Did you know that you could be leaving money on the table by not effectively promoting products or services that are targeted to your Long Tail keywords?
If there is one thing that has always baffled me, it is the effort (or lack of) that most Website owners put into selling to their 'Long Tail' traffic.
For those of you that don't know what Long Tail traffic is; it is the traffic that is generated from search engines for keywords that are not what a good number of you are targeting in your SEO and PPC campaigns. They are usually words that most people overlook because they are not as 'popular' as some of more frequently searched phrases.
For instance, if your company Website is targeting the words "dog training", then your long tail keywords might include words like "Florida canine trainers" or "how to train a German Sheppard" and other words that most people would not normally focus on as much as the more popular words.
The majority of Website owners put their efforts into ranking for the words that are the most popular and forget about the rest.
The majority of the traffic you will get to your Website will be for Long Tail keywords. Tailoring your Web page to suit this traffic will help you sell more product or services. The fact is that even though you are targeting specific (highly searched) keywords, you will NOT get as much traffic for those words as you will for your other Long Tail combinations.
In most cases, even if you did achieve top ranking for the more popular (and highly searched) keywords, you would still get more visits from all of your Long Tail traffic.
What's worse is the fact that many Website owners actually think they should focus ONLY on single keywords that get large amounts of searches every month. This is not only nearly impossible for 99.9% of the Websites out there, but it's just plain stupid. Single words are almost impossible to rank for.
Many believe that if they're not ranking for a specific single word that all is lost, but that could not be further from the truth.
The truth is that the majority of people don't use single words when searching for products or services on the Web. According to One Stat (a popular analytical software company) the majority of people (about 80%) expand their searches by using 2 or more keywords:
It tells you that you should NOT focus ONLY on single words for starters. In addition to that, I would add that you should not put all of your efforts into trying to achieve top ranking for the more popular keywords.
Now I'm NOT saying to completely forget the popular words. On the contrary - I believe you should start your optimization with those words. BUT you should also put plenty of effort into your Long Tail words if you ever plan on improving your online sales.
What's even more interesting is that people coming to your Website using Long Tail keywords are more likely to buy from you IF the page they land on has offers that cater to those searches.
I remember learning this lesson many years ago. I was one of those guys that researched my niche, found the most frequently used keywords (according to Overture at the time) and went to town on my Website using ONLY those keywords and combinations of them.
This worked great at first, but once the search engine algorithms began to change I found myself fighting against more competition than ever. I soon realized that I wasn't getting as much traffic as I once did even though the words I chose were the most popular. I then started optimizing the Website for every other combination I could think of and that helped a little.
One day I was always looking at the Website stats and I noticed the site was getting traffic for some pretty strange phrases, but they ALL related to my niche so I started optimizing individual pages for each keyword phrase. I then began to customize each one of those pages to suit the traffic I was getting for this word. After a month or two the Website was receiving WAY more traffic for my Long Tail keywords than I was my main ones.
What was even better was, since I started customizing the pages individually for each specific set of words, I was actually 'converting' more of this traffic into sales. This technique has worked for so many of my clients in the past and I've generated millions in revenue for them using this method.
In 2002, I was handling the Web marketing for one of the largest Steel Building manufacturers in the U.S. This company fabricated steel building for use as Garages, Hangars, Carports and much more. They were a giant in their industry. But there marketing was not at 100%. They lacked the power of the Web.
This company used to advertise in automotive magazines (like Hot Rod, Motor Trends etc) and they spent a fortune on radio and television as well.
They were spending well over $40k in magazine ads and ZERO on SEO and PPC.
They had just started testing Pay-Per-Click with very small campaigns, but they knew nothing about SEO or PPC. They did not know anything about choosing keywords or how to handle the traffic when it came to their Website.
I took over their PPC and SEO and (as with every other company I'd ever taken on) they began to get more traffic than they could have ever imagined. I won't get into all of the details of HOW I did it all (at least not in this email), but I will tell you how I improved their conversions and turned their traffic into leads, which would later turn that year into their best sales year ever.
Now mind you... the cheapest building this company sold was $5k and they ran all the way up to over $100k so there were huge sales opportunities with each and every visit they received.
The problem was... they did not know what this traffic was or what to do with it. They had no idea where it was coming from or for what keywords. Once I was able to dig in and figure all that out, it was easy.
I noticed that most of their pages were plastered with nothing but words that meant nothing to the reader. Their copy was extremely weak. They did not offer their readers anything they were looking for and talked mostly about the company and what they did.
I started to monitor this traffic and optimized the Web pages for individual words. I then started up the PPC campaigns and drove the traffic to specific pages I had built for each individual set of words (about 40 pages!). This turned out to work better than even I expected!
For instance, I would send someone that looked up the (Long Tail) keywords "cheap metal carports for sale" to a page that talked JUST about carports and made the person 'visualize' their car in this finely crafted carport.
If the person looked up a word relating to Hangars I would send them to a page about... you guessed... it Hangars.
This all seems so simple now, but the fact is that most people see LOTS of Long Tail traffic coming to their Website and never bother to alter these pages to suit this traffic.
If a person is looking up "Dog training in South Florida", then you should make a page with the look and feel of a 'Florida' Website that discusses training dogs.
THAT is the mental trigger that guides a person thoughts and feeling and lets them know that they've arrived at the right place. This in turn will help you convert your traffic into sales much better - I swear.
Try this for yourself. Look at your analytics (you do have Google analytics don't you?) and start taking the top visited Web pages and converting them into top SELLING pages.
