Monday 7 September 2015

Long-Tail Keywords and Their Role in SEO


Just when you thought you’d mastered SEO using your keyword planner, someone mentioned long-tail keywords. What are they, and why are they better?

In their most basic form, long-tail keywords are an extension of your head keyword, but are far more effective at drawing consumers to a purchase. For instance, let’s suppose you have a retail establishment selling tropical and coldwater fish and pet foods in Devon.

Your store name could be North Devon Aquatics and Pet Foods. The obvious keyword(s) would be pet foods, or aquatics, both of which bring up hundreds of keyword combinations.

With pet foods bringing up over 400 keyword search results, you need to be rather more specific. You’ve just added a blog post on the value of buying pet foods in bulk. Using the long-tail keyword, ‘bulk pet foods delivered’, and the search numbers drop to three.

No doubt those three were specifically searching for someone who delivered pet foods in bulk, but the search results are a little low. Change it to ‘pet foods delivered’ and the results go up. Let’s not forget your local SEO. Change your long-tail keyword to ‘pet foods delivered in North Devon’ and although search numbers will drop, those searches should produce an even higher conversion rate.

Recent research has highlighted the use of long-tail keywords specific to a blog or content marketing piece, provide up to 70% of page views, a lower bounce rate, and a far greater conversion rate to sales.