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Seasoned professionals in the arena of online marketing know it's clever to use keywords that target potential customers who are "late" in the buying cycle. So, how do you find out what these keywords are? ...and why are they so important?

In professional terms, what we are talking about here is the concept of targeting so-called long tail keywords.

Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling. Whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy. In practically every scenario, these specific searches are more than likely to end up in a sale, than a generic search. For clarification, here’s an example of the step-by-step path a customer would use in a buying decision:

1. Customer becomes aware of a product.

2. Customer initiates a search for information about the product.

3. Customer evaluates alternatives to product (features, pricing, etc...).

4. Customer makes their purchase decision.

5. Customer pulls out their credit card and completes the transaction.

6. Customer then evaluates the product after buying it and decides if they want to keep or return it.

Using the above six step path to a purchase as our model, you can probably already see that you want to target the customer who is somewhere around step four...

Customer makes their purchase decision.

...because once they have made their decision to buy something, that's when they start using very specific search phrases to seek out their target purchase.

Here’s your opportunity

It turns out that highly specific multi-word phrases tend to be far easier to rank higher than the more generic single keyword or double keyword phrases.

Let’s look at a breakdown. Say your site sells custom designed t-shirts with Brooklyn motifs. At first, you might consider targeting a generic phrase like t-shirts. But, let’s get real, if you tried to go after that phrase, you'd be facing direct competition from big sites like bustedtees.com, thredless.com and zazzle.com. It's unlikely you'd be able to knock any of those sites out of the top ten unless you're willing to invest a pile of money and a load of time.

Even if you were to target a more specific phrase like custom t-shirts you'd still be up against heavy hitters like zazzle.com, vistaprint.org, and spreadshirt.com. So let's look at some of the keywords that are specific to what you're selling — keywords that you can start ranking for and generating traffic and sales right away.

Here are a few highly specific key phrases that relate to customers who are much later in the buying cycle — at least at step three, probably at step four and possibly step five:

• brooklyn graphic tshirts
• t shirts with brooklyn motifs
• made in brooklyn t shirts

Of course, these are just a few examples. I'm sure you could think of many more. However, the point is twofold;

1. The long tail keywords are much easier to rank for.

2. People who search by using long tail keywords are far more likely to become buyers!