What Are Longtail Keywords And Why Are They So Important?
Long tail keywords are keywords which are more descriptive, so for example a competitive main keyword could be something like: rugby tours whereas a long tail keyword would be Lions rugby tour packages.
We can assume one, some or all of the following things when a potential customer uses longtail keywords:
1. The person is naturally a detail orientated person
2. The person is closer to making a buying decision
3. The person is experienced at searching online
The Importance Of Longtail Keywords For SEO
In SEO longtail keywords are super important. Firstly the competition on the main competitive keywords is very tough, to varying degrees depending on both the keyword and industry, so longtail keywords give the website a chance of more success. When analysing a website for SEO, there will be logical longtail keywords that are related to the tougher keywords, so in a way while we optimise for the longtail we are also including the main keyword.
Example:
Payday loans (main keyword)
Same day payday loans (longtail keyword)
Whether in SEO terms or in pay per click advertising terms, longtail keywords are highly valuable. Think about what your search process is yourself and you will more than likely realise this. Some of us are naturally detail orientated so we may use the longtail in the early part of our search. However if the person is not like this, they will normally become more detailed as they have searched for a while. They don’t want to waste time looking at research when they are close to being able to make a buying decision.
Let’s look at a holiday scenario as an example:
1st search – Zanzibar
2nd search – climate in Zanibar
3rd search – Zanzibar holidays
4th search – bespoke Zanzibar holidays from UK
Here’s the thought process:
The potential customer had heard good things about Zanzibar from someone she trusts, so she decided to check out sites and photos online – 1st search. Then she wasn’t sure about the weather during the time of year she wished to visit, so hence the 2nd search. By now everything is looking promising, but she has no idea of the cost of holidays in Zanzibar, so she does the 3rd search. After the 3rd search she realises that Zanzibar is a place that she would prefer to see in a more varied way, and as the prices of normal packages seem affordable, she feels her budget would stretch to a bespoke holiday, so that is the why she does the 4th search.
An example of someone who wants to buy a party dress:
1st search - party dress
2nd search - cheap party dress
3rd search - cheap pink party dress
The average person searching at the research phase will use a competitive generic keyword such as “party dress”. Not long after searching and seeing some high prices they will modify their search to something like “cheap party dress.” Now we are already into long tail keyword territory but it can go further. As the search deepens the searcher realizes that pink is the trendy colour at the moment, or pink is what she fancies wearing on her next night out, so then she is using the long tail keyword “cheap pink party dress.”
The more experienced the searcher the more likely she will start off with this right at the beginning so as not to waste any time, or more detailed orientated people will do this naturally. And in general people are becoming far better at searching as the search engines continue to improve the results they show to us.
A long tail keyword means one of three things; either the person is close to making a buying decision, is an experienced searcher or is detailed orientated. Think about it logically, when you want to find information online on products, services or for research reasons, you want to find it quickly, you want it to be as precise as possible and give you something extra that other information has not up until that moment.
Long tail keywords can be optimised in this way. The trick here is getting into the mindset of your customer and pre-empting all the possible things they would like to know about whatever the subject of the long tail keyword is and then going at least one step further. You will create a page which is a resource, which means customers will like it and sites which see it as an authority may link to it.
On some of the search engine forums SEOs have stated that this algorithm which was named Mayday by some and Black Tuesday by others has had a disastrous effect on some well established sites which did not have enough content in deep pages.
Whether you are a small business owner, or a medium to large business owner, all the signs show that drilling down into your site with niche information across all aspects of your site based on long tail keywords is a good way to go. Long tail keywords are important both to your customers and the search engines.
The Importance Of Longtail Keywords For PPC
In PPC all of the same principles apply – the only difference is that you are paying when someone clicks on your ad. This means that you really want to catch potential customers when they are close to buying, but you may also need to catch them earlier in the process as well.
To do both it is good to set up campaigns that can have separate budgets, so that you can control how much you invest into the different stages. Of course there are some people who are ready to buy on the first search and they didn’t use a longtail keyword.
All of your ads can include the longtail keyword relevant to them, so the concept is that your potential customer types in the phrase and it is 100% reflected back to them in the ad creative that you show. They should hopefully click on your ad, which brings them to a specific page where this longtail keyword is also included in the page content. Everything should be synchronised for success in this way!