7 Reasons Your Business Should Target Long Tail Keywords:

The keywords you choose to optimise your website content for can have huge implications on the success of your entire SEO strategy. Thus it is very important to get it right.

Guessing keywords or only targeting highly competitive broad keywords is a wrong strategy that can jeopardise your SEO campaign from the start and can be difficult to recover from. This is one of the biggest mistakes in Keyword research a business can make.

Rather than targeting the most common broad keywords in your niche, it is better for your business to focus on more niche, long-tail search terms that are easier and quicker to rank for.

Optimising your website for long tail keywords can prove extremely successful for your business. In fact, long tail keywords can amount for up to 60% of a website?s total search traffic. Take a look below at the top keywords that drive traffic to this website.? You can clearly see that long-tail keywords feature prominently.

If you are still not convinced, here are 7 reasons why targeting long tail keywords is more profitable for your business.

7 Reasons Your Business Should Target Long Tail Keywords:

1. Easier to Rank

It is much easier for your website to rank favourably on search engine results for long-tail keywords than it is for broad keywords.? By targeting broad keywords you are essentially competing with millions of other businesses which can make it next to impossible to rank on the first page of search results. Long tail keywords on the other have much less competition, making it easier to rank.

2. Quick ROI

The choice of keywords also has an impact on your return on investment.Due to diminished competition, you will have to spend far less time and resources to achieve a decent ranking for long-tail keywords that you would for highly competitive broad search terms. While a first page ranking for broad keywords can take more than a year to achieve, the same can be achieved for long tail keywords within a few months. As a result, the return on investment is noticeable faster for long tail keywords.

3. More Targeted and Relevant

The traffic generated from long tail keywords is more targeted than broad keywords. Long-tail keywords are more specific and offer a better match for meeting the exact needs of the searcher. For example, when a customer is searching for ?Web design services in London? and your web design company from London shows up in the results, it would be a better match than another high-ranking business that targets ?Web design?.

4. High Conversion Rates

Broad keywords are typically used by customers for initial research during the early stages of the decision making process. Long tail keywords, on the other hand, are very specific and typically used by customers when they are closer to the decision making process in the purchasing life-cycle. As a result, long-tail keywords often produce higher conversions and can be more profitable for a business to target. For the above example, corresponding long tail keywords can be ?Property for rent in West London? or ?Bespoke Web Design in London?, instead of the broad search terms ?Property? and ?Web Design? respectively.

5. Benefits for PPC campaigns

Long-tail keywords can prove very beneficial for Pay per click campaigns which are becoming increasingly expensive and can be a drain on your company?s marketing budget. If you use PPC campaigns such as Google Adwords, you can improve your results significantly by targeting long-tail keywords. The cost per click of long tail keywords is often many times lower than that of broad keywords. Targeting long tail keywords in your PPC campaigns ensures high conversion and lower overall costs.

6. Good Starting Point

Targeting less competitive long-tail keywords can also be a good starting point for your overall SEO strategy . As your site builds authority and trust by ranking favourably for long tail-keywords, it puts you in a better standing for achieving the same for more competitive broad keywords. It is a great starting point, particularly if your website is new.

7. Easier to Optimse Individual Pages for Specific Keywords

Search engines crawl every page on your website individually. It is thus important that the search terms, each page is optimised for, are as specific as possible to the content on that particular page. It is also important not to optimise two pages for the same keyword as they will be competing against each other for ranking. Long tail keywords make is easier to achieve this.

Drawbacks of Targeting Long-Tail Keywords

Like any other marketing technique, there are some drawbacks of targeting long-tail keywords that your business should know of. One of the main drawbacks of targeting long-tail keywords as part of your SEO efforts is search volumes. The traffic volumes of long-tail keywords can be considerably lower than that of broad keywords. But then again, the probability of your ranking high for a broad keyword is very limited and much higher for long tail keywords. My advice will be to not rely on guess work but use Google?s Keyword Tool to estimate monthly search volumes for your long tail keywords before finalising your decision.

Conclusion

This doesn?t mean that you can?t target broad keywords. It just means that you shouldn?t only target broad keywords. A business needs to find the right balance between broad and long tail keywords in order to maximise the benefits of SEO and get the highest converting traffic to their website. The best keywords to choose are mid range, not too broad or too specific.

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Source: http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog/why-target-long-tail-keywords/6205/

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