This guest post submitted by Mert Erkal from www.searchforblogging.com. Visit his site for even more information on blogging and SEO.

These days I have seen quite a lot of bloggers who are trying to dominate popular search phrases to pull traffic to their blogs. Frankly speaking, most bloggers will never dominate popular search phrases. Top five blogs dominated those keywords already. Thus, you should not expect your blog to rank on the first page of search engine results for those specific keywords.

Yet, the game is not over for the small and mid-sized bloggers. Thanks to a concept called the Long Tail, we can still drive good traffic from search engines without dominating the top keywords.

What is Long Tail ?

The Long Tail relates to the keyword phrases you will receive traffic for. As mentioned above, even though my blog is about “blogging”, my blog does not have any chance to rank well for the keyword term “blogging”. It’s not really worth spending my time for this phrase. It will not bring traffic to my blog in any case.

However, a long tail phrase is niche focused and specific. Okay, they still do not attract much traffic, yet attract targeted traffic to my blog.

I hear you saying ” why should i want to rank well for a phrase that will not bring much traffic?”. Well, think like that. Your blog is filled with those articles, and you satisfy the people visiting your blog through search engines. The traffic is so focused that, eventually you have much more chance to make those people your loyal readers. Because your blog responds to their questions. What else an Internet reader ask for?

How to Target and Monitor Long Tail traffic?

The most important factor is your blog article titles. There are simple rules. If you apply them to your everyday blogging, believe me you will drive significant focused traffic to your blog.

• Use names when possible. If you are reviewing a product or a software, use the name in the title.
• Be specific when writing your titles.
• Popular words will bring more Long Tail traffic
• Five and seven words titles are better for search engines to recognize what your article is about.
• Use HitTail

What is HitTail?

Hittail lets you keep track of long tail phrases that bring traffic from search engine results. It is a very powerful free tool where you can keep track of what your readers are interested in. You see niche market demands and trends with Hittail. However, you should note that you need to have at least some traffic from search engine results in order Hittail to work for your blog.

Let’s take a look at my blog’s Hittail results:

HitTail gives me a short summary of my long tail status:

Top ten keywords are 33.3 % of all your search engine traffic (the top ten keywords listed from the top to bottom)

Long tail keywords are 66.7 % of all your search engine traffic (other keywords, starting from the eleventh keyword, top to bottom)

How Should i Read this Status report?

HitTail is telling me that 33.3 % of all my search engine traffic comes from top ten keywords listed on the top. Today i can not take full advantage of a huge search engine traffic (66.7 % of my potential search engine traffic!) from the long tail keywords listed above. Thus, if i create and write article titles with those long tail keywords, i will bring more traffic to my blog from search engines. Simply because i will build a list of articles which respond to specific search engine queries.

These are my top 10 keywords:

• kazeli

• affiliate how long does it take to make money

• camtasia software key

• can i use affiliate programs with wordpress

• can you use wordpress for business

• clickbank ready for wordpress

• create web traffic

• find blogs with no-follow

• finding blogs with the do follow attribute

• how to create web traffic

These are my long tail keywords:

• how to find blogs without no-follow

• how to find follow blog

• how to produce an effective business plan

• how to use wordpress 2.0

• how to use wordpress for business

• how to write killer articles

• ilker giveaway

• keys to blogging

• laptop giveaway

• laptop giveways for december

• methods to increase rss subscribers

• ok to use wordpress blog for business

• powered by the super adsense

• powered by the super adsense wordpress theme

• reporting significant improvements

• super adsense wordpress

• tricks of good knowledge improving skills

• use wordpress as your website engine

• water resistant keyboard laptop notebook

• why should i use wordpress instead of blogger

• wordpress easy update

• wordpress ezine theme

I must admit, not all above long tail keywords are good article headlines. But there is one which i can easily pick and forget for a good headline. “why should i use wordpress instead of blogger” is an amazing article headline for one of my targeted niche segments. I will definitely write an article with this headline soon.

How can you use HitTail for your daily blogging?

• Are you get bored of thinking about what to write ? Why don’t you write what your potential readers expect from you?
• Schedule all your weekly articles by using HitTail
• Get suggestions and to do lists from HitTail in order to fully utilize your potential search engine traffic
• Monitor search engine trends on daily basis

Basically you need to put the HitTail code in your blog templates so that it reveals real time keyword data.

How do I put the HitTail code in my blog templates? (copied this part from HitTail FAQ page for your easy guidance)

Blogger

• Go to Template tab
• Put the script into the template right above the </body> tag
• Save the template changes & republish your blog

New Blogger

Get a cool Blogger widget or follow these steps:

• In the Dashboard view, click on “Template” link in the “Manage” section
• Under “Template” tab, click on “Edit HTML” in the top navigation line
• Put the script into the template right above the </body> tag
• Save the template changes

TypePad

The easiest way to add the code - just get a TypePad widget, it only takes a minute!

Alternative way, or if you’re using “Advanced” templates:

• Go to Weblogs tab
• Pick your blog
• Go to Design tab. If your template is not set to “Advanced” you need to do so by following these steps:
  o Click on “Manage Your Designs”
  o Check the box next to your blog’s template name
  o Click “Convert to Advanced” button at the bottom
• Put the script before the </body> tag on each template page (Main index template, archive index template, etc.)
• Save changes & republish your blog.

Movable Type

• Put the script on each of your template pages just before the </body> tag(Main index template, archive index template, etc.)
• Save changes & republish your blog.

WordPress

A free hosted version of WordPress doesn’t allow any javascript or analytics code to be put into your blog template.

However, if your blog is hosted on your own server, you can insert HitTail code into the footer template. Please visit the site below for instructions on how to implement it: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Javascript

You can also download this HitTail plugin for WordPress which installs the code for you.

Squarespace

• Starting from the Administration Dashboard, click Edit Site Content in the Overview section.
• Then click the Edit Website Footer button at the bottom of the page.
• Put the HitTail code in the footer template.
• Click Save & Close.

Now, you should immediately set a free HitTail account by today. There is also a PRO version available. However, free version is more than enough for most of the bloggers. If you have any questions, i will be more than happy to answer. I hope it works for you. Enjoy!

Author : Mert Erkal

www.searchforblogging.com

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