Trying to get more eyes on your website should be the goal of any business. This leads to greater brand awareness, more knowledge of your products, and hopefully, more buyers and revenue for your business.
This is why a strong SEO strategy is essential for the success of any business. Your strategy will be built around the keywords you want to rank for in search which will hopefully bring your target audience to your website.
In a perfect, you would have your pick of keywords without any hassle. However, this is not the case as unless you’ve struck business gold, you won’t be the only business competing for certain keywords. The more competitive your market, the more demand there will be for your desired keywords. So, how can you continue to draw eyes to your website and boost your search ranking?
With a strong SEO strategy that incorporates both short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are more common search terms and therefore are more widely used making them more competitive. If you can leverage long-tail keywords as well, they can help improve your ranking in search and help you generate more traffic in a competitive market.
Before we look into the benefits of long-tail keywords, let’s first just clarify what they are.
The main difference between short-tail and long-tail keywords is their length. A short-tail keyword is typically just 1-2 words long. These are common, and although useful, may not deliver as much impact as intended.
Long-tail keywords are typically 3-4 words long. They tend to focus on a niche and allow you to really narrow your market.
It all comes down to specificity. Long-tail keywords are more specific, therefore they have less competition. The reverse is true for short-tail keywords. This is why a good balance of the two is important.
Now, let’s examine the main benefits of Long-tail keywords.
As mentioned earlier, long-tail keywords are less popular and more specific. As a result, if you’re using google ads, it’s likely that they will cost less to bid on than short-tail keywords. This means you may get a better ROI as your initial spend will be slightly less.
As long-tail keywords incorporate more words, they tend to use specific terms that narrow down search parameters such as geographic location, age, or specificity of services or products. When looking at long-tail keywords, these can serve as sources of future content you create – like blog posts.
Say you were looking for content for your plumbing business. Some long-tail words may be ‘Bathroom renovations in Northampton or ‘shower drainage services in Northampton. If these are services you offer, you could create a blog post or piece of web content built around these terms, which in turn, will help people in need of these specific services find your business.
Furthermore, these long-term keywords will give you insight into what your audience is searching for, so you can alter your current web content and create future blogs with this in mind. On a side note, blog posts are a great way to rank higher in search – so if you aren’t doing this already, we suggest you start.
By their very nature, your long-tail keywords are very likely to include some short-tail keywords you wish to rank for. Think of it like two birds with one stone. This will help you rank on the popular short-tail keywords whilst also boosting your ranking on your niche long-tail words, leading to an increase in more organic traffic.
Because long-tail keywords are more specific, they will answer someone’s search query in a more direct fashion. People using these terms tend to have a better idea of what they want, so when they find what they are looking for in search, they are more likely to click through and make a purchase.
Long-tail keywords are not only more specific but also more natural as well. As search technology evolves, it has incorporated speech technology and will continue to do so more and more. When people use speech for search they tend to use long-tail terms as it is more direct and in keeping with how we normally speak.
Using long-tail keywords will allow you to perform well not only on standard web searches but in those performed through speech technology too!
There are so many benefits to using long-tail keywords, that if you haven’t already incorporated them into your SEO strategy, you may be selling yourself short. Start building them into your web content as soon as you can, and you could see a boost in your web traffic!
Reach out to the team at Zudu today to see how we could help you with search engine optimisation.
