Connecting long tail keywords to pages

[Warren_Vick]

New to Moz and this forum, so be gentle.

I’m in the process of overhauling a generally neglected website and have just finished some research on long tail keywords. My question is, how do I implement these? For example, I’ve got a product “Acme Widget” which has its own page on the site (and ranking well for the product name itself). I have lots of long tail keyword sets which describe key benefits of the products – some of which appear in the product copy, others which don’t (perhaps because the thing that a user may search for is ugly/bad-English in copy). For the sake of argument, let’s say I have the following long tail keywords for my Acme Widgets.

• cheap red widget
• los angleles widget
• strong green widgets florida

What is the best way to implement these? Do I need to simply incorporate the text into my main Acme Widgets page, or do I need to have separate pages which are highly targeted to each long tail keyword? The problem with the former is unnatural/ugly copy. The problem with the latter is that coming up with enough content to justify (and rank) a page on each keyword set would be quite a challenge.

Regards,
Warren

[Everett]

Hello Warren,

The more you think about this the more likely you are to get yourself in trouble with Google. Just write informatively and naturally, with the goal of converting the visitor, and you should be fine.

I know this advice sounds like it's brushing off the question, but it's not. If you start putting keywords like "los angeles widget" and "strong green widget florida" into the copy you're going to ruin your chances of ranking well in the long-term... Likewise if you start creating geographic targeted doorway pages. Both of these tactics are against Google's Webmaster Guidelines and are pretty easy for them to spot.

I would take these "long tail" keywords and group them by topic. For example:

Widgets (size)
Widgets (strength)
Widgets (location)

Then I would total up the search volume for each "set" of long tail keywords. If it looks like it might be worthwhile to create content, then put up a page for each set and use the variations naturally. Don't worry if you can't use them all exactly. Google gave you the data so you can assume they already know the semantic relationships between the phrases - thus, you don't need to put them all in there. Search for "Cheap Widget" and you'll see results for "Inexpensive Widgets".  Make sense?

If you do create these topical pages just be sure that they are valuable to the visitor. If they're not you could harm your site.

[Warren_Vick]

Thanks for your advice on this one too, Linda. I'm pleased that the implementation does not involve a new page for every long-tail keyword. As part of a copy overhaul, I'll carefully craft in all the variants.

Language differences are a challenge... while I can work in "mobile" and "cellular" into copy, spelling differences between US and British English will look a bit odd. e.g. color/colour.

/W

[Linda-Vassily]

Welcome to the community!

The great thing about long-tail keywords is that you don't need a page for every one, in fact you shouldn't. A well-written page can rank for a number of keywords.

What additional pages would make sense, given what people are looking for and what you have for content?

If the queries being used mainly have to do with simple variations, that is something you could probably add to your main widgets page [green widgets vs. red widgets]. If it has to do with a more basic difference [premium heavy-duty widgets vs bargain household widgets] those could probably be separate pages.

And definitely don't worry about matching ungrammatical search terms--Google can figure that part out and the last thing you would want is ugly/bad page copy!