Today's post takes a look at how you can use long tail keywords to grow your audience and ultimately increase revenue for your business.
What are long tail keywords?
In general, long tail keywords is a term used to describe less searched for words which combined search volumes outweigh that of a top 10 keyword selection or competitive keywords. Think of a long tail keyword as a type of keyword phrase that can have at least three, and some times as many as five words in the phrase.
Long tail keywords are search phrases with longer word counts. Their length makes them more specific than searches with fewer words.
A practical example
Generic keyword: small business
Long tail keyword: small business financial case studies
In the above example, if someone does a search for ‘small business' they could really be looking for anything related to small business. However, if someone is searching for ‘small business financial case studies' they are looking for something specific and intentional – In this case, financial case studies.
Here's a visual representation below.
When to use long tail keywords?
You would use long tail keywords when you want to refine search terms to a particular web page, as well as when the searcher is looking for something rather specific.
Like normal keywords, long tail keywords are used to define what is on the web page and what the publisher or author wants to be found under in search engine results.
If you're just getting started in SEO, using long tail keywords will allow you to make some quick wins as they are generally less competitive and have lower search volumes than competitive keywords.
Why use long tail keywords
Popular search terms make up less than 30% of the searches performed on the web. The remaining 70% lie in the long tail of search.
The long tail contains hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be conducted a few times in any given day, however, when taken together they comprise the majority of the world's demand for information through search engines.
Long tail keywords often convert better, because they catch people later in the buying or conversion cycle. Some benefits of using long tail keywords include:
- Better quality traffic: Long tail keywords are more specific, which means visitors that land on your website from a long tail search term are typically more qualified.
- Less competition: The more specific you get with your long tail keywords, the less competition there is.
- Rank better for difficult terms: By also including competitive terms in your long tail keyword phrases, you're also gaining traction on that difficult search term.
A major benefit of leveraging long tail keywords is that, although these keywords are used less in search, the visitor that finds your website using them is more likely to buy your service or product. As illustrated above, this type of visitor to your website has a much higher probability of converting.
Finding long tail keywords
Knowing what long tail keywords are is one thing, knowing how to research and find them is something else altogether.
Some useful resources to get you started include:
- Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool
- Google Insights for Search
- Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction
- Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
Google's AdWords Keyword tool is a common starting point for SEO keyword research for most people. It not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms. This process can be rather time-consuming, particularly if you're unsure about what you're doing.
If you're looking for a tool that will do all the heavy lifting for you so you can continue to focus on your business then we would recommend Long Tail Pro.
Long Tail Pro is a powerful keyword research software. Long Tail Pro allows the user to generate hundreds or thousands of unique Long Tail keywords in a matter of minutes based on 1 single root keyword or multiple root keywords at once.
Developing your long tail strategy
Success online can look different to everyone. However, if your website has a blog and you are leveraging this for generating leads and sales for your business you need to be looking for more intelligent ways to use keywords and develop your SEO strategy.
Understanding how long tail keywords can build and grow your audience has become an important influencer in building and growing your organic search traffic.
Users have over time, learned to be more specific with their search terms and less general. Knowing this, you can't afford to ignore the importance of long tail keywords and its influence on growing your audience and improving online engagement.