Long Tail Keywords: The Key to High Conversion Rates

Most experts will tell you that gaining conversions is a numbers game. And they are right. Just not the numbers that you’re thinking about.

Let’s say you manage to drive 10,000 organic traffic to a product page in a month. With an average of 2.35% conversion rate online, that means a possibility of 250 customers buying your products or services online, or reserving a slot to an event you’re hosting.

Now take a step back. How did you get 10K organic visitors in the first place?
Here are the requirements you have met:

You optimized your page for a broad search keyword that has more than 30,000 in monthly search volume.

You ranked as the first result in SERP for that broad search keyword.

Existing on the top spot means you have an average CTR of 31.7%, with a margin of error taken into account.

Awesome, right? You can definitely do that too. All you have to do now is beat the big shot websites who are also gunning for the same broad search keywords. And depending on your business’ niche, you’re looking at names ranging from Wikipedia, Amazon, IGN, Neil Patel, Facebook, CNN, and most often than not: the great Google.

Now let’s go back to that 250 customers you managed to convert.
What if I told you that you can gain the SAME number of customers by driving only 800-1000 organic visitors to your site just by utilizing Long Tail Keywords for your SEO efforts.

Too good to be true? Well, read on then. We’ll show you the science behind it.

Imagine placing the product you sell, or the services you provide, in front of your customer at the exact time they need it.
That’s what long tail keywords do.
It does that by utilizing a human psychological aspect that’s very important to marketers: Intent. Or, in relation to SEO: Search Intent.

Oh now we’re talking. This tells us that the person searching works in a corporate environment, and wants to know if wearing red lipstick will be appropriate for her line of work.

It is now possible for you to create content that would directly target your audience searching for that long tail keyword and provide value to them.

It also opens up several possibilities for you as you can also create content that:

With the use of a Keyword Research Tool, you’ll see that these keywords or phrases are most likely to have low search volume, and that’s mainly due to how specific the intent these keywords represent.

However, due to the nature of these keywords having low search volume, you will find that there is very little competition when you target them. And that’s a win in itself.

Now don’t get me wrong, due to the nature of how specific to their search intent these long tail keywords are, it will require a lot of effort from you and your content creation team.

The important thing here is that you already know what to do. More than that, with the help of long tail keywords, you know exactly how your customer thinks.
All you gotta do now, is make content that answers their search intent, and you win 70% of the traffic.

Google only has 10 slots available on any search queries’ results page. Getting ranked for the second page is out of the question. That’s a dark place, and no one goes there.

Now if you’re unlucky enough to also have marketers targeting your focus keywords through paid ads, then that already small digital real estate you’re competing for just became a whole lot smaller.

Save yourself a lot of frustration and disappointment by targeting long tail keywords instead. For one, fewer websites are competing for them.

Plus, the more specific the search terms are, the easier it becomes to find your target customers looking for a particular answer.

Here’s where the massive effort from you and your content creation team comes in: You will need to publish content that would address these specific search queries. Do so, and you will rank highly for them.

If your content directly answers a customer’s query, Google will rank that page as a top result in SERP.
Neat, right? Let’s look at what that means for your content creation efforts.

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not so simple. Especially if you’re using broad search keywords as the center of the topics you’ll be conceptualizing on.
With long tail Keywords, you’ll know exactly which content topic to prioritize because it’s the one that will directly answer your customer’s needs.

But how do you actually do it? I’ll give you a tip: Throw SEO out of the window for a moment.

Focus on your customers and what they need, then create your content. If you write an awesome original content for your target audience and your goal in creating it is to genuinely help them, you’ll find that you’re automatically putting in long tail keywords without even breaking a sweat.

Add to that the fact that since your content is now bringing the right customers into your site, you will now have opportunities to create related topics to the one you’re discussing.
I call this: Dedicated Content.

The idea behind this structure is that there exists a Pillar Content which contains complete and comprehensive information about a topic that your page is trying to rank for. The job of this main article is to provide support to cluster articles which would then be discussing specific subtopics related to the main content.

Let’s say your business revolves around providing financial advice to customers who need it, and you would like to rank for financial advice for retirees.
Your Pillar content would then see a main article that has everything one needs to know about retiring, its benefits, and what retirees need to keep in mind.
From the subtopics of your pillar content, you can then create specifically-targeted articles addressing topics like superannuation, what to prepare for before retirement, or national policies for retirees. These articles would then have contextual links to your pillar content which your readers could follow to gain more information related to the specific topics you are discussing.

You could also do this the other way around. This time, your pillar content would see its subtopics linking to your cluster articles.

These internal links would not only strengthen the authority of your articles in Google’s ‘eyes’, it would also exude a sense of expertise to your readers which would then lead to very high rates of organic growth.
Like everything else in digital marketing, producing success organically requires time, patience, and continuous optimization.
Don’t expect results overnight just because you found the holy grail of content marketing. Long term results usually require maximum effort, but it will definitely be worth it.

Okay, you already have a sturdy structure in place for your contents. Now it’s time to make them.

Headline

Your article’s headline is the first thing that your audience will see. For most, it’s the only impression that you could ever make to your customers as only 2 out of 10 people will probably read your whole article.

