Why Long Tail Keyphrases Are Better

To maximise the number of visitors coming to your website, you might try an alternative approach to SEO keyphrases. Traditionally, people have used short keywords to capture traffic such as ‘Mechanic Plymouth’ or ‘Blue Widgets. However, these days, those in the know are turning to the ‘long tail’ keyphrase to drive the right traffic towards their site.

So what are Long Tail Keyphrases?  Quite simply, they are search phrases that involve a collection of keywords rather than just one or two words.  For instance, if your keyphrase was ‘Wedding Cars’, you might expand this as a long tail keyphrase with ‘Hire Luxury Wedding Cars Chesterfield’.

The phrase ‘Long Tail’ relates to the decrease in the number of searches performed as the number of words in the search phrase increases.  The shorter phrases are overused and there is tons of competition for those keyphrases, but the long tail phrases are underused and the competition is greatly decreased.

It can take months or even years to dominate highly competitive phrases on the Internet.  However, long tail keyphrases can be driving great volumes of traffic towards your site within a few days.

There is little point trying to compete with big money firms for the most popular keyphrases.  You cannot possibly beat them on short keywords, they have people, teams, and whole departments dedicated to Internet Marketing.  BUT you can out-market them by using Long Tail Keyphrases.

But what if these long tail phrases only get a limited number of searches each month?  Then increase the number of specific long tail phrases that you use.  People using long tail searches are much more likely to be searching for the very thing that you’re selling, so that increases your chance of boosting revenue by playing outside the traditional SEO keyword game.

Rethinking search allows us to stop thinking of keywords, product names and brands as short phrases. Search is rapidly evolving, it’s all about phrases now, keywords are already out of date for the canny marketer.  The average search term is growing, as people start to search  specifically for what they are seeking.  In the past, the average keyphrase was 1.2 words, last year, it increased to 2.1 words, but sources tell us that this year and beyond, it will push to 3 and 4 words.

Constructing keyphrases is all about thinking about what the customer might write when they are searching for a product or service.  It’s not just about writing a bunch of terms with one keyword or brand name in it.  It’s about embracing the entire long tail approach, accessing through Natural Search the thousands of potential customers that will use a long tail keyphrase when searching.

So, the long tail is a fantastic opportunity to increase the number of visitors coming to your website.  It allows you to target multi-worded search queries and means that you can adjust your SEO and create content that matches the long tail approach.  Of course, the downside is that you will need to work hard at promoting a large pool of long tail keyphrases, but this approach can yield a much greater conversion rate, so it will be worth it in the end.  SEO is changing, don’t get left behind.

Nikki Pilkington is owner of Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing company NikkiPilkington.com, specialising in Higher Google Listings, Social Media Marketing, Google Adwords Management and Article/Blog Marketing. If you would like to discuss any aspect of promoting your website, you can contact her via www.nikkipilkington.com