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Here is a tip for people who want to know how to optimize a long tail SEO strategy.

Let’s say your Web site sells trail shoes but you’ve found the competition for “trail shoes” is too much for your basic SEO techniques. One-dimensional SEO strategies tell you to pour everything you’ve got into that query space to dominate it: build a great site, expand the useful and informative content often, and obtain as many links as you can.

Of course, if you can do all that, so can your competitors.

Two-dimensional SEO strategies tell you to concentrate on secondary keywords, the “long tail” strategy. If you cannot beat them, go around them. So instead of optimizing for “trail shoes” you optimize for “trail shoes X Y Z”, where people may be looking for very specific trail shoes.

But that trick is passe. In fact, it’s now a more highly recommended strategy than the first (in some corners of the SEO community).

Three dimensional SEO strategies focus on neighborhoods and networks rather than individual Web sites. You can optimize for both the highly competitive core term and the long tail terms by specializing through micro sites.

Now, a lot of people have tried to boost their primary sites with micro sites and faux networks. I am not proposing that. If you’re going to create micro sites, each site needs to have a unique function and purpose. You’re creating a brand for each micro site so that it can stand on its own. But the brands are built on long tail queries.

In essence, you create a niche neighborhood that connects with sites you don’t operate but which helps guide people to the central resource you want to promote the most. These segue sites serve as a transition point for surfers. If they are looking for “trail shoe recycling” you can write articles about how to recycle trail shoes on a micro site and use that site to promote your main trail shoe site.

It’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, let me move my product reviews to another domain”. You have to create a site that could and should exist (in someone’s mind) regardless of whether your primary site exists. In this way you bring your passion and expertise together to create a new, useful resource that attracts motivated, interested visitors.

The micro site then suggests to those visitors that they look at your primary site.

Do you have to spend as much time developing value for the micro sites as for the primary site? No. But you don’t want to abandon the micro sites completely. They should be redesigned at least once a year and updated with new content every 1-3 months.

There is no specific number of sites you need or should create. However, if you create more than 10 you’re probably doing it wrong. In my experience, micro site clusters work best when you keep them in the 5-10 range. You want to provide unique, useful information to people that is substantial and coherent.

You would need to use different templates for each micro site, so if they all look like the primary site, you’re doing it wrong.

You would NOT necessarily want to interlink the micro sites. If you do interlink them, make sure you do so through relevant copy, not through footer, margin, or navigation links.

You want each micro site to link out to other sites you don’t control that are relevant each site’s primary topic (its brand). Show people there is a coherent Web community about the topic. Build the coherent community if you must (it’s okay to reciprocate with a few of the sites — the more obscure and unknown your linking partners, the better).

This is not cheap spammy stuff. If you can put a micro site network together in a day or two, you’re doing it wrong (i.e., you’re being spammy). A week, maybe. Frankly, if it takes you less than two weeks, you’re probably doing a sloppy job. Spend at least 2 days on each site.

Promote each site appropriately. Don’t obsess over links, but get links for each site. You don’t need many before people start to notice the sites.

This technique is what some people call organic search arbitrage. However, the more you try to systemize it, the less likely you are to achieve long term success. You don’t want to be constantly building new Web sites. You just want to create a Web neighborhood that accrues traffic from multiple long tail queries, funneling that traffic toward the master brand site.