All newbies to internet marketing need to know how to improve search engine rankings. Anyone who knows anything about internet marketing will know about traffic. Traffic is the amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives. A homebased business simply doesn't survive without it. Whether you are using a landing page, sales letter page, web site, article or blog, you need to attract traffic.

The two main components you need are:

- Good content without verbiage or hype

- Good content with important keywords

Notice the emphasis on good content. That's really important and must not be neglected. However let's concentrate on keywords first.

A keyword is a word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many web sites offer advertising based on keyword targeting so an advertisers banner will only show when a specific keyword(s) are entered.

So now you know that your keywords have to be high on the internet surfer's search list. However, you'll have huge competition for the popular ones so it is best to choose keywords that are moderately popular as apposed to highly popular.

Here's where we introduce, 'long tailed keywords'. For example, the phrase 'internet marketing' is used by 640,000 of your competitors with around 138,000 people searching for it every month. However, if you use a term like 'internet business opportunity' you'll find 15,000 people a month searching for this and only 8,500 competitors.

Get the picture? Use long tailed keywords because you won't have as much competition. In the above example, you are 8 times more likely to be found using the moderately popular term.

And don't forget plurals. You may have noticed that earlier in this article I used the term 'improve search engine rankings' (plural). I could have used 'improve search engine ranking' (singular).

Both of these have a monthly search of around 8,000. Between the two that's 16,000 people searching for those keywords. The competition for both terms combined is only 3,500.

Look for unusual spellings. For example, 'homebased business' has a monthly search of 10,000 while 'home based business' had 85,000 but with a competition count of 164,000.

You are better off employing several less popular keyword terms whose search numbers when combined are as high as one popular term. However, they will have far less competition. There are several programs on the internet that will help you find the best terms. Some free, some not. Google it - but not just now. I have an important message coming up.

Untruths and half truths.

When you write articles and blogs, were you told about long tailed keywords? If not, then that's an untruth by omission.

And what about the tedium of all that writing? Were you told not to worry about it and just hire someone to do it for you? Or perhaps you were encouraged to get private label rights (PLR) to some pre-written scripts.

I think that purchasing work written especially for you is quite a good idea. However, the PLR work could be in the hands of a thousand or more people. Personally I would re-write any of this work to give it your own style. That way you'll always be providing original content.

I trust this has given you a better perspective on how to improve search engine rankings by using long tailed keywords. Do your research, be genuine and your online homebased business will eventually flourish.

To your success.