When it comes to suggesting long-tail SEO keywords, one of the most common issues we Search Engine Academy associates run into when advising clients or teaching students is they want to use the shorter, very popular phrases. Invariably, they want to use highly popular, very saturated single words or two-word phrases that are common in their business.
Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to use those words, except that their competition, which may well be national or international companies have already hijacked the search engine results pages (SERPs) for those words. I ask these folks how many years they have to be patient in ranking for these phrases. Almost all of them tell me they aren’t thinking in years, but weeks.
Well, I hate to bust their bubble (OK, I really don’t mind!), but when I show them round figures for the number of searches vs. the number of competing webpages (hundreds vs. millions), they get discouraged. Luckily, there is another option for finding your top keywords for SEO.
Long-Tail SEO Keywords Are Simpler
Long-tail keywords are low hanging fruit. They often have very healthy search demand and a low number of pages that present SEO keyword competition. It’s so much less work to target phrases that may be very exact to rank higher. Once you’ve mastered some of these longer phrases, then you can go after the high demand phrases, but don’t expect miracles right away.
Long-tail keywords may reflect exactly what’s on your website. If the phrase “men’s high-top black basketball shoes” matches one of your products, why not use that phrase instead of “basketball shoes?” For one thing, anyone who types in that phrase and lands on your page is ready to buy. In a few short clicks, they’ve found what they want, and you make a sale! Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Or suppose you sell and install project accounting software. Think about the related concepts and phrases that support project accounting software. It just might be that you find a few long-tail keywords that are easier to target and boost your pages faster in showing up higher in the SERPs!
Granted, it takes a little work to create copy around a long-tail keyword phrase. But you can also look at it as an opportunity to create highly relevant, very useful content that just happens to line up nicely with Google’s guidelines on quality content. If you look at it in this light, then you’re going to be in compliance more often with Google Webmaster recommendations. In turn, this lessens the chances you’ll get hammered with Google Penguin or Panda updates.
So, you’ll sleep better at night, knowing you don’t have to obsess over if you’re doing “white hat SEO” or not. You can use that energy for other things like creating more great content, participating in social media platforms, building relationships with prospects, and getting more sales.
So the next time you’re presented with long-tail keywords, think of them as an advantage over your competition!
Until next time…keep it in the ditches!
All the best,
Hey Nancy,
Great article and very appropriate. Must admit that while I have probably always applied the long tail approach (focusing on 3-4 word phrases as KW) I have never consciously sought after them. I will now – you did inspire me 🙂
But – does not take away me being ambiguous! I constantly focus on traffic relevance to KW. The usual – low comp, low SE result, limited BL’s, decent traffic. For LT, it’s hard to really make it relevant. Take your example:
basketball shoes – exact local US search today (Google KWT): 33,100
mens hightop black basketball shoes – exact local US search today: NIL
So even if I can rank to high – I get zero traffic! What’s the point. Would you not rather go with some traffic – e.g.500-800 giving you a probablilty of getting say max 12% if you are in #2 = 60-100 a day? That’s not much but what really makes sense in what you say above is the fact that once your visitors are on your site, if you can entice them, you get related traffic – and perhaps sales. That’s what driving me to really focus on LT now – the related traffic. But still – I will never go with a LT that has NIL in exact search. I really see no point.
Cheers,
Lucas
Lucas,
I am totally with you in if that a LT KWP has no traffic, it does no good to use it, even if you have a product page for it. Hopefully though, the site has products to sell that will bring traffic to the site with a good phrase. And you bring up another good point that’s a post for another day – even if the phrase exactly describes what’s on your site’s page, if by doing KWP research, there’s no demand – no search queries – then don’t use it. I did assume that anyone using LT KWPs would have done their home work using a keyword research tool, but you know what “assume” means…:)
Thanks so much for reading the post and commenting!
Cheers, thanks a lot,