Scoring a front-page rank for an extremely competitive keyword can be difficult, especially for business owners who are just getting into the SEO game. Small business owners are often unable to compete when it comes to ranking for single-word searches of popular goods and services, which can negatively impact their rankings overall.
Thankfully, there are ways to even the playing field. Utilizing long-tail keywords is an easy and effective way to gain productive traffic and increase sales – with some studies suggesting that customers found through long-tail keywords are actually 50-60% more likely to contact the business or purchase the product searched for.
Unlike “head” keywords (simple, one or two word phrases commonly searched for, we’ll use “shoes” as an example), long-tail keywords are extremely specific and generally contain between two to five words (“black shoes for boys”, for example). To get the most out of a long-tail keyword campaign, you’ll want to pay attention to your site’s specific traffic statistics and make sure to use keywords in a useful way inside relevant page content on your site.
Make sure to closely watch your analytics account after implementing your long-tail keywords, to see which words are useful for conversion so you can expand those campaigns. And remember to closely track the ROI of each long-tail keyword – after all, connecting with 10 potential customers , all of whom are willing to buy right then is always better than having your site viewed by 100 lurkers who quickly click off of your page.
By Michelle Robertson