It is in the mindset of a lot of small business owners today that targeting a keyword with high search volume is the best approach to being successful in online marketing especially in terms of ranking and website traffic. Well, here at Rocket Local SEO we would like to completely remove and correct that idea and belief. A business can’t be successful by just focusing on targeting keywords with high search volume. Think about a game where everybody aims for a certain target, you think you win if you are competing for 10000 to 100000 competitors? Without a thought, of course not and your chances of winning is at zero percent.
The same thing goes when choosing the keywords you want to target for your website. In this post we are to discuss long tail keywords and how can these keywords benefit your business in terms of boosting your search ranking and website traffic.
So what are long tail keywords?
These keywords are longer and more specific phrases that users and searchers use when looking for a piece of information they need when making a purchase.
Here’s an example: if a company offers web design services, the chances of business to rank for web design is very high. This is because this keyword has too much competition and if you are a startup business, the chances of your business ranking to this term is nothing. Now, if your business will use a long tail keyword such as “web design services in Phoenix AZ”, the competition will be lower compared to just web design. This increases the chance of your business to rank in that search term.
You might think though: “If I choose to use long tail keywords, the traffic I will get will be lesser and it might not be the best option.” Well, this statement is true, you will really get less traffic but this traffic you will get will be a lot better. You will get specific traffic coming from people that are actually looking for your services and with that, you can surely increase your sales and business performance. Here’s a photo coming from MOZ that explains this:
Here the reference link for this – https://moz.com/blog/illustrating-the-long-tail
Let’s now discuss the other reasons why long tail keywords are so important in doing an SEO campaign.
- As stated above long‐tail keywords are low volume and highly‐focused search queries and tend to convert exceptionally well. Meaning by having long tail keywords you have bigger chances of outranking your competitors.
- Long-tail keywords are often the same as how people actually search in Google. This means that people using long-tail keywords are really searching for information about a specific topic and using these terms in your site increases your click thru rate exponentially.
- Long-tail keywords help in creating your text content. Since these terms are actual words being searched by people, they often fit into a phrase when adding into the body of your articles.
- Long-tail keywords have higher conversion rates. With the image we had above, these terms can greatly increase the conversion of your since people are really looking for a specific product or type service. According to recent research by WordStream, the top 10% of landing pages convert at 11.45%. While the average conversion rate for long-tail keywords is 36%! Very huge difference when it comes to performance right? For more information, follow the links.
After discussing some of the main reasons why we need to use long tail keywords in our SEO campaign. The next step is that we need to find them.
How to Find Long-tail keywords?
It’s actually easy to find long tail keywords and we have a lot of tools we can use in finding them. Below are some of the tools you can use:
- Google autocomplete suggestions. This is one of the easiest ways of finding your long tail keywords. When we say it’s easy, it really is. You simply type a broad keyword or a seed keyword and suggestions will automatically display. Take a look at this example:
This feature of Google shows what the people are really typing in search engines. Being able to have these lists will help you gather good keywords you can choose from for your SEO content strategy. - Keywords Everywhere Plugin. This tool is really one of our favorites. Aside from showing us the search volume and competition for each keyword, it also shows some keyword suggests we can check. It’s also cool that most of these keywords are long tail. For the keyword “local SEO guide” we got long tail keywords as related keywords. Take a look at this example:
- Answer The Public. This tool is somehow new but it’s really a good one. Simply added the seed keywords will display a lot of long-tail keyword ideas for a certain topic. You might need to get a pro version of this tool though to get full access of its features. Take a look at this example:
- Ubersuggest. Of course, this tool will not be missed. We personally love how this tool works for our long-tail keyword research. Plus, it is completely free. Finding long-tail keywords has never been this easy. This tool also shows all relevant information for you to decide when choosing the list of keywords you want to target. If you would like to read about our post about ubersuggest, click here. But for the purpose of this article, take a look at this example:
To sum everything up, long-tail keywords are really beneficial and the best option for startups and small businesses especially if they want to rank in Google. Well established businesses can also get the same benefits because they can greatly increase the number of keywords they can rank for. So what are you waiting for? Do it now and add long-tail keywords in your SEO campaign and content strategy.
Do you need help? Rocket Local SEO is happy to assist and help you. Take advantage of our free SEO consultation. You can also message us directly for other inquiries you may have.
