If you’re thinking of looking into long tail searches (eg vacation rentals) for your site, where do you go to find them? These are the odd combinations of keywords that Googlers look for such as “vacation rental with extra barbeque”. They give you insight into what people are looking for.

There are some great resources for this, such as the free version of Wordtracker or Google Suggest. Just type in your basic keyword (vacation rentals here) and you’ll get a list of combinations. The many long combinations at the end are the long tail.

The problem with this idea is that you get a public list. It’s also a list of general searches, rather than something specific to your site.

It’s better to look at your own website visitors. What combinations are they looking for? Your analytics tool such as Google Analytics will tell you what keywords brought people to your site. That’s the big difference

This information is incredibly valuable and you can use it to find out what makes your site unique. I’ll bet there are some combinations in there that you never expected!!