There are often a huge number of searches for a single keyword, but the combined traffic from low search volume keywords is powerful. Image: Dave Duarte / Flickr / CC-BY-SA

Deciding on keywords is usually half art and half science. There are two basic types of keywords in internet marketing: high-competition keywords and longtail keywords. High competition keywords are keywords that get a lot of searches and are often the easiest, simplest ones to remember. Longtail keywords, on the other hand, may not get as many searches and can be more difficult to remember. The big secret to affiliate marketing, though, is that longtail keywords can be the source of your success.

Defining a longtail keyword

A longtail keyword, by definition, is any keyword that is not high competition. “Reality TV,” for example, would be considered a very high traffic and high competition keyword. While there is a lot of money to be made in high-traffic keywords, it can be very difficult to build consistent, profitable traffic. Lots of competition means it takes a lot of work to get and keep your website near the top of lists of results. A longtail keyword, on the other hand, has very little competition. Usually, longtail keywords are very specific phrases. “Winner of Dancing With The Stars Season 24″ is an example of a longtail keyword. The name “longtail” comes from the long, tail-like end of the bell curve that graphs search volume.

Choosing longtail keywords

The process of identifying your longtail keywords can take time, but it is very important process. Once you have decided what type of offer you are going to target with a longtail, identify three or four high-traffic keywords as a jumping-off point. For an offer advertising a college scholarship search, for example, you might want to start with keywords such as “college scholarships” and “money for college.” Once you have the basic high-traffic keywords go to Google Insights for Search. Enter your keywords and look over the results. The top searches and rising searches will give you the keywords you should use to find your longtail keywords. Select a few of these, and run them back through the keyword tool. Arrange the search terms in Google Keyword according to Global Monthly Searches. Select a few phrases that are three or more words long and have lower Global Monthly Searches results, and you’ve got your longtail keywords.

Putting longtail keywords to work

Longtail keywords can be put to work for you very easily for one very simple reason – there isn’t much competition. Consider each longtail keyword a niche that is just waiting for you to fill it. When you target a longtail keyword, you are attempting to fill the online niche of the few people each month or year that will type that exact phrase into a search engine. You can target a keyword with your whole website or just one page on your website. Either way, there are several places you should include the longtail keyword.

• Page title
• Page description
• Text in the first paragraph of the page
• Titles of each page section and subheading
• URL of the website or webpage
• Metadata information

If you include this type of longtail keyword with your article or webpage, you can make longtail marketing work for you.