05 JanTarget Long Tail Keywords for Better Conversion

Keyword research is a critical part of any SEO campaign. During your keyword research you should determine your most popular keywords based on what is most relevant to your business.

From here you should aim to create a keyword list, ideally in a spreadsheet, as a minimum aim to include columns for global and local search results per month (you can get these figures using the Google keyword Tool).

Here’s 2 common mistakes to avoid when performing your keyword research for your SEO campaign.

At this point and before you go any further, I would like to share with you, two common mistakes that beginners tend to make so that hopefully, you do not waste valuable time making the same errors.

It’s Not All About High  Search Volume

Wouldn’t it be great if your site could list number one for a high search keyword? Probably not. Here’s why, keywords with high search volumes tend to be 1-2 word phrases which means they are more general phrases and so less targeted, which in turn means they do not convert well, they also tend to be very competitive and so very costly. I have seen this in many of my clients Paid Search campaigns. If you did this in your paid search campaigns i.e. Google Adwords, you would most likely end up spending huge amounts of money with little conversions to show for it. In SEO, your campaigns will return less targeted traffic and a high bounce rate.

Go for ‘long tail’ keyword phrases

So what should you do? The answer is to choose longer, specifically targeted keywords using the higher volume keywords within them. For example, if you are a taxi firm in Leeds, target the key phrase, ‘book taxi Leeds’, or ‘taxi company Leeds’ instead of ‘taxi’

This simple strategy of using ‘long tail keywords’ is a great way for a small business or someone on a limited SEO budget, to quickly reach the top ranking, drive more targeted traffic and reduce the bounce rate. An added bonus is that since the longer keyword phrases will also contain the broader phrase inside them, those higher volume keyword phrases will not get ignored.

Up the ‘ante’

Once the strategy starts to bear fruit, you can take the increased revenue from the long tail search terms and invest it in securing some of those larger-volume search terms. Now, because of your work with the long tail keywords, it will be much easier to move them the rest of the way up the rankings.

The 80 / 20 Rule – Focus on a Small List of Relevant Keywords

The second mistake in the keyword research stage, is to focus your SEO campaign on targeting a large amount o keywords. Using the paid search analogy again, most if not all my clients PPC and SEO campaigns have a 80/20 and even 90/10 split on the keyword ROI. In other words 80% or 90% percent of their ROI is based on 20-10% of their keywords.

And there’s no reason to think your campaign will be any different! Therefore it’s a good idea to keep your keyword list short and base them around the main ‘strategic keywords’. You should also ensure that your site has SEO optimized pages for each one of your main ‘strategic’ keywords.

From the main keywords you should  generate a smaller group keywords and focus on them. Make sure the keywords are clearly mapped to the best pages of the website and set goals for ranking on those keywords. After top rankings are achieved, the list can then be expanded to include additional keywords.

Be sure to keep the original keywords from the smaller ‘strategic’ list even after it has been expanded. It is important to continue monitoring the rankings of your original terms so they don’t slowly ebb away, down the search engine rankings.