How would you build organic traffic to my new site?

[startupsalesmentor]

I know many of the obvious SEO, tricks, obviously I am here right...

Anyways for messageslinger.com the question is should I use a longtail and pick up what contact contact and icontact are not paying to be at the top of, or should I go right at them in key searches with a potent organic SEO and SEM approach?

Any help....APPRECIATED!

[ziller]

I would go for long tail phrases to begin with, depending on the success you get with trying to compete for the more competitive phrases. but going back to business basics I would make sure your service and your product actually competes with the likes of icontact before you try and spend money competing with them.

[Jeremy80]

ziller makes some good points. Sometimes it is not a good idea to go after the most competitive phrase right off the bat. It is usually a better idea to first start with some less competitive keywords. That way you can get some traffic to your website asap. That initial traffic can help you keep your marketing efforts going. As your website builds up some good rankings and traffic, you can gradually start targeting more competitive keywords. I like to target a group of keywords with varied levels of competitiveness.