How to Increase Website Traffic with the Help of Long-Tail Keywords

Understanding the significance of achieving a high rank on Google's search engine results pages (SERPs) is crucial. These compelling statistics demonstrate why ranking well on the SERPs is essential:

• Google searches initiate nineteen percent of online purchases. • Mobile search ads contribute to a 46 percent improvement in brand awareness. • Moving up one spot on the SERPs results in a 30.8 percent increase in click-through rates.

What does this mean for you?

Securing a top position on the SERPs can lead to enhanced sales, engagement, and brand visibility—an ideal scenario for web-savvy brands. However, achieving these goals is not an easy feat, particularly when targeting short, high-volume keywords. These keywords are highly competitive and expensive to bid for.

On the other hand, targeting long-tail keywords allows you to attract searchers with specific intent more easily and at a lower cost. Sounds intriguing? Great! Read on to discover why long-tail keywords matter for online brands and how you can utilize them to drive website traffic.

Why Are Long-Tail Keywords Important? Long-tail keywords, consisting of three or more words, closely resemble the search queries entered by users on Google. While these keywords generate fewer searches compared to their shorter counterparts, they are more precise and less popular. So why should you target them?

Long-tail keywords have a high conversion rate. Due to their detailed nature, they align closely with user intent, attracting more clicks and driving greater traffic.

Need proof?

I recently published a post on Instagram spaces, and it ranks well on Google. Let's compare the engagement and position of different variations of the head-term "Instagram space."

As you can see, the long-tail keyword "how to space out Instagram captions" receives more clicks and achieves a higher ranking than the shorter version "Instagram space."

Still not convinced?

Consider these data-backed points that favor long-tail keywords.

They Have Low Competition

Shorter keywords are popular among marketers, resulting in high competition. Conversely, long-tail keywords, found at the tail end of the graph below (hence the name "long-tail"), are less sought after.

Lower competition creates more opportunities for ranking, which is why Google Ads containing long-tail keywords generate more impressions.

To validate this claim, I examined the keyword difficulty (KD) scores of long and short semantically-similar keywords (LSI). Here are the results:

Clearly, as the keyword length increases, the KD decreases.

This is why brands relying on search advertising should capitalize on longer keywords to surpass the competition.

They Attract Qualified Traffic Longer keywords generate high-quality traffic that is more likely to convert.

Why is that?

Short keywords are broad terms that do not reveal much about the searcher's intent. In fact, the searcher themselves may be unsure of their intent. Engaging and converting these ambiguous leads can be challenging.

On the other hand, longer queries are used by searchers who have a clear intent. These individuals are already in the advanced stages of their buyer journey. By structuring your marketing strategy around long-tail keywords, you can effectively engage these high-potential consumers.

They Are Cost-Effective Now, let's discuss the best part about long-tail keywords.

What is it?

Longer keywords have a lower cost-per-click (CPC) compared to their shorter counterparts. Even small brands can afford paid advertising by utilizing these keywords. To support this claim, let's examine the CPC comparison from the previous example:

The CPC for the longest keyword "how to lose weight fast" is the lowest.

Do you see my point?

Longer keywords can be advantageous for both organic and paid marketing endeavors.

Driving Website Traffic Using Long-Tail Keywords in Two Steps As you can see, leveraging long-tail keywords is an effective growth-hacking strategy in digital marketing. However, simply incorporating them into your content or targeting them without a solid strategy will not yield the desired website traffic.

So what should you do?

1. Find the Right Long-Tail Keywords First and foremost, you need to discover long-tail keywords that are relevant to your niche, content, and target audience. There are several approaches you can take.

• Google Search: Begin by typing a relevant broad keyword in the Google search bar and select one of the longer auto-complete suggestions that appear.

You can also explore keywords from the "Related searches" and "People also ask" sections on the search results page.

These suggestions provide more specific but less popular keywords that you can target.

• Keyword Research Tools: While Google searches can be time-consuming, especially with a large volume of keywords, you can utilize keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner or comparable platforms such as SEMrush.

Enter the seed keyword and apply filters like location, volume, and match type. This will provide you with a list of keywords along with their search volume, KD, and CPC, allowing for easy comparison.

Sort the results from low to high and select the highly specific long keywords at the top of the list.

Most tools also suggest relevant keyword categories, allowing you to further refine your search. In the previous example, "best social media tools" served as the broad keyword, and by adding the term "analytics," I obtained a list of keywords related to analytics-based social media tools.

[Insert refined keywords list image]

But there's one more trick...

Many people ask questions on Google when seeking information. To target those exact keywords, look for a keyword tool that includes a "Questions" filter.

• Competitor Research: Another method is to discover the long-tail keywords your competitors are targeting. Tools like Ahrefs provide keyword reports based on domain names.

You can outperform your competitors by reverse-engineering their keyword strategies.

How can you do that?

It's simple. Identify the organic and paid pages that are gaining traction and generate keyword reports for each page. From these keywords, select the low-volume ones and incorporate them into your content.

• Online Consumer Forums: Explore conversation threads on platforms like Reddit and Quora to gain insights from your target audience. Set up alerts for promising prospects.

Observe how people communicate and the language they use. Understand their aspirations and needs. By understanding your target consumers, you can discover better long-tail keywords. This will provide you with a ready-to-use list of long-tail keywords to target.

2. Target Long-Tail Keywords Effectively Now, let's discuss the actual process of attracting traffic using carefully selected long-tail keywords. However, it's important to note that not all keywords can be targeted using the same approach.

Feeling confused?

Allow me to clarify. Each search topic has its own "search demand curve," which allows us to categorize long-tail keywords into two groups: "topical" and "supporting." Your targeting strategy will differ for each group.

Targeting Topical Long-Tail Keywords Topical keywords revolve around a specific subject. If you analyze them using Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, you'll notice that their "Parent Topic" remains the same. Let's use "keyword cannibalization" as an example.

If you don't have access to this tool, examine the top-ranking pages for the keyword, and you'll notice that they all include the key term in their titles.

[Insert top ranking pages image]

How can you drive website traffic using these topical keywords?

The answer: Create a dedicated page for each keyword. While it may require effort, it's easier than trying to rank for vague yet popular keywords. Another effective approach is to utilize modifiers to further refine your targeting.

For instance, the keyword "black shoes" may have a high KD, but when modified to "black shoes with khaki pants," the KD decreases to two.

It becomes much easier to surpass these two competitors. You don't even need to write long, detailed content. A simple content piece rich in keywords can do the job.

Targeting Supporting Long-Tail Keywords Creating separate pages to target these long-tail keywords is not effective since Google aggregates results for similar queries, causing your pages to get lost among the crowd.

So what's the solution?

Target the head term. However, you need to identify the supporting keywords first. Input your keyword into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and examine the parent topic.

If the parent topic differs from your keyword, you should target the parent topic instead.

But how?

• Study the top-ranked pages for the broad keyword. • Observe the level of detail and comprehensiveness in their content and aim to create an even better page. • Include the keyword prominently in the page title. • Naturally incorporate the keyword into subheadings, page URLs, meta descriptions, page content, and image file names (if applicable).

Ranking for broad terms may be challenging, but the effort is worthwhile.

Ready to Master Long-Tail Keywords? Long-tail keywords offer significant benefits, but they are not a magical solution. They need to be approached and managed strategically. The approach and tools mentioned in this article will give your optimization efforts and website traffic a significant boost.

If you require assistance with any other aspect of SEO, please let us know in the comments below.