Boost Blog Traffic with Long Tail Search Engine Optimization How to Grow Your Blog by Targeting Specific Search Terms

Most bloggers who analyze their blog traffic statistics learn that the majority of visitors to their blogs come directly from keyword searches on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Many of those bloggers spend a lot of time doing keyword research to identify the keywords that people are actively typing into their preferred search engines to find content similar to what is published on those blogs. The reason is simple. Once you know the keywords that people use in order to find content like yours, you can revise your existing content and write new content that actually uses those keywords in order to capture some traffic from those keyword searches.

A Search Engine Optimization Problem
Unfortunately, the world of online keyword searches is imperfect, and it can be very difficult to compete with large, popular Web sites for broad and popular keyword traffic. How can your small blog appear high enough in keyword search results when big sites with deep pockets and vast content are already dominating the scene?
A Search Engine Optimization Solution
One answer is long-tail search engine optimization, which is the highly targeted and specific keyword search optimization that small bloggers can leverage to boost meaningful traffic to their blogs.
Going after the Long-Tail SEO Traffic
Long tail search engine optimization techniques involve researching the very specific keywords and keyword phrases that people use to find content like yours, and then writing content on your site that focuses on those keywords. For example, instead of focusing on a keyword such as parenting, which is an extremely broad and competitive in terms of search results rankings, a blogger could focus on writing content for a more specific keyword phrase, such as parenting twin infants, that is more targeted to their content and attracts a smaller, niche audience. The assumption is that large blogs already own the broad search phrases, so they're unlikely to spend time optimizing content for highly specific keywords that attract smaller audiences. That's exactly where smaller bloggers can snatch some traffic from the big players.