Search engines determine what a blog or website page are about from keywords. For instance, if you write a page about “material handling space saving in Charlotte” then you are more likely to rank higher on Google for those keywords.
However, I find that a lot of companies try to rank for simple keywords instead of “long-tail keywords.”
Let me illustrate.
A few years ago I was talking to a business owner about his website. It was a financial services business, and he wanted to increase organic traffic. For the sake of anonymity let’s say his name was Mike.
We got into a discussion about keywords. I asked what keywords Mike was interested in ranking for; the reply was that he wanted his company to rank for insurance.
“Hmmm, that is going to be difficult,” I said.
His response, “I thought you were good at this internet marketing thing.”
I smiled, “I am OK at it, but you would need millions of dollars to rank for a word as general as insurance, and you would never make that money back. You don’t offer insurance services to everyone in the U.S. do you?”
“No, only Charlotte,” said Mike.
“OK, that helps. Do you offer all types of insurance?,” I asked.
“Yes, but we want to increase our whole life business.”
“So if you got a lead from Columbia, SC that wanted car insurance would that be valuable to you?” I asked.
“No,” said the client.
And that was Mike’s introduction to long-tail keywords.
You probably know that keyword research is an important part of SEO, content marketing, and inbound marketing.
Often people get tied up in ranking for keywords that bring the most traffic. However, most of the time it is much more valuable to try to rank for long-tail keywords. They will bring less traffic, but it is easier to rank for long-tail keywords.
How do you come up with long-tail keywords?
Geography: It is much easier to rank for SEO Charlotte than SEO. Loads easier.
Try to incorporate the location of where most of your customers are, or where you tend to sell your products or services. You can use cities, towns or region names.
Specificity: Instead of saying “insurance” use keywords that add specificity. For instance, whole life insurance.
Then combine the specificity and the region. Refining your phrases will give you long-tail keywords that are less difficult to rank for and bring in targeted traffic.
Do the research to find out which keyword combination might be the best and provide the most searches per month.
Then enter the different keywords into a few different search engines and see what results you get.
If that looks right then congratulations, you have found a long-tail keyword!
If you don’t like what results you see, try a different combo until you do.
Want more marketing advice about keywords and inbound marketing? Get our checklist for inbound marketing here.