We all know that highly competitive keywords can bring a good amount of traffic to a website every month but at the same time targeting those keywords for the top positions of search engines may not be easy and could take months to achieve.
Considering this fact, I would like to draw your attention to the power of long tail searches or what we call ‘long tail keywords’ which also have the ability to bring noticeable traffic to a website but are often ignored by most marketers. If you are also among those marketers, this blog is for you. You will learn here the importance of long tail searches and why should you include them in your online marketing strategy.
First of all, let me explain to you what exactly is a long tail keyword. A long tail keyword is one that contains three or more words. For eg., if I talk about my industry, the long tail keyword for one of my highly competitive keywords ‘SEO Consultant‘ would be ‘Best SEO Consultants in Singapore‘ or ‘Who is the best SEO Consultant in Singapore‘.
No matter if your online marketing strategy focuses more on search engine optimization, pay-per-click, or content marketing, you can leverage the benefits of a long tail keywords strategy for your business anyway.
Why should you use long-tail keywords
#1 Less Competition: Of course, this is one of the primary benefits of using long-tail keywords for your online marketing campaigns. If I talk about search engine optimization(SEO), due to the lower competition, it is comparatively easier for you to rank your website on long tail keywords. Also, if you include long-tail keywords in your PPC campaigns, the cost per click(CPC) is quite low as compared to the highly competitive keywords.
#2 Quality Traffic: In the above example that I gave for my industry, you can see that long tail keywords like “Best SEO Consultants in Singapore” & “Which is the best SEO Consultant in Singapore” can bring quality traffic to my website. These keywords can bring those users who already know about the jobs of SEO consultants but are searching for the best one to hire him/her. If this would have been the case with highly competitive keywords like “SEO consultants“, the users may use these keywords to search the list of SEO consultants or just to gain some insights into the jobs and activities that SEO consultants do. So you can see the difference in the quality of traffic in the case of both keywords.
#3 Supporting Role: Another benefit of using long-tail keywords is that they can help you to rank your website on difficult terms as well. By including highly competitive keywords in your long-tail phrases, you will definitely notice that you will start getting a good amount of traffic from high-competition keywords as well which could have been very difficult to achieve without using long-tail keywords.
#4 Search Share: Long tail keywords comprise 70% of the total search traffic (says a report by SEOmoz ). Considering this fact, there is no reason why shouldn’t you include long-tail keywords in your search marketing plan especially when it is easier & quicker to rank on top with these keywords as compared to highly competitive keywords.
How to find long tail keywords for your business
In my opinion & experience as an SEO & PPC consultant, there are mainly 3 methods to find out the best long tail keywords for your website.
1) Google Adwords: If you are already running PPC campaigns for your website on Google Adwords, you shouldn’t look anywhere else to find out the best long tail keywords that can bring a good amount of traffic to your website.
In the Google Adwords interface, you can click on the tab ‘Dimensions’, and then under Dimensions, you can further filter the report by selecting ‘Search Terms’ from the drop-down of various criteria of dimensions. This is the best way to find the exact long tail keywords because it generates a real-time report for you.
2) 3rd Party Tools: There are many 3rd party tools available like KeywordSpy, Wordtracker, etc. which can help you to find long tail keywords having a good amount of searches for your business.
3) Google Search: Google search is in itself a good indicator of long tail keywords. You may type a few of your primary/highly competitive keywords and it will show you suggestions based on those keywords. Just try it now and you will see huge possibilities for generating long-tail keywords for your website.
Considering the above facts & benefits of using long-tail keywords, you shouldn’t wait anymore. Just go ahead & add them to your search marketing plan and see the difference yourself.
