When most people think of SEO and ranking on the SERP, they think about those popular short phrases that everyone is searching. In doing this, they are leaving behind a vast market of long tail keywords that they should be targeting but are not. Long tail keywords are keywords that have lots of words in them. For example, one long tail keyword might be “how do I clean my sperry shoes?”. As shown, a long tail keyword is not just a simple one to two word phrase but one that has many words in it. These long tail keywords are not popular search terms which is why companies don’t think to rank for them but there is an untapped market out there that can drive your website’s conversions. If you think about it, most people that are searching using long tail keywords are looking for something specific. In our above example, the searcher is looking for a way to clean this specific shoe. If your product or website is providing an answer to this searchers question then you would want to show up on the SERP for this query. On top of looking for something specific, this searcher is probably ready to purchase or read about content relating to his query. So if they find your page which sells cleaning solution for sperry shoes then the searcher is probably going to buy your product. The reason for this is because when people search specific items they are showing that they have completed the research and are now looking for specifics that they like in order to purchase. Most of the research is being done using short tail keywords which are those more common, high search volume terms but they don’t have a high conversion rate. So it is important to not leave those long tail, high conversion keywords to your competitors for them to steal your business.
2 Responses
Great post about long tail keywords. In my own keyword research for my project, I’ve realized that I’m going to have to focus on optimizing my site for long tail keywords more so than short keywords. I’m creating a website for my church, and because there are so many churches within my denomination, it’s impossible to compete with all of them to rank for short keywords. Optimizing for long-tail keywords is much more effective.
Overall, I think you did a great job of covering long-tail keywords. When working with projects, focusing on long-tail keywords instead of short keywords is well key. Like I said before, I think you did a fantastic job wording it in this post. Great job.