Using SEO is one of the best ways to make sure that your website turns up in search engine results because if someone’s looking for a site like yours, you want to make sure they find it. But it’s no good turning up in search engine results if you’re listed on the 100th page, or worse, the 500th page because no one looks at these pages.

At most, people only look at the first 2 or 3 pages.

So how can you make sure that your web pages turn up in these first few pages of results?

It would be easy to think that you need to find the most popular keywords with the highest amount of searches each month…right? Wrong. Doing that would make it almost impossible for you to succeed because there are already thousands of other marketers using them and because their web pages have been up longer than yours, they are already generating a lot of traffic and so their popularity is already m loving them up to the top results spots.

So, to get your web pages showing up on the first pages of search results, here is what you need to do:

Find Long-Tail Keywords

These are words that are more specific to what you’re selling and it’s typically a phrase of 3 or 4 words. For instance, if you’re trying to sell coffee, there’ll be a ton of competition for “Coffee” as a keyword. Instead, try using a more exact phrase like “Organic Costa Rican Whole Bean Coffee” While such exact phrasing will yield fewer searches, they will be more target specific and tailor to people who are probably more likely to make a purchase. Quality over quantity is the name of the game here, kids.

Aim For Moderate to Small Competition

In addition to using long-tail keywords, also look for phrases that have little or even no competition. This will help to make sure that your web page turns up at or near the top of search engine results. For example, if there are only 8 other marketers using your exact phrase and the search engines show 10 results per page, then your page should be on the first page of results.

See What Keywords Your Competition Is Using

It’s always a good idea to check out the competition to see what other keywords they’re using and the content they’re using to attract more customers.

Try using an online tool like SpyFu, or use Google’s free Keyword Planner, which is used with Google’s anything-but-free AdWords platform.

And although you will not get many visitors to your site by using long-tail keywords, it’s far more beneficial to get on the first page in front of a few highly targeted prospects, then to end up on the 100th page of broader search terms, where your potential customers will never see your website link anyway.