyword, google might give you a list of question based keywords such as "where to buy ebook reader" or "who sells ebook readers" etc

Long post: when you site has certain trust and age, long post such as this one can really give you keywords that you never thought of. If you are making money through adsense, then it is worthwhile to hook your analytics and adsense account so that you know which long tail keyword triggers high paying ads.

How to backlink longtails
Once you have include lots of longtail keywords in your content, it is time to watch the analytics. One of my adsense site that generated over 1k in earnings have thousands of long tail being generated every day. Trying to backlink all of them will be impossible. Here is my criteria in choosing which keywords to backlink:

High potential: if a long tail is in page two and is generating consistent clicks (1-5) or traffic (10-30) per week, it is worthwhile to backlink them until they hit number one

Containing my main keyword: if a bunch of long tails has a common keyword that I want to rank, I would give them at least 1-2 backlinks since they will help my main keyword

High CPC: if a keyword generates a high CPC such as above USD5 or even USD10 per click, I would backlink that. It might help to trigger even more of such high paying ads.

In summary, long tail keywords are really important to any SEO efforts and for making passive income. If you master this, it will be easier for you to build any site and start to earn money from it within a short timeframe.

Btw, the vacation has been great so far. My lovely wife and I have spent 3 days in Holland (Amsterdam and Den Haag) and we are now currently in Belgium. In the coming days, we will spending a couple of days in Luxembourg, Munich and Prague. It is super cold right now but I am enjoying myself. It also gave me a taste of how my dream life will be. Traveling and making money online while doing so. This is a great way to live! I did some calculation and figure out I need to make 30k a month to be able to live our dream of traveling all year around. This is a 5 year target that I have set for myself which is entirely doable.

In fact, in the coming posts, I will be talking more about how to really scale my online business models beyond adsense and amazon. If you are read the book entitled "what get you here will not get you there", you will know that jumping from one state (say making 5k a month in passive income) to another state (say making 50 or even 100k a month) requires a total shift in how you do things. If you do not change with the different states, you will probably not be able to get to a higher ground. Personally, I am used to different business models since I am from a startup background so applying that to my online business should be very interesting for anyone who wants to really grow their passive income.