In his famous best-seller book, Nicholas Sparks wrote: “Every great love starts with a great story…”. The premise of his story may be the love between a woman and a man, but we can easily apply the same rule to the unrequited love towards a certain product in a marketing sense.
As businesses started to learn about SEO and its benefits, storytelling has become popular once again. Along with it came the one core ingredient that binds everything together: long tail keywords.
Although there are many other factors in a successful SEO equation, words can make or break your strategy. So, let’s get into why long tail keywords still play a huge role in optimising your website.
Multiple Keyword Ranking on One Page
Not long ago, Ahrefs published a compelling study on how many keywords you can rank for with one page. The usual practice is to optimise a single page for keywords that are relevant to the context.
However, their findings showed that the average #1 ranking page ranks for around 1000 other keywords.
What exactly does this mean?
Imagine you’re selling surfing gear and you have a #1 ranking page. It’s either because you have a one-of-a-kind best-selling product, or because you’re targeting specific keywords that your competition isn’t aware of yet.
Why is this good?
When the search query is more specific, and the customer finds the exact product they were looking for on your page, the conversion rates go up.
But, how can your website rank for multiple keywords on one page?
The answer is – you guessed it – going long tail!
The Value of Long Tail Keywords in SEO
Long tail keywords are best described as unique and longer keywords that have a small search volume. If they’re rarely searched for, why bother?
Well, there’s a higher percentage of long tail searches combined than the generic ones in the search engines.
That brings us to their overall value. People prefer detailed descriptions of the things they would like to buy, so particular word groupings can lead them to their end goal without having to check numerous websites.
Even though fewer people will look for specific phrases like “cheap surfing gear south Sydney” or “cheap surfboards south Sydney”, they are further along in the purchasing process and thus more likely to buy what they searched for.
What’s more, typing in a 5 or a 6-word phrase is more helpful than a single keyword and will load more accurate search results.
Lastly, it leads to higher conversion rates, and that’s the whole point of using long tail keywords, right?
Semantic Importance of Multi-Word Phrases
Let’s put it this way: Sometimes it’s better to not overthink things. Every piece of content should be created after we ask ourselves what is the main purpose of a certain chunk of text.
Is it a user guide? A product description? Or maybe an interview?
Honestly, it doesn’t matter where your long tail keywords will appear – as long as there’s natural-sounding, valuable information surrounding them.
Multi-word phrases serve as a semantic glue between other words and meaning. They contribute to building a relationship with the audience.
Therefore, offering valuable content not only helps readers gather new information within the niche, but brings them closer to your brand.
Lesser Ranking Competition
In the world of ever-growing competition on the market, entrepreneurs find it difficult to rank for common keywords.
On the other hand, focusing on unique, rather than generic words makes your page climb up the SERPs. Assume how many websites want to rank for keywords such as “surfboard”.
Again, unless you’re already a best-selling surfboard company, it’s very unlikely that people will find you on the first given result, or even on the first result page. Especially if you run a small company that has yet to earn a steady follower base.
So, try to concentrate on the precise definition of your product, like “best surfboards south Sydney”. As we mentioned it earlier, the search volume is significantly reduced than with one-word, high-volume keywords.
Eventually, you’ll come across a smaller, if non-existent, ranking competition.
Higher Conversion Rates
Why would someone type in the shop location if they don’t want to visit it?
Readers will use long tail keywords when they’re confident in their buying decision. Writing a more detailed explanation means that they spent some time in the research and reduced it to a few crucial words.
If integrated naturally in the text, those words are the last main reason for increasing your conversion rates.
To Conclude
Using long tail keywords is, without a doubt, a vital part of an overall SEO strategy on your site. It brings a semantic importance to the text, lowers ranking competition and finally, converts visitors to buyers.
