“Our mega store has NFL footballs for sale at low prices. NFL Footballs are a great gift for children of all ages. Buy our NFL footballs on line right now”

As you can see it is clearly written for the key words “NFL Footballs”. I know you’re thinking I wrote that terribly to prove my point but no I’ve found text that bad on a client’s site. At least it does have a high density for the keyword phrase but stuffing your phrase into every sentence is not going to win you any points with search engines. More than likely, you’re going to get hit with an over optimization penalty and even worse potential customers are going to walk away with a negative impression of your business. Take a look at the same pitch only rewritten:

“We have the best prices on NFL footballs in Minnesota. Made from premium quality leather our footballs are built to take NFL style punishment and come out shiny and new. Whether your athlete is in high-school, college, or pee wee league these pro NFL footballs are perfect for any age.

This new pitch still mentions NFL footballs as often as the last one but it presents it in a much more natural sales oriented way. Not to mention, we are going to grab some long tail terms by seeding the text with keywords that pertain to the target market (high-school. pee wee, etc…) and it even mentions the geographic location “Minnesota”. If you were a consumer which pitch do you find more appealing?

Writing proper ad copy is an art and a science. Just practice a bit and you’ll find that you’ll start writing SEO friendly ad copy. So in conclusion write for people first seach engines second.

Consumers are typing in these longer phrases and I’ll let you folks in on a little secret. Sometime the amount of traffic coming from long tail phrases is greater than the traffic from one strong keyword. I know it sounds crazy but looking at my personal sites and those of my clients I’ve seen this distinct patter emerge time after time. While one or two key words will get thousands of hits, these phrases may get 10 or 20 but there are hundreds of phrases contained in a site.

The long tail is your friend. For two distinct reasons. Number one: you are getting traffic and from my perspective all traffic is good. Number two: your visitors are getting a better search experience because they are more than likely to find exactly what they are looking for on your site. A happy targeted surfer is more likely to convert to a sale.

So should you be targeting log tail terms? Of course! When I plan a SEO campaign I’ll pop open a spread sheet and type all my key words in one column. In the next column I’ll put in all the modifiers i.e. the stuff that makes up the phrases. Going back to my previous example I’ll put “cars, automobile, and autos” in column one. In the next column I’ll put in “Honda, Toyota, and Chevy”. The the next column I’ll put in “New, used, and previously owned”. Now the fun part, mixing and matching. Start making phrases with all your words. Mix and match is the name of the game. When you’re done take your combinations and pop them into your favorite search engines. See if there is actually any competition for those phrases. Once you’ve done that use a tool like WordTracker or Overture’s free tool to see how often people actually search for those phrases. When you find a combination that has few competitors and a high number of searches you’ve got a winning phrase that should get you some nice long tail traffic.

Now that you’ve got your list of phrases make sure to incorporate them into your SEO friendly ad copy. Of course be smart and write it so a person can understand it not just what you think a Search Engine spider will like. I guarantee when you start consciously targeting the long-tail phrases you’ll get more target traffic to your site.