Marketers and small business owners recognize that SEO delivers a higher return on investment than other marketing tactics.
SEO delivers highly targeted traffic and leads based on keywords. It’s why 71% of marketers rely on keywords as the main SEO strategy to rank higher in search engines.
Keywords are important to rank higher, but there’s a lot more to keywords. You need to know the difference between short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords.
Not knowing the difference could lead to an ineffective SEO strategy and website visitors that don’t have an interest in your services.
If you’re looking to get traffic to your website that you can easily turn into leads, read on to compare long tail keywords vs. short tail keywords and how you can create an SEO strategy that gets results.
What Are Keywords?
Keywords have two aspects. The first is from the perspective of the person searching for information. They use search engines to look for products, compare brands, answer random questions and so much more.
The search terms they use are called keywords.
The other aspect of a keyword is how information and websites get indexed in search engines. This is the topic of your site and individual pages on your site.
Search engines have bots that crawl the HTML code of your website to learn what your site is about. Each page gets indexed like an old filing system.
When someone searches for information online the search engine’s algorithm takes a couple of hundred factors into account to produce the most relevant results.
Keywords are one of the main factors.
Long Tail vs. Short Tail Keywords
As a marketer or small business owner, your job is to match how people search for information with relevant content on your website.
That’s where long-term and short-term keywords can make a difference in your SEO strategy.
A short-term keyword is a keyword that is made of one or two words. A long tail keyword is a search term made of three or more words.
Let’s take a look at the real-world impact these types of keywords can have on your search results and traffic.
You have an online store that sells fitness equipment to gyms and people who want to build home gyms.
You might think that your main keywords are fitness and fitness equipment. Those are short-term keywords that give a general sense of what your site’s about.
There are millions of searches for fitness each month. What you don’t know is what those searches are really for.
Is someone looking for fitness workouts? Maybe they want a fitness coach? They could want fitness equipment, but you don’t know if it’s for a home gym or a commercial gym.
You can rank high for those short-term keywords. You’ll get a lot of traffic, but it’s not highly targeted because you don’t know what people are really searching for.
That traffic is unlikely to turn into leads and customers.
You can use long-term keywords like fitness equipment kettlebells, commercial gym equipment, and home gym equipment.
There are fewer people using those specific search terms. However, if you rank for those keywords, you’re likely to get those people to convert to leads and customers.
You can also target users based on location. Even though your store is online, you can reach people based on specific locations.
How to Do Keyword Research
Do you see how long-tail and short-term keywords can make a difference in your site? How do you go about searching for the best keywords to use to get highly targeted traffic?
Start by brainstorming ways people will search for information on your site. Write down what your target market searches for when they have an interest in your products or services.
The thing to remember is that you shouldn’t focus on just terms that people use to buy your products or services.
Consumers take a long journey to get to the point where they’re ready to buy. The most effective SEO strategies use keywords at different points of the buying process.
Using the fitness equipment example above, you can target commercial gyms with a few search terms they’re likely to use in the early stages of the process.
A new gym owner will want to know the essential equipment they need to get started. An existing gym owner would want to know if it’s time to repair or replace the equipment they already have.
They’ll compare brands, and price points, and look at maintenance costs before making a decision.
You can create content that answers these questions. In the process, you build brand trust because you’re helping people make informed buying decisions.
You can use keyword research tools online to find keywords. You want to choose keywords that have enough volume and less competition to rank in search results.
Other SEO Factors to Boost Your Search Rankings
Search engines consider many other factors before they deliver results to users. Your website design, performance, and usability are key factors.
The site’s content and technical code have to convey to bots what your site is about so it gets indexed properly.
It’s wise to hire a website designer to review your site to make sure that your site is optimized for search.
Good SEO Starts with Knowing Short Tail and Long Tail Keywords
Once you understand the difference between long tail and short tail keywords, you can create SEO strategies like an SEO expert.
Both have a purpose, but if you want to get targeted traffic to your site, make sure you use long-tail SEO keywords.
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