How to target long tail keywords

[aoifep]

Apologies if this is already answered, I'm a newbie.  I'm looking to determine how to target long tail keywords.  I'm supporting a site that is new and with very small budgets in the very competitive life insurance market.  If we devise a list of long tail keywords, should we then add those to the page titles, meta descriptions etc rather than the short tail ones that the site will never rank for anyway?

[MattAntonino]

You could - although I would suggest that if you create content for the long tail keywords it will perform better than if you just slap some labels on existing content.  I would think the plan would be:

1. Create new long tail content (blogs are #1 for this, I'd guess.)

2. Rank the long tail stuff and get more notice, thus gaining more backlinks and more pass through to your head keywords (short tail).

3. Then create a mix of long & short tail, keep growing in both areas.

[brandonRT]

Matt is right - fresh, unique blog content using your targeted long-tail keywords will go a long way.

One added suggestion is to do a search using the keywords, make note of the top 10 ranking domains, and then do a "[keyword] site:[rankingdomain.com]" search to see how many times the ranking domains use the keyword and in what context.

Those domains are your benchmarks, so emulating what works but putting your unique twist on it (and not straight up duplicating it) should help get you on the right path. Make note of their meta tags, linking domains, etc. Then do them one better

[WesleySmits]

Writing unique and deep content about the subject.

For example, If you are targeting the long tail keyword: 'cool buildings found in new york city' and 'the best subway stations in the world.' you should write really good content about the two subjects. Make sure to try to grab multiple long-tail keywords around a certain topic and make sure the content is valuable to your visitors. Not just content created purely for ranking on certain keywords.