In today’s competitive digital landscape, small businesses need every advantage they can get to stand out online. One of the most effective, yet often overlooked, strategies is targeting long-tail keywords for search engine optimization (SEO). Here’s why focusing on the long-tail in your keyword research can be a game-changer for your small business.
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What are long-tail keywords?
In SEO, keywords fall into one of two camps: head keywords or long-tail keywords. Head keywords are more general search terms that appeal to a wide audience (for example, “women’s shoes”). Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer, more specific phrases that appeal to a particular niche (for example, “women’s waterproof sustainable hiking shoes”).
The term “long-tail” comes from the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, in which Anderson shows that there is a market for virtually any product. And although this market is small in some cases, the vastness of the internet makes your niche product or blog post profitable nonetheless.
Less competition, more opportunity
Head keywords are highly competitive, making it challenging to achieve the top spot in search results for these terms. Large companies and established brands often dominate the search results for these broader terms because they have a sizeable marketing and SEO budget. Small businesses simply cannot compete with this.
Long-tail keywords, however, provide better results with less investment, making it a cost-effective strategy to compete with larger companies in your industry on a limited budget. Fewer websites are writing content about long-tail keywords on the internet. This means less competition, which makes it easier for your small business to rank higher in the search results. This, in turn, means you have a better chance of being seen by your target audience.
Additionally, long-tail keywords allow you to target niche markets and reach customers who are looking for exactly what you offer. This level of specificity not only improves your chances of being found but also ensures that the traffic coming to your website is more relevant and likely to convert. Moreover, the people searching for these long-tail keywords usually know what they are looking for. As a result, they are more likely to become customers/subscribers if your site provides the value they seek. Targeting these specific keywords often leads to higher conversion rates, giving you more value for your SEO efforts.
Related: 8 Great Keyword Research Tools
Having trouble coming up with ideas for long-tail keywords? If you have a clear mission statement, you should be able to define your unique selling points (USPs). What makes you stand out amongst the competition? Your USPs can help you determine some long-tail keywords to pursue; just make sure these are things people are actually searching for!
How to come up with long-tail keywords
As part of your keyword research, you will need to decide on the main topic(s) for your blog. Most of the time, this will be quite obvious. For example, on our blog, we write about the different things that will help small businesses succeed online. This topic directly ties into our mission and into the services we offer our clients. Whatever main theme you choose, it should be the number one keyword or keyphrase you want to be found for online. In our case, that would be website design for small businesses.
Once you have the head keyword, you can then begin breaking it out into long-tail variants. For example, if you own an Italian restaurant and blog about authentic Italian food, some of your long-tail keywords might be “authentic homemade Italian spaghetti bolognese” or “authentic homemade Italian limoncello”.
This process requires proper keyword research, so you can determine whether certain long-tail keywords are worth pursuing or not. As you work through this, think about the specific products or services you offer and what makes them stand out from the competition. Pay attention to the questions your ideal customers are asking online. Over time, you will come up with a workable list and can create a corresponding content marketing strategy.
Use internal linking to your advantage
Once you have written content optimized for these long-tail keywords, link these blog posts to your larger pages. These could be product category pages, service description pages, or even larger blog posts that are more detailed and comprehensive (in the SEO world, we call this cornerstone content).
Always link from the tail to the head. Google crawls links to understand the layout of your website and its content. If there is no link between the long-tail content and its head, there is no connection. Without that connection, Google does not understand the relevance of that content and will thus ignore it altogether.
Conclusion
For small businesses, long-tail keywords present a powerful opportunity to increase visibility, attract the right customers, and boost sales. By incorporating long-tail keywords into your small business SEO strategy, you can level the playing field and achieve sustainable growth online.
Keep Reading: Why You Should Use a Focus Keyword Only Once