Without the right words that are finely crafted to catch your user’s attention and make them curious enough to click on your pages’ in search results, the rest of your article which you so painstakingly created may as well not even exist.

This is what makes your headlines very important.

Every cloud has a silver lining as they say, since your customers are looking for an article that would address their problems and solve the very questions they entered into Google’s search box. While they aren’t aware that they are doing it, your target audience is actually doing long tail searches. All that’s left for you to do is make your headlines speak to them and directly address their needs.

Here are two simple steps that you can do to integrate your long tail keywords in your article’s headline and make it compelling for your customers:

Look up Popular Headlines

First, do a little organic research on social media channels that has to do with your industry’s niche. Then Check out posts or tweets about related articles that get shared the most.

Something about the headlines used in those articles caught the attention of the customers in your industry. Ask yourself: What makes these headlines so special?

Now Craft your Headlines Based on Popular Ones

Most of the massively shared blog posts in social media had headlines that were modeled from other popular articles. So don’t be afraid to study and copy a catchy headline you see on the internet. Just make sure you create a unique and better one for your article.

There are different methods of crafting compelling headlines, some more applicable than others depending on your industry’s niche. But here are the essentials that you would always need to keep in mind:

This is the make or break moment. This is the point in your article where your reader will decide to read through your content, or close the tab and look for a different one.

This is where you make your sales pitch. Your Introduction.

Let’s take a step back: You managed to get your reader through the front door using your headline. Why? What made them click on your article’s headline in SERP?The simple answer: Your headline answered their question perfectly.

The first one is easy: All you have to do is to redefine the query they entered on Google’s Search bar using your own words.
This is usually a hard thing to do since you can’t really read your customers’ minds. Or can you?
With the amount of research you made into long tail keywords mirroring their search intent, this step should be easy as pie.

Now, explaining the second one is a bit complicated, as it has something to do with human psychology.
So let’s simplify it with a real-life example:
Remember that feeling you felt when you were ready to buy something that you have always wanted? Only to find out that the store you entered did not have the exact make and model you were looking for?
Then the sales guy starts offering you alternatives but none of those is the one that you really wanted? Yep, that feeling.

Affirming your customers’ needs in your introduction is like telling them: “Yep, we got what you need. You’re in the right place.”
But how do you actually go about doing it in your article, though? Well first, let’s go back to your customer’s original query.
Okay, you know their search intent. You know why they’re here. Now we dig deeper. You’re the expert in the subject, what do they really need?
Take my introduction, for example. Most Long Tail Keyword articles online would tell you that it increases impressions, drives huge traffic, and ranks your web pages higher. And yes, that’s probably what you were looking for when you entered your search query. But what does your website, your business, really need? Conversions.

You don’t need people ‘just visiting’ your website or its pages. You need people who will buy your products and avail of your services.
Reinforce your Sales Pitch. It does wonders.

In order to make content that your readers will deem valuable to them, I would like to reiterate a point I made earlier in this article: Prioritize your customers before your website’s SEO.
Before you worry about integrating your long tail keywords on your articles in order to appease the SEO algorithm, think of creating high quality content first.
Not only will it support your article’s authority ratings, it would also help you avoid Keyword Stuffing.

A good method for incorporating long tail keywords in your article without being overly repetitive is LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing.
Basically, LSI considers the usage of synonyms and negative antonyms (or “not x” statements) to substitute for your specific keywords in order to avoid stuffing and repetition. Entity Explorer and Answer the Public are some examples of LSI Keyword Tools that you could use for this purpose.

Keeping these guidelines in mind, you will notice that you are already using your long tail keywords in a seamless and very natural way while writing your articles.

However, the amount of time that people spend on the internet is getting longer. What gives?
As you know, there is no shortage of information on the internet. This means the average reader who will stumble upon your article would probably just scan it and then move on to other sources in case they don’t find what they’re looking for.

This makes your Subtopic Headers all the more important. It is a very effective weapon that you can use to counter content scanning and get your readers back on track. Subtopic Headers usually have bolded words and have font sizes that are bigger than normal text. This makes them ‘pop out’ of your articles making them easily noticeable to the reader scanning your content.
Add to that the fact that Google’s algorithm takes into consideration what your header tags (Your < H1 > to < H6 > tags) say as well as how it’s structured in ranking pages for SERP.

Incorporating what you’ve learned about long tail keywords and how they mirror your customers search intent, it would now be a walk in the park for you to create relevant subtopic headers that addresses your readers’ needs with pinpoint accuracy.

This is where article transitions come into play. As much as you can, try to have a transition statement before or after your subtopic headers.

One way of doing this is by asking questions at the end of each section. Questions that will then be answered by the next section of your article which is introduced and highlighted by your subtopic headers.

Do this by reiterating your article’s message and state the same point you did in your introduction. This would help you fortify the consistency of your content as well as the message you’re trying to deliver. Then, strengthen your content’s message further by making sure your long tail keywords are naturally integrated in your conclusion.

And that’s it! You now have a high quality, well-written content. One worthy of Google SERP’s Top Rank.
Now we’ll make the process of hunting for your long tail keywords much easier.