SEO optimization for popular long-tail content

[CuriosityMedia]

I was wondering if you all have tips / best practices to SEO-optimize new pages created for popular long-tail queries, as well as recommendations to assure we don't have duplicate content issues.

[MattRoney]

I would add that you may find Cyrus Shepard's Keywords to Concepts a useful read. You may find you don't need to optimize for every long tail term you want to catch.

[BradsDeals]

My advice would be to write for topics rather than for keywords. For example, if you're building one page for "red widgets", one for "crimson widgets", and one for "scarlet widgets", ask yourself if those aren't all actually the same thing. If they are, write one page instead of three, and talk about red widgets using supporting widget-related vocabulary, because the search engines will not be fooled, and even if they are you don't want to have three light, near-duplicate pages competing against one another. Write the best page about red widgets the internet has ever seen. Google is increasingly good at understanding context.