A search engine spider is a program that follows, or “crawls”, links throughout the internet, grabbing content from sites and adding it to search engine indexes. Spiders will visit your site and see what new content you have. However, the less new content you have, the less they will visit you.

Did you know you can train web spiders? Because web spiders are specifically looking for new content, the frequency of their visits to your site is determined by how often your site has been updated in the past. If  you only update your content once a month, the search engine spiders know they only need to visit on a monthly basis to see your new content.

If you are updating your content at least once a week, thee search engine spiders will get used to coming around weekly to index your new content and indexing that new content means it is then available to be found by search engines! Those web spiders are looking for new content so you have to feed them new content to get them trained to come and visit your site.

A blog is the best and easiest way for businesses to add new content on a regular basis. Work on adding great content that will not only be crawled by spiders and indexed by search engines, but will be attractive to people when they are searching.

Another tool that helps spiders and search engines is an xml site map. XML is a document structure and encoding standard that is the standard for spiders to find and parse site maps. Site maps can improve search engine optimization by making sure that all of your content can be found. You can set your site map so that it will notify search engines when you have new content so the spiders will not only be trained to come back, but will get an invitation to see your new content.

Businesses wanting to be found on the web have to come to terms with the fact that content creation that is search engine friendly is imperative to growing online.

Has blogging helped your business? Tell us how.

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What are long tail keywords? They are the specific niche phrases that help you reach a very targeted market as opposed to short tail keywords that are targeted at a broader marketing. In 2010, on Google, over 50% of searches had over 4 keywords entered. Long tail keywords allow you to better reach your specific targeted audience. This image from the Left Click Blog is a illustration of the long tail.

Let’s look at an example:

The words “Real Estate” get 1,000,000 monthly searches. If you are using the keyword real estate, it will be very hard for you to rank. In most cases, it would also not be effective to rank for real estate. If you are a local Realtor, it does not make sense to try to compete for the term “real estate” because you are competing for that phrase world wide.

The term “Real Estate in Mountain Home, AR” gets way fewer searches. If you are a Realtor in Mountain Home, Arkansas, that would be a better keyword phrase to try to rank for because it is specifically relevant to you. This is an example of a long tail keyword phrase.

You can take this example even further. While “Real Estate in Mountain Home, AR” is a good phrase, in this case, you still have a lot of competition because there are many Realtors in Mountain Home. An even longer long tail keyword might be, “Norfork Lake view home in Mountain Home, AR.” Of course, there will not be as many people searching with that phrase, but, if they are using those words and they find your listing for a Norfork Lake view home in Mountain Home, AR, you have delivered exactly what they are looking for. That kind of traffic is very valuable because you have exactly what they are looking for!

Think of long tail keyword examples for your business. If you have a static website, the opportunity to get long tail keyword traffic is limited. You should limit your keyword phrases to one per page. If you have a 20 page website, you have 20 long tail keyword opportunities. However, if you have a website that you can expand and add pages or even better a blog, you have limitless opportunities to rank for long tail keywords that will reach a more targeted market.

You can research keywords online with free tools such as Google’s keyword tool. You can also do research with paid tools such as Hubspot’s keyword grader that can be integrated with your blog and website and track your keyword traffic.

Key Take-Aways:

1. Use long tail keywords for better traffic. Reach your niche market more effectively.
2. The more opportunities you take to use long tail keywords, the more effective they will be.

Next Step:

1. Start a blog! It is one of the most effective ways to reach your target market.

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