I digg keyword research, it’s totally hot, and what I really digg down deep in my seosoul is the long tail; it’s the heart of Internet research, and for many, seo. Whenever I visit a website and get hung up there for more than a few minutes, one of the first things I do is view their source code. You can do this by right clicking on your screen and clicking “view source code.” I have my own ideas right off the bat of what their keywords consist of, or what they should consist of, and I’m curious if they are utilizing seo.

I can tell right away if they are completely unfamiliar with seo, sorta familiar with seo, or have someone in house or hired an seo expert. The long tail has a lot to do with this.

The first thing I check is the home page source code. If the page doesn’t have a title tag and meta values, I all ready know the situation isn’t good. But if it does and it targets some pretty general terms in the title tag and meta values relating to the specific industry, along with some graphic modifiers, and as always good content (if it didn’t have good content I wouldn’t be there anyways) that’s one thing, but it doesn’t tell me what I really want to know.

You can find out their strategy, if they have one, by viewing the source code of their internal pages. This is where the long tail should be.

Say you’re checking out a website about renewable energy. The home page title tag, meta values and content really focuses on renewable energy, energy conservation, alternative fuel, and the company name (for banding purposes). Good, ok. If you then view the source code of the internal pages, and the title tag and meta values are the same as the home page, they are most likely not aware of or utilizing the long tail.

The long tail is an expansion of the core, root keywords. Individually each carries a significantly lower search volume than the root, but when as many of the long tail words and phrases are utilized, they carry a heavy load as a team.

As an example, long tail keywords of the example above could include and are absolutely not limited to:

  • peak oil
  • eco homes
  • bio fuel
  • alternate diesel fuel
  • alternative car fuel

There a hundreds more that could be utilized; and each of these could possibly be turned into the main site concept and a long tail developed solely from it. So you see, the long tail is the meat and potatoes of keyword research.

If the long tail keywords are to be utilized properly, they should each support their own page within the site. The title tag, meta values and content should focus on the long tail word, while it always ties itself back in with the main concept of the site.

So as you can see, as an seoer, long tails are totally hot!