You have a business opportunity and a website and you want to make it more search engine optimized. You live in Auckland and want to try to take locals the most. You figure long tail key words like the following are best:

• home based business in Auckland
• best home business in Auckland
• finding your financial freedom Auckland
• flush your job in Auckland
• welcome to your home based business in Auckland

Perhaps you hire a company to help you with SEO; perhaps you do it your self. You make many pages, blogs and articles that use the key phrases. You really drive the point home about “best home business in Auckland” and “finding your financial freedom in Auckland”. You pages are beautiful and your articles we research. You tweet your blog postings to get them into the major search engines quickly and for free. You buy products to help you build followers. You know the leads are just going to pour in.

You wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Nothing but crickets. What went wrong.

You use the Google adword tool and discover something. No one is searching on “best home business in Auckland,” but they are searching on “best home business”. The competition for this shorter tail is fierce. You look at the sites that are on the top of the first page. There’s no way you can beat that. Is SEO for real or is it just a way for others to make money from you?

The reality is, many of the best key words are already well in use in many industries. The pain of this discovery is made worse when you have hired a company to do SEO for you. Sure, you are at the top of the first page for “best home business in Auckland,” but no one is searching. Well, except you to see where you rank in Google and Bing. That isn’t going to get the job done. What should you do?

Continue your blog and article marking for your long tail key words. After all, this is the market you want, but don’t bother with expensive SEO services for phrases that no one uses. Instead, visit the sites that come up for the shorter phrases that are in your niche. Do they allow advertising? Make note of those that do and pursue advertising there. Let them spend their money on SEO while you use them to market. Now you can use your phrases such as “best home business in Auckland” and the like as your headlines. Now you will see hits to your site and leads in your inbox. Now you are moving toward results.