How To Use Long-Tail Keywords to Rank on Google
When looking to expand your search reach and increase being found on monthly searches, you should look to implement a long-tail keyword strategy. Using long-tail keywords are keywords or keyword phrases that are a more specific search term – and typically longer – than more popular keywords that are searched for.
Long-tail keywords, unfortunately, get less search traffic, however, they will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific. They allow you to gradually get more traffic and to be found by new and motivated audiences.
In order to profit from a long-tail keyword strategy, you should have a clear vision of your company, your product, and your website. You should be including long-tail keywords into your marketing strategy for all content.
What are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords are more specific and sometimes less common than other keywords. Long-tail keywords are “unpopular” (low Volume) and are highly-focused search queries that tend to convert exceptionally well. They focus more on a niche and targeted phrase.
The use of long-tail keywords can be found especial if your content marketing strategy includes voice search terms.
There is a market for virtually every product. In some cases, however, this market is extremely small. The vastness of the internet, though, makes your niche product, or your niche blog post profitable.
For now, you should know that the vast majority of Google searches are very specific and unpopular (i.e., long-tail) and this also can be true for other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGO.
One Main Theme
Most blogs have one main topic, or head term – this is called the head term, or main keyword. Mom blogs are usually about children and family life; food blogs are about eating, restaurants, and recipes; Disney blogs are generally about Disney. Our blog is all about digital marketing. So, all of our blog posts are about digital marketing or about digital marketing-related-topics.
The main topic or theme of your blog or site is the number one keyword (or key phrase) you want people to use to find you. In our case SEO. Imagine yourself having a food blog about homemade Italian food. You would then like to be found on a search term like [homemade Italian food]. That would pretty much be the number one.
Lots of Topics
You cannot, however, optimize all blog posts for the same term [homemade knit sweaters], even if all your blog posts will be about homemade knit sweaters. Instead, you should write a number of blog posts about all kinds of long-tail variants of your number one search term. In the example of the sweater blog, you could write about all kinds of homemade things: cable knit sweaters, oversized yarn sweaters, how to knit a sweater. These could be your different categories.
Your blog posts could even be more long-tailed. You could write about: homemade knit scarves, homemade knitted blankets, homemade knit caps and so on. You will find all of these keywords and more if you have done your keyword research correctly.
Depending on the company you work with will depend on the keyword research tools they provide and utilize. SEMrush, Moz, and Google Keywords Planner are a few of the better-known keyword research tools.
Link Content
If you optimize your blog post for different long-tail variants, you should be linking the different posts to your main category pages. From your main category pages, you will want to link to the different articles as well. Remember: always link from the tail to your head and back again! That way, Google knows what your site structure looks like and which of your pages is most important. Make sure your most amazing pages rank high in Google!
Why You Should Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
When it comes to ranking, it is much easier to rank for long-tail keywords than for more common keywords Since fewer websites compete for high ranking, you more than likely able to rank at the top in the search engine result pages (SERP) of Google. The longer and more specific the search terms are, the easier it will be 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 significant amount of increased traffic altogether.
Another benefit of focusing on long-tail keywords is that, although these keywords are used less in search, the visitor that finds your website is in the conversion part of the funnel. They are using more specific terms which means they are more likely to buy your service or product.
Mission Statement
When you are selling something online, you need to make sure it is good products. There are so many companies out there that you need to make sure you are selling something that is as unique as you are. You should also be well aware of what your product or your website offers to your audience and most importantly what makes it special. If you know and understand this, it will be much easier to make your audience like and buy your products and services. You should take some time to think about the uniqueness of your product and write that down.
A scenario for this might be – selling cruises. You offer great facilities for children, making the cruises especially suitable for young and single parents. Offering great cruises to Hawaii for single parents could be the uniqueness of your service. This is your mission, your niche, this is what you have to offer to your audience! You’ll want to make sure you write down your mission in words that are used and understood by your audience.
Market Competitiveness
In some markets, it is really hard to rank. Some markets are highly competitive, with large companies dominating the search results. These companies have a very large budget to spend on marketing in general and SEO specifically. Ranking in these markets is hard. You will be unable to compete on a small budget in a market like the travel industry using search terms as Disney Vacation.
However, if you have your mission clear, you should be able to define what makes your product or website stand out from this market. You should be able to find your niche. You should use your mission in order to start ranking! Taking our example of cruises for single parents to Hawaii, this would mean that you should focus on the less competitive term [single mom cruises Hawaii]. Again, use words that your target audience uses and avoid difficult to rank for terms.
Define Your Mission with Long-Tail Keywords
Once you have defined your mission, where you make abundantly clear what the uniqueness of your product, site, or blog is, you should be focused on choosing the long-tail keywords you want to rank for. Trying to make your website rank for a specific term can be quite profitable, as long as this specific term closely resembles the product you are selling.
How you describe your mission can be the focus of your SEO strategy. These words should be central in the long-tail keywords that you aim your website to rank for. People using the terms of your mission and finding your website will be relatively small in volume, but these people do have the highest chances to buy your product or to become regular visitors and increase your conversion rate.
Create Awesome Content
Once you have completed your keyword research and you know which keywords you would like to rank for. When you find long-tail keywords, you can then start to create content. Creating content can be quite challenging.
A benefit of doing keyword search is knowing topics that you can create content around. Knowing what people are searching for and how they are searching for will help create standout content.
Final Thoughts
Want to learn how to do this for your own site? Or better yet, have someone do this for you? The team at Blue Water Marketing can help with creating a marketing plan and content creation plan that includes long-tail keywords.
Contact us today to see how we can help you rank higher on Google SERP.
