When SEO master choose to target a highly competitive keyword(s) or keyword phrases, it could take months or even years to see meaningful movement in the SERPs. But the search landscape has recently shifted, and more searchers are typing in long tail search terms to come across what they’re searching for in search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and MSN. Not surprisingly, marketers and SEO strategist are responding by focusing their attention to long tail search optimization. If you haven’t begin incorporating long tail keywords into your SEO keyword research strategy or you’re not quite sure if it’s the right move for your website, here is the what, why, and how of long tail search, to help better understand its pivotal shift in online marketing and SEO.
What Is Long Tail Keyword?
Long Tail Keyword Search for SEO strategies, is a very targeted search phrase tactic that has 3 or more keywords. It typically contains a head term, which is a more generic search term 1 or 2 words in length. For example:
Head term: SEO
Long tail keywords: SEO Company India, India SEO Services
Why Target Long Tail Keywords with SEO?
- Generating a greater degree of quality traffic and higher conversion rates, long tail keywords are more specific, which usually means visitors that come to your site from a long tail search term are more qualified than those from broad ones. Content targeting IndiaSEO Company, for example, will receive more relevant traffic than content targeting SEO.
- And since the content on that page is more relevant to the searcher, a much larger percentage of that traffic is most likely to purchase the SEO Services for their business and site.
- Because long tail keywords are less competitive. Everyone looking for an IndiaSEO Company is typically searching for SEO Services.
- Long tail keywords help you stay afloat. If you fall in the SERPs for a head term (if you’re one of the few ranking for it) it is a drastic blow to your business. If you diversify with long tail search terms, losing rankings on a few phrases won’t interrupt your business, and you can regain those search rank listing positions rather quickly.
- Long tail search helps you rank for difficult terms. By including the head terms in your long tail keyword phrases, you’re also gaining traction on that difficult search term. Furthermore, you can also boost pages targeting competitive terms by linking to them from your high ranking pages targeting long tail variations of that head term.
- Long tail search is the most popular type of search. According to SEOmoz, long tail search now serves as 70% of search traffic. As searchers become more and more confident in how Google returns results for their query, they’re free to be more specific with search queries instead of defaulting to a generic term and scanning through results to find what they’re truly searching for.
How to Target Long Tail Keywords With Your SEO Efforts
- You may have advanced keyword analytics tools as your SEO arsenal such as HubSpot’s Keyword Grader tool, that allows you to get more specific with your SEO long tail search efforts. Additionally, you can also get started by logging in to your Google Analytics account and identifying the terms that drive a majority of the traffic to your site.
- Next, search for long tail variations of those terms using the ‘Suggest Keywords’ option by using Google’s Keyword Tool.
- If you’re having trouble finding decent long tail keyword phrases in your keyword tool, jump over to Google.com, enter your head terms into the search box, and let Google Suggest recommend some long tail variations for you. This sometimes can work towards you favor, especially when you have no idea where to begin.
- Identify keyword terms that would be great to create content around. We suggest that your Keyword includes this phrase in your URL, page title, H1 tags, and throughout your content, as well.
- To convert those visitors, provide additional contextual content, videos, pictures, or offers. By moving these visitors through the sales funnel, you’ll see more conversions from this qualified traffic and you’ll be able to monetize your long tail search efforts more fluently and effectively.
How to Analyze & Improve Your Long Tail Search Strategy for SEO
- Measure the amount of traffic you currently drive for long tail keywords. By establishing these numbers from the beginning, you’ll be able to measure if you’re gaining traction for those keyword phrases month after month.
- Analyze how useful the long tail traffic is. If you end up in the top of the SERPs for a long tail keyword phrase but drive no traffic for it, it’s not a good place to spend your time or efforts on. If you get traffic but low conversions, start testing your calls-to-action and landing pages. If, after A/B testing CTAs and landing pages.
- Determine which keywords convert the most revenue. A customer was once a prospect, a prospect was once a lead, and a lead was once (maybe) a long tail searcher. Start tracking which long tail keywords drive the most future business. Over time, you can even attribute customer acquisition costs and lifetime customer value metrics to this equation by getting more specific.
- Evaluate the success of content optimized with long tail keywords. Metrics to consider are bounce rate, time on page, social reach, and inbound links. If visitors leave a blog post about how to rank with SEO in 1-2 minutes, for example, one can infer that blog post is not useful for people searching that term.
- Carry over on the success of the post by targeting similar terms. When you’ve identified long tail keyword phrases that drive traffic, conversions, and other positive site metrics, experiment with synonyms of those words. Identify gaps and opportunities in your content. If you notice people coming to your website from relevant search terms you hadn’t considered, there’s an opportunity to optimize your site for that group of searchers.
After reading all this valuable information on long tail search for SEO, ask yourself; “Are you leveraging the SEO power of long tail search in your marketing content?