Open the marketing toolbox for a great find to help your business master the art of the keyword…
Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly how your customers find you online? Enter HitTail. Their services analyze your web activity to show exactly what keywords and phrases people use to get to you. It’s a valuable tool particularly since the backend methods are ever evolving. For example, traditional methods for using keywords on websites, blogs, news articles, press releases and the like is to be brief and use several one-word descriptions to describe the content. The thought is that global descriptions will maximize the audience for searches – SEO 101, right?
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson
Well a lot has changed since the days of Thomas Jefferson and this is one place where wordiness pays because existing data shows four and five word “keywords” could be an effective SEO strategy to boost your sales and marketing efforts. So, rather than several single all-encompassing words, several phrases of two or more words could bring better results.
In the article, Industries that Use Google Adwords the Most, Chris Gregory, Director of SEO at Dagmar Marketing and a past guest on LGK’s The Marketing Mojo Show recommends long-tail keywords as one method to stay competitive.
Long Tail Keywords – are keywords that are more obscure that might have less competition. These keywords will have less monthly searches however, they will usually be cheaper to bid on. By targeting multiple long tail keywords you will have a better chance of ranking well and therefore increasing your CTR (Click Trough Rate), and when taken as a whole, might be a better source of leads than one of the more competitive keywords with more traffic.
Consider this example:
You are a specialty online retailer who sells handmade soaps and lotions with many unique combinations, such as grapefruit-lavender, all with a base of shea butter. Use SOAP, LOTION and SHEA BUTTER as your website keywords and the results will be a lot different than if you use a phrase to mimic what a shopper might actually use for their search such as SHEA BUTTER HANDMADE SOAP and GRAPEFRUIT-SCENTED LOTION. In this example, a keyword such as soap would probably not show your business in a favorable search location – you’d compete against drug stores, mall stores, grocery stores and other big stores that sell soaps. Shea butter as your keyword might produce various definitions of what shea butter is and where it comes from, descriptions of its magical properties and a page or two of other retailers.
Another advantage to this long tail approach, according to the HitTail graphic below, is that click-through rates are higher when keywords are more specific, probably because potential customers can narrow down specifically what they want more quickly.
In full disclosure, LGK is giving this subscription based service a try courtesy of HitTail. We’ll periodically provide updates on our progress on this blog. In the meantime, have you embraced the long-tail keyword approach? Feel free to share your experience and tips in the comments section of this post.
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Good article and thanks for the mention. I’ll add this thought to the mix:
As search engines get better at voice recognition we will start seeing increased activity in long-tail searches. Users will be more comfortable searching for exactly what they want instead of the short hand – 2 and 3 word searches like they are doing now. All business owners should start becoming familiar with long tail search patterns and not put as much importance on top tier or “vanity” keywords that everyone is chasing after. They will spend less money ranking or advertising for these keywords and have a lower cost-per-acquisition for a lead.
Thanks for sharing Chris. Most people don’t realize Siri and Cortana are a part of the mix… powerful ladies! The rules change every day it seems – thanks for helping us keep up.