What are longtail keywords?
Introduction
So, you’re at your SEO agencies rather swanky offices, and your half way through your meeting, during which, a rather nice latte has been offered. Sipping on rich blend offering coffee aromas up your nostrils you hear your two seo consultants bang-on about they’ve been busing building backlinks, writing content marketing, and they have also been building NAP citations, which all sounds well and good, you know what that all means, yet, your seo consultants keep mentioning “longtail keywords”- and you simply do not know what it means, so without further ado, well sipping on that latte, you ask the meaning, which may mean that more questions emerge, such as:
-Why are we going after keywords, which less people are searching for?
-Why are we spending so much on “evergreen content marketing”?
-Why can’t we just go after the main terms, the ones that your competitors have, and are obtaining sales from
Well, you might be at your seo agency and there might now be a rather stunned silence, you’ve asked a question that possibly the consultant cant really answer, and that’s why you’re here, and you’ve come to the right place, as our seo consultants, well, we don’t want to brag- okay we do, well they cut the mustard.
So sit back, resume sipping on a new fresh latte, and let us answer the question that possibly other agencies can’t all too easily.
What are longtail keywords?
Vanilla flavoured coffee, organic coffee beans, coffee beans that haven’t been roasted- now at this point you might be thinking, is this agency obsessed with coffee, and the answers yes, we are, we think its oil that keeps the cogs at our agency moving along, especially on Monday mornings.
Yet, we deviate off point, and we don’t mean too, what we are trying to get at is this, all of those descriptions, describe coffee, but there a rather longwinded way of going about it, “organic coffee”- well, a shorter query would be coffee beans, instead of saying flavoured coffee beans, again you might just even type coffee.
So, what’s the point we are trying to make?
Well, it’s a rather simple one, normally, not always however, there is an exception to every rule, but generally the shorter, the more exact queries “car insurance”, “ladders”, “pizza delivery near me” well they all have higher “search volumes”- which we will explain what this means later on, but in a nutshell more people type it, or ask this, which means more shoppers, which can mean more sales.
Yet, to rank for those terms, that means to rank say on the first page of Google, well guess what, a whack of other businesses, and their dog and gran also want to be there, its competitive, sometimes so much so, that to get there, it wont take days, weeks, or even months, yes you took the answer out of our very mouths, it can even take sometimes a very long time, so you can see why businesses here in the fine industrious city of Cardiff, South Wales, and further afield look for another solution, one which means they can get on the first page, but not for your main terms like “coffee beans” no for the longer, less typed queries like “find me a retailer that sells flavoured coffee beans” or find me a retailer that sells Columbian coffee.
Do you like Columbian coffee? We do, very nice, especially on a Monday morning, we already said that didn’t we?
So, what does search volume mean?
So, what does “search volume” mean?
Well, if your SEO consultant mentions “search volume” it simply means how many people are making that search per month.
Our SEO agency uses various SEO tools, as well as Google Search Console, which is an essential tool if you’re planning on implementing organic seo, why? We hear you ask…
Well, the answers simple, most often businesses, whether there truly vast organisations, that employ thousands of staff, or simply a sole trader business, normally, a lot of these businesses will invest in digital marketing, and sometimes at the very core of the SEO strategy is for the business to rank for relevant keywords, now for the agency or indeed the business to see if it improving, or moving backwards needs reliable seo tools, one such tool is “Google Analytics” and also “Google Search Console”- which is a must, as it tells you vital information, if your planning on implementing organic seo, such as:
– Where your website ranked on average for keywords
– Google Analytics will tell you how many organic visitors you have had, bounce rates, time on site
– They are a must, and are often used by seo agencies with other seo tools as well
So, in a nutshell, “search volume” is simply how many people made that search, so we are a digital marketing agency, so we will want to rank for keywords such as “marketing agency” plus the city where we are based, but this might have a much less of a search volume that say seo company, so our seo wizards, will work out which term is best to target, so we can attract more valued customers here in Wales.
Why would an agency opt to target words and phases that have a lower search volume?
This is an interesting question, one which does baffle our clients when they first come to us, that is they ask, why cant we just go after the main terms, so for example, if you sell car insurance, they want to know, why cant we just aim to rank in the top 3 for “car insurance” in the U.K.
But here’s the thing to remember, that is, a business sector, like car insurance is fiercely competitive, companies will literally spend multi million-pound figures on getting their websites to the top, and here’s the thing, they may have done so for a long time.
Now, you might be thinking, well, why does it matter if they have been forking out for a really long length of time, well, the answers simple, there “SEO ranking factors”- well, there going to be super strong.
Its kind of like going to the gym, just because you’ve hired what you think to be a world class personal trainer, this doesn’t matter if you’ve just started training, as in the first week, unless your superman, your not going to be lifting the heaviest weight at the gym, unless you want to injure yourself.
No, it’s the personal trainers job to condition you, to get you stronger so eventually, you can lift the heavier weights, and this is exactly the same concept when it comes to seo, just because your paying what you deem to be one of the best seo companies around, you cant realistically be placed on the first page of Google until you’ve beaten the competition, and if your direct rivals have been investing for long periods of time, and when we say long, sometimes we mean a very long time, well, you guessed it there’s often a massive, no scrub that gigantic effort that needs to be put in by the agency, and yes, you got it right, no a short term burst but for a very long period of time.
