SEO Blog

When it comes to SEO, one of the most important things that you’ll need to do is to define your keywords. Whilst you might already have some in mind, if you are starting from scratch there is every chance that the competition rate might put them out of reach.

Imagine you’re a new online store offering designer clothing. You will probably have already established that there is a fair amount of competition out there. When you come to decide on your keywords, a generic phrase like ‘designer clothing’ is going to be difficult to achieve.

A quick search on Google reveals that there are around 38 million other sites currently ranking for the phrase. Among these will be some strong pages that will have many years of optimisation behind them. Inevitably this will be a very difficult phrase to gain a ranking for, especially at this stage. So when you’re starting out on your SEO journey, you might want to consider some long tail keywords.

What are long tail keywords?

Well, a long tail keyword is simply a longer key phrase. Rather than a short tail keyword, which is usually a maximum of three words, long tail phrases are expanded over a few words or more.

The theory behind this is that the longer your keyword is, the less competition it will have. This is because longer phrases tend to be more targeted and as such won’t be relevant to all sites.

So using our designer clothes example; you might choose to target ‘online designer clothes store’, ‘Men’s online designer clothes store’ or ‘London designer clothing shop’.

This of course can continue throughout the site. Rather than simply targeting ‘designer jackets’, you might want to be more specific about the individual types available – ‘designer men’s evening jackets’.

Improve conversion rates

Long tail keywords should target exactly what you are offering on the page you are optimising for. Two word short tail phrases tend to be a little vague or all-encompassing. Shorter phrases have greater competition and can be construed in a number of ways. With a long tail phrase, there is often far less ambiguity.

For example you can add words like ‘buy’, ‘store’ or ‘offer’ to get searchers who are specifically looking to make a purchase. Whilst ‘designer clothing’ is likely to attract searchers with a buying intent, it could also draw in people who are just researching or browsing. These are unlikely to bring in any conversions, whilst your long tail phrase which includes key buying terms will only get those looking to part with cash.

This isn’t restricted to e-commerce sites though; long tail keywords have benefits for all sites.

Here’s one way of looking at it. You want to get find out the upcoming fixtures for the England football team, do you type

a) England
b) England Football
c) England Fixtures
d) England International Football Fixtures

The answer in most instances will be d). If you want to find something specific, you tend to type in exactly what you want.

A) Will give you all sorts of information about England and might not include anything sports related at all. B) Will provide you with information about football in England; however, this might include domestic competitions and other irrelevant information. C) Isn’t specific to football, or the England team, so won’t necessarily give you what you’re looking for right away. D) Is the only one to include exactly what you’re searching for.

This model can be applied to all sites and all phrases. So if you are starting out and want to get some traffic, good rankings and conversions, carve out your own SEO niche. Use far less common long tail keywords and get yourself seen on Google by the people that really count. Then, as your site strengthens, you can look to develop your short tail keywords too.