I read a book a few years authored by Chris Anderson entitled “The Long Tail”. The term “long tail”, which was coined by its author, is used to describe the economic concept of targeting less-competitive niche markets rather than hugely competitive broad markets. Even though there is a larger total pie (money) available in a broad market, by definition that market is bound to be highly competitive and decidedly generalized resulting in a diminished ability to profit from that market.

So what does this have to do with Search Engine Optimization you may ask? Well, it dawned on me that the Long Tail of Economics is precisely the same concept I preach over and over to clients in regards to ranking high in the search engines.

Keywords that one would optimize for can basically be split into two distinct categories, which would be short tail keywords and long tail keywords, or broad keywords and narrow keywords.

Let’s say you are a retinal eye specialist working in Las Vegas, NV. Conceivably you could optimize for short tail keywords such as “eye doctor” or “eye care”, but the chances of ranking high for these enormously broad and competitive keyword are exactly slim and none.

It would be better to optimize for the term “retinal eye specialist”, as that phrase will be much less competitive in the search engines and the traffic you receive from it would be much better targeted. Even better still would be to optimize for phrases like “Las Vegas Retinal Eye Specialist” or “Nevada Retinal Eye Specialist”. Obtaining a top ranking for these phrases would require very little effort or investment and visitors arriving at your site would be extremely targeted to your particular service.

This same exact concept also applies to Pay Per Click marketing.

Let’s say you are a wedding photographer working in Orange County, CA and are running a pay per click campaign with Google’s Adwords. If you were to bid for the word “photographer”, you would be contending for an extremely competitive term and it would likely cost you around $2.50 or more per click to rank in the top three spots. Even more important to consider is that it could be costing you $2.50 per shot for worthless clicks. That is, an aspiring actress in Omaha, Nebraska looking for modeling pictures is as likely to find your site as one looking for wedding pictures on Orange County. Suffice to say, a model from the Midwest is not the ideal client for an Orange County Wedding Photographer.

The correct long tail strategy in this scenario would be to bid on phrases like “Wedding Photography in Orange County” or “Wedding Photographer Serving Southern California “. Not only would the bid price to be in the top spot run much less than $2.50, but you can be assured that the people clicking on these ads would be seeking your specific service in your specific area.

So to get the best results with your search engine optimization efforts, follow these simple rules.

1. Do not use single word keywords, as they cannot be promoted effectively.

2. Avoid the most popular keyword phrases because you’ll be competing with millions of other pages for a search engine’s attention.

3. Specific multiword phrases are the keyword terms to optimize for. Not only will they be less competitive and much easier to rank in the top spot for, but the traffic you receive will be of much higher quality.

William Foote is co-founder of http://www.vmg-interactive.com.