One of the main goals of a webmaster is to try and attract as much traffic as possible via low cost or free methods. One of the strongest sources of free traffic is what is known as organic traffic, that is, traffic that comes from search engines.

Generally, this traffic is generated by people searching for some sort of information and then being directed to your site from the search engines. If you can manage to get your site listed in the top positions for various common phrases you can drive a large amount of free traffic to your site, a wonderful result for any webmaster.

Let’s think logistics here for a second though. It isn’t always possible for the everyday webmaster to capture top rankings for heavily searched key phrases. This is because the big dogs in your niche have likely developed much more reputable web sites and networks to capture those same top rankings. As such, the high competition search phrases are often out of reach of the young webmaster.

Not to worry, however, as there are other options for a new site to pursue. The most common of these is known as long tail article writing or trying to capture long tail traffic. While it is true that you’re not likely to capture a top ranking for the keyword “dog” simply because there are so many sites ranking highly for that term, it is entirely uncertain as to whether or not you’d actually like that placement.

Consider this, what exactly is the person searching for the word “dog” looking for? Who knows? They could be looking for any number of things, many of which may not even be on your site. So yah, you’d probably get a large amount of traffic but none of it would be interested in what you’re offering.

However, what if you were to rank highly for a term such as “how to train a poodle to sit”? This would most likely be a great benefit for you if your site was actually about training poodles as this person is looking for exactly the product or content that your site provides. This is the concept of long tail marketing. That is, as the content becomes increasingly more specific the number of prospects shrink, however, they become much more targeted towards whatever it is that you are selling.

This is an important concept to understand when writing articles for search engines because it is generally impractical to try and write articles or develop content targeted at high traffic / high competition keyword phrases when that traffic isn’t even very targeted.

Instead, it is much more lucrative (and much easier) to develop quality content containing keyword phrases that have lower search volume but that also have much less competition as the traffic that you do capture is much more targeted to your offer.

In addition to developing content related to long tail keyword phrases, it is important that the content deliver high quality value to your prospects since this will also help your site in the eyes of the search engines.