If your site is relatively new and is not ready to compete against the big boys in the SEO keyword stakes, then long-tail keywords could be just what you are looking for. They can bring you traffic by performing well in the search engine results as longer keywords.

Let’s look at how to use Google Analytics to discover which ones you could make more of on your site for increased traffic levels and improved search engine results.

1. Set your time-line in Google Analytics for your site to 3 months or so.

2. Click on the left hand navigation on Content and then Top Content. You will then be shown the pages of your site in order of how many times they have been viewed.

3. Select the page that you want to analyse. Then select ‘Entrance Keyword’ either on the page that you are shown next or on the drop down menu. You will be shown all the keywords that were used to find that page on Google. You can test these keywords by entering them into Google yourself to see the results.

4. To select the best keywords, think about these points:

• Select keywords that are relevant to your site and are likely to be used again
• Use ‘page views’ to assist your choice, as that refers to how many times the page was viewed with that keyword as the entrance keyword
• The average time on page – the longer it is, the more engaging and appropriate your content was for the keyword used. Low bounce rates mean that the page was also what the visitor was expecting to find for that keyword.
• Time spent on the page can also be related to the length of the content, not just whether you were providing what the visitor was looking for.

Select the top 10-15 keywords, and reuse them in your content and your meta tags for improved results on your search engine results and increased traffic.