Focusing on ranking for the “top 10-20 keywords” for your industry is too often the only strategy used to increase and maintain Internet traffic, but that can be a huge mistake. Sure, keeping your site on the radar by focusing on the top keywords of your industry may help customers find your site, but this doesn’t always translate into referrals, sales and leads. By managing only the top keywords, you may be missing out on a substantial amount of business.
Keywords and phrases outside of the “top 20,” known as Long Tail keywords tend to be longer, more specialized, and are searched by users who are looking for something more specific.
For example, let’s say you’re a retail store specializing in women’s footwear. In terms of searching for a new pair of shoes, the keyword “shoes” may be considered a head keyword. But when looking for a specific kind of shoe, using a string of key words like “black patent leather red heel shoes” is more effective in helping customers find exactly what they are looking for.
This is the basis of the Long Tail theory. The heart of it is that traffic drawn in by the Long Tail keywords is higher quality and more promising than traffic generated by the top 10-20.
Industry research and the results we have experienced with our customers supports this, yet many businesses are unaware of the Long Tail theory potential. For example, 57% of Amazon’s sales result from searches outside of what is “popular”.
The key to using a Long Tail strategy is utilizing your own website data. This information is your best source of Long Tail keywords, being more personalized, relevant to your business and descriptive of what defines you from your competition.
So which customers is your business missing out on? It may be time to reevaluate the keywords and terms you focus on. Our team at Infinite Communications can help you develop more effective SEO strategies that will get you in touch with the right customers who were looking for you all along.
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