To grow your online business, you need more ‘qualified’ traffic to your website. A primary way to achieve this is a first-rate SEO strategy.

With all the digital marketing tools, consultants and agencies available to help, its within your grasp to increase the number of qualified customers to your website and business.

One key strategy is long-tail keywords.

What are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords are keywords or key phrases that are more specific – and usually longer – than more commonly searched for keywords. Long-tail keywords get less search traffic but will usually have a higher conversion value/ rate, as they are more specific/ targeted. These keywords focus more on a niche. The term long-tail keyword comes from the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. In this book, Chris Anderson shows there is a market for virtually every product. In some cases, however, this market is really, really, really small.

It is much easier to rank for long-tail keywords than for more common keywords because there will be fewer websites competing for high rankings in the result pages of Google. The longer (and more specific) search terms are, the easier it is to rank for the term. Because of the vastness of the internet, it is easier to find your audience for your particular niche. Focusing on a group of long-tail keywords will result in a great deal of traffic altogether.

Another advantage of focusing on long-tail keywords is that, although these keywords are used less in search, the potential customer that finds your website using these are far more likely to purchase/ engage with your service or product.

To yield a high return from your long-tail keyword strategy, you should have a clear image of your company, your product/ service and your website. Here, I’ll attempt to explain what long-tail keywords are and show you how understanding your own product helps you set up this strategy and why you should put in the effort.

You must be acutely aware of what your product and/or your website offers, your/its competitive advantage and how that translates to your audience…what makes you special.

If you know and understand this, you will be more effective when engaging your audience and persuading them to like and procure your offering(s). Take time to consider the uniqueness of your service/ product and write those strategic points down. Be diligent to write down your competitive advantage in words that are used and understood by your audience.

It is important to note that in some market spaces, it will very hard to get high SERP rankings. Some markets are too highly competitive, and have large companies dominating search results. These companies have unlimited SEO and digital marketing budgets. Ranking in these markets is near impossible. You will be unable to compete on a small budget in a market like the auto industry using search terms as ‘new car sales.’

However, if you have your CA clear, you should be able to define what makes your product or website stand out. You should be able to find your specific target audience/ your niche. Concentrate on less competitive terms and use words that your target audience uses (and PLEASE avoid difficult terms).

Use your competitive advantage and mission to define your long-tail keywords.

The definition of your mission, in which you make crystal clear what the awesomeness of your product or service is, should be the principal factor in choosing your long-tail keywords. Trying to make your website rank for a specific term can be quite profitable, as long as this specific term closely resembles your product and/ or service.

The terms you use to define your mission can be suitably used to emphasize your SEO strategy. These words should be fundamental in the long-tail keywords you aspire your website to rank for. People using the terms of your mission and finding your website will be relatively small in volume but will be highly qualified customers to buy your product.

The next step: amazing content…

After you have completed your keyword research and know which keywords you would like to rank for, start creating epic content.

I’ll elaborate on this in my next post.

A website that is aiming to fine-tune the search terms being used to find the right web page. When someone, such as yourself, is trying to find a very specific thing. This could be information on how to increase your business, along with revenue through SEO and other traffic building methods, for example.

Similar to the way regular keywords work, long-tail keywords are useful in describing information on a web page. They include exactly how the person or company publishing that web page wants you to discover them. Whether that be in your search engine of choice or on its results page. Unfortunately, due to how specific a string of long-tail keywords can be, they will drum up fewer visitors and traffic to your published website. However, they will positively attract a higher quality of user traffic. This, in turn, will also result in a higher conversion rate over regular keyword searches.

The Mobile Effect on Long-Tail Queries

If you are like me, you have in your pocket, purse or in your hand right now, a mobile device that would make the generations before us tremble in their boots. They can do so much. Such as telling the time, weather, traffic warnings, play music, play podcasts, play audiobooks, watch videos, movies, etc. And yes, even make phone calls! But more importantly, thanks to the various mobile assistants, today’s “cell phones” can listen to our voice queries and understand our needs. Voice search is not only extremely cool and convenient, but it is also changing the way SEO strategies are developed.

Nowadays, mobile queries are becoming more and more relied upon. As a result, short tail search terms are not as relevant. This is due to the terms used in voice searches increasing over typed search terms. This emphasizes the importance of researching and using the right long-tail keywords and terms to draw in voice searches. To put things into perspective, almost four years ago, back in 2016, the Global Web Index indicated that 1 in 5 people are using voice search on their mobile device. I am sure it is closer to over half by now and there are no signs of slowing down.

As you’re trying to increase business and revenue, I would recommend when researching your keywords, that you use a more conversation-like style. These conversation-style long-tail search terms can boost your SEO. To maximize this strategy, ideally, you would have keywords that describe your services, along with detailed features of your products. Include proper speech phrases when doing this.

Let’s say you’re a distributor of Star Wars paraphernalia. Using the shorter tailed keyword “Force” might not necessarily be as beneficial in drawing those using voice search to your web site. Try instead using long-tail keywords such as “X-Wing Pilot Helmets in Mint Condition” to better connect with what your audience is searching for.

Are Long-Tail Search Terms here to stay?

Generally speaking, yes. Long-tail search terms and keywords are essentially the way that people are searching the web already. As long as there are businesses trying to get as many people to visit their website, there will always be strategies created to maximize the visibility of their services and products. Content is still king when it comes to SEO. By thinking about how your audience is searching for you will help ensure you and your site will be front and center.

Successful strategies for your SEO will happen once you understand what content your target audience will benefit from. On top of this, relevancy is taken into consideration as well. How can you take care of this, you ask? As I mentioned earlier, there are several tools like the Google Keyword Planner in Google Ads, or SEMrush’s Keyword Search tool, along with digital marketing agencies such as Techwyse.com that can help.

In conclusion:

Take into consideration the way we are using voice search in our daily lives; we are doing searches more like conversational questions instead of the old typed keyword search. This is how long-tail keywords work; your business has a much better opportunity to rank higher for these queries and being shown at the top of the search results.

Pay attention to your audience, their method of queries and search for what they are looking for. Ensure you stay focused on your business objectives. Research how to use long-tail search terms and keywords to improve your visibility and impression share of your target audience. The long-tail keyword is how we are already communicating, not just with ourselves and each other conversationally. Still, it also reflects on some small level, how we communicate online with our audience.