Proper keyword selection is essential if you want to drive traffic to your online store. But have you heard of long tail keywords ? Through these types of keywords, smaller businesses are able to compete with the big ones and boost their website traffic. In this article, we reveal why long-tail keywords are so important and how to select the right ones.
Keywords are the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. Distributing the right keywords throughout your product pages , your blog , and throughout your website helps you greatly improve your ranking on Google.
In this article we will focus on long-tail keywords as a tool to increase traffic to your ecommerce.
What are long tail keywords?
Long tail keywords are search terms made up of several words (three or more).
Because they are longer terms, long-tail keyword searches occur less often than shorter search terms. This may sound negative, but it actually means that these types of longer search terms are much more targeted and therefore more relevant to users.
Why are long-tail keywords so important?
The graphic below, from Neil Patel's website , explains very well what long tail keywords are and where they got their name. At the top of the chart you see the most popular search terms (the first 10,000 keywords). Being the most popular means that there are literally millions of searches for those words every month.
Why you shouldn't compete with those popular keywords
Competing on those popular keywords, whether organically or paid, is going to be very difficult.
From the organic point of view , you will have to compete with thousands of websites. Do we stop to think about it? A simple search term like “smartphone” is going to appear everywhere on the internet. How are we going to appear at the top if we compete with that keyword? For small business owners, it's practically impossible.
As for paid ads , going for these popular keywords is going to be expensive and probably not very effective. If you pay for your Google Ads ad to rank well for the search term "smartphone", do you really know what the user's intention is when they click on your ad? Do you want to buy a phone? Are you looking for information about smartphones that are going to be launched? Are you looking for accessories?
In this case, the search term is so vague that we can be sure that your ad will not be relevant to a large number of people , so you will be paying for a click that will not convert.
Why it is better to compete with long-tail keywords
As we go down the graph, we see that long-tail keywords account for 70% of online search traffic. And not only that: as the competition is much less, it will be much easier to position yourself organically, much cheaper to bid on Google Ads and, best of all, these types of keywords will be much more relevant to users.
So, if your store sells phone cases, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to target terms like "Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone case" than just "smartphone case"? Surely yes!
Below is a similar chart from neilpatel.com that provides examples of these search terms and breaks down how costs are reduced by keywords with less competition and the chances of conversions increasing as you go down the X-axis.
The further down the X-axis we go, the more specific the search term is, and the cheaper and easier it is to rank well for those terms, both organically and with paid ads. Actually, this is the perfect strategy for any business targeting a very specific market niche.
How to find the right long tail keywords?
The first step in finding the right long-tail keywords is getting into the minds of your target audience. When you write on your blog or create a landing page or landing page , you have to think about your ideal client. If you already have experience in your sector, you probably already have an idea of who your ideal client is.
Know your audience
Create a buyer persona to define your customer prototype. This is a very common practice in the world of marketing. When creating your buyer persona, include information about the person's gender, age, job, economic status, hobbies and interests. This way it will be easier for you to address him or her every time you post any type of content on your website.
Once you know who your target audience is, how they behave, and how they search, you can better understand what keywords and terms they will use when searching for a product that you can sell to them.
Do keyword research
When you have created your buyer persona, it will be time to research your keywords. If you've created Google ads (Google Ads) before, you'll have access to Google Keyword Planner .
From the keyword planner, you have access to suggestions for keywords that you might want to compete with.
Once on that page, you will find other suggestions for similar keywords . The great thing about this tool is that you can see the average cost per click ( CPC ) for each search term and also get an idea of the competition. Even if you don't create an ad with Google, this can help you get an idea of how difficult it is to rank organically for a specific search term.
The list goes on and on with similar keyword suggestions, so take your time and some notes.
There are many tools to find keywords . KWfinder is one of my favorites. Like Google's tool, KWfinder gives you many suggestions of similar search terms, while also giving you a keyword "difficulty" score for most terms, which is an indicator of how difficult it is to find. position that term organically.
The PPC score indicates how much competition there is to win the bid in Google Ads.
There are other tools at your disposal as well. Neil Patel once released a free tool called ubersuggest . It works a lot like KWfinder and Google Keyword Planner.
Answerthepublic is a great tool for discovering the questions people are asking in relation to certain search terms. It can be useful when writing titles for your blog articles.
You may also want to consider other simpler tools like Google's autocomplete when you start typing in the search bar. Similarly, you can search for a keyword, and on the results page, you'll see the "Searches related to" section at the bottom.
You can also go to forums in your industry, on Quora or reddit to find out what people are talking about, what questions they are asking, what trends are emerging and what jargon they are using.
If your store collects customer reviews (or your competition does), check them out as they might give you some ideas. Of course, having a review system on your website has many advantages, in addition to boosting your SEO.
How do you use long tail keywords?
By now, you may have realized that long-tail keywords are used to increase traffic to your website. Use these keywords on your blog, product pages, and landing pages to strengthen your website organically.
When creating content, be sure to use these keywords sparingly. If you overload your articles and pages with keywords (an action known as keyword stuffing), Google will penalize you. This tactic was used by many websites when Google was just entering the market.
The use of keywords is definitely important, but as Google is constantly improving its algorithms and getting "smarter", keep in mind that your content must add value to the reader. Google is learning to find relevant content for certain search terms even if the words or phrases are not exactly in the meta description of the pages, so make sure your content is of quality and adds value to your readers.
Conclusion
The use of long tail keywords or long tail keywords can be a very effective SEO strategy if done correctly. By focusing on longer search terms that are lower in cost, have higher conversion rates, and are more specific and relevant to your audience, you can make the most of your marketing budget and hone your SEO strategy to appear on the first page of results. Google search.
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