When it comes to improving your website’s SEO, you should go for every opportunity available. It’s common for people to do keyword research and target keywords that have a high search volume. However, this can make you seem like a fish in the ocean. Everyone wants to be able to compete with the big websites – who wouldn’t? But it doesn’t always pan out that way.
Fortunately, there are a few simple ways to rank higher in SERPs using specific long-tail keywords. Whilst it is very tempting to overlook long-tail and solely focus on fat head keywords, long-tail keywords may be what your website needs, Long-tail keywords can be very beneficial if you know what to target.
What are Long-Tail Keywords?
In SEO, there is a difference between head keywords and long-tail keywords. A long-tail keyword is a more specific search than a head keyword and most of the time – but not all – is made up of more words. A head keyword is a general term that is searched often. A long-tail keyword is a more specific topic or subtopic of the generic term. Typically, less content is created on this topic.
You can get a good estimate of what long-tail keywords your audience is searching for by typing in a search query into Google and looking at the suggestions.
Target Local Searches
Local businesses will struggle to compete with larger companies for broad keywords; there will always be those industry giants that will dominate the SERPs. However, local business owners can get a lot out of utilising long-tail keywords.
Whether it’s being searched via Google Maps, Apple Maps or Search, the majority of people will look up a local business before physically going to the location. When searching for restaurants, the common search phrase is “restaurants near me”, but you cannot target this specific keyword. However, you can target keywords that include your city, postcode or street name, For example, if you want to target keywords in a city, you could look for “restaurants in Birmingham”, and to be more precise, you could target a street name.
Almost half of Google Searches are for local business and 76% of people have made a search for a business on their phone and visited the area within 24 hours. With this evidence, we can see that local searches are very common and it should be in your best interest to target local-intent keywords.
Intent Keywords
When researching keywords to improve your website’s chance of ranking higher in SERPs, you should include intent keywords in your study. Intent keywords are more useful for commercial businesses and represent the later stage of the sales funnel.
When you’re looking to make a purchase online, you’re most likely doing a small amount of research before making your final decision. Before making a purchase, online searchers will often go through the buyer’s journey to ensure they’re making the right purchase. This is when people will tend to start searching for long-tail phrases to get a more specific result for the product/service they are interested in buying.
At the first stage of the buyer’s journey, you may search for something general, such as “black hoodie”, which would have a high search volume but very competitive to rank for. Further along the journey, searches will begin to be more specific, such as ‘nike black hoodie’ or ‘black full zip hoodie’. Eventually, these searches will become more specific down the journey, which is why you shouldn’t ignore long-tail keywords. Long-tail phrases have a higher conversion rate compared to fat head keywords because the buyer is most likely at the end of the buyer’s journey.
Intent keywords also include ‘best’, ‘cheapest’ and ‘sale’. These keywords will have a lower search volume, but will have a larger audience more interested in looking to make a purchase.
Voice Search for Long-Tail Keywords
Whether they’re asking Alexa or Siri the best place to eat in their area, you cannot deny the importance of voice searches. It has undoubtedly made lives easier being able to search for something verbally, however, this has caused a few problems for your SEO.
Digital voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa are hitting the technology industry by storm and are becoming more popular and innovative as each day goes by – which is why you should focus on long-tail keywords. These assistants are built to understand natural phrases, such as “what is the weather going to be like today”. It’s not very common to use fathead phrases when speaking to your device and because of this, SEOs will need to start thinking about what keywords work best with natural voice search phrases.
To be able to compete with your competition, long-tail keyword implementation is a necessity. These keywords should be more conversational. The majority of voice searches are local searches which gives you more of a reason to prioritise long-tail keywords.
Conclusion
Long-tail keywords are just as important as broad searches when it comes to SEO. They may not always be someone’s first search, but they certainly target an audience more interested in making a purchase compared to broad phrases.
With good research and a good amount of implementation, long-tail keywords could be a key part in your digital strategy and may introduce you to phrases you didn’t even know you could rank for.
If you’re unsure about the best SEO practices, get in touch with a member of our expert team and we can help steer you and your site in the right direction.