You can use Isis Toolbox's SEO Tools to check your Websites ranking, link popularity and more.
If there is one thing that has always baffled me, it is the effort (or lack of) that most Website owners put into selling to their 'Long Tail' traffic.
For those of you that don't know what Long Tail traffic is; it is the traffic that is generated from search engines for keywords that are not what a good number of you are targeting in your SEO and PPC campaigns. They are usually words that most people overlook because they are not as 'popular' as some of more frequently searched phrases.
For instance, if your company Website is targeting the words "dog training", then your long tail keywords might include words like "Florida canine trainers" or "how to train a German Sheppard" and other words that most people would not normally focus on as much as the more popular words.
The majority of Website owners put their efforts into ranking for the words that are the most popular and forget about the rest.
This is a VERY big mistake.
The majority of the traffic you will get to your Website will be for Long Tail keywords. Tailoring your Web page to suit this traffic will help you sell more product or services. The fact is that even though you are targeting specific (highly searched) keywords, you will NOT get as much traffic for those words as you will for your other Long Tail combinations.
In most cases, even if you did achieve top ranking for the more popular (and highly searched) keywords, you would still get more visits from all of your Long Tail traffic.
What's worse is the fact that many Website owners actually think they should focus ONLY on single keywords that get large amounts of searches every month. This is not only nearly impossible for 99.9% of the Websites out there, but it's just plain stupid. Single words are almost impossible to rank for.
Many believe that if they're not ranking for a specific single word that all is lost, but that could not be further from the truth.
The truth is that the majority of people don't use single words when searching for products or services on the Web. According to One Stat (a popular analytical software company) the majority of people (about 80%) expand their searches by using 2 or more keywords:
- 2 word phrases - 32.58%
- 3 word phrase- 25.61%
- 1 word phrases - 19.02%
- 4 word phrases - 12.83%
- 5 word phrases - 5.64%
- 6 word phrases - 2.32%
- 7 word phrases - 0.98%
What does this tell you?
It tells you that you should NOT focus ONLY on single words for starters. In addition to that, I would add that you should not put all of your efforts into trying to achieve top ranking for the more popular keywords.
Now I'm NOT saying to completely forget the popular words. On the contrary - I believe you should start your optimization with those words. BUT you should also put plenty of effort into your Long Tail words if you ever plan on improving your online sales.
What's even more interesting is that people coming to your Website using Long Tail keywords are more likely to buy from you IF the page they land on has offers that cater to those searches.
I remember learning this lesson many years ago. I was one of those guys that researched my niche, found the most frequently used keywords (according to Overture at the time) and went to town on my Website using ONLY those keywords and combinations of them.
This worked great at first, but once the search engine algorithms began to change I found myself fighting against more competition than ever. I soon realized that I wasn't getting as much traffic as I once did even though the words I chose were the most popular. I then started optimizing the Website for every other combination I could think of and that helped a little.
One day I was always looking at the Website stats and I noticed the site was getting traffic for some pretty strange phrases, but they ALL related to my niche so I started optimizing individual pages for each keyword phrase. I then began to customize each one of those pages to suit the traffic I was getting for this word. After a month or two the Website was receiving WAY more traffic for my Long Tail keywords than I was my main ones.
What was even better was, since I started customizing the pages individually for each specific set of words, I was actually 'converting' more of this traffic into sales. This technique has worked for so many of my clients in the past and I've generated millions in revenue for them using this method.
I'll give you a real life example...
In 2002, I was handling the Web marketing for one of the largest Steel Building manufacturers in the U.S. This company fabricated steel building for use as Garages, Hangars, Carports and much more. They were a giant in their industry. But there marketing was not at 100%. They lacked the power of the Web.
This company used to advertise in automotive magazines (like Hot Rod, Motor Trends etc) and they spent a fortune on radio and television as well.
They were spending well over $40k in magazine ads and ZERO on SEO and PPC.
They had just started testing Pay-Per-Click with very small campaigns, but they knew nothing about SEO or PPC. They did not know anything about choosing keywords or how to handle the traffic when it came to their Website.
I took over their PPC and SEO and (as with every other company I'd ever taken on) they began to get more traffic than they could have ever imagined. I won't get into all of the details of HOW I did it all (at least not in this email), but I will tell you how I improved their conversions and turned their traffic into leads, which would later turn that year into their best sales year ever.
Now mind you... the cheapest building this company sold was $5k and they ran all the way up to over $100k so there were huge sales opportunities with each and every visit they received.
The problem was... they did not know what this traffic was or what to do with it. They had no idea where it was coming from or for what keywords. Once I was able to dig in and figure all that out, it was easy.
I noticed that most of their pages were plastered with nothing but words that meant nothing to the reader. Their copy was extremely weak. They did not offer their readers anything they were looking for and talked mostly about the company and what they did.
I started to monitor this traffic and optimized the Web pages for individual words. I then started up the PPC campaigns and drove the traffic to specific pages I had built for each individual set of words (about 40 pages!). This turned out to work better than even I expected!
For instance, I would send someone that looked up the (Long Tail) keywords "cheap metal carports for sale" to a page that talked JUST about carports and made the person 'visualize' their car in this finely crafted carport.
If the person looked up a word relating to Hangars I would send them to a page about... you guessed... it Hangars.
This all seems so simple now, but the fact is that most people see LOTS of Long Tail traffic coming to their Website and never bother to alter these pages to suit this traffic.
If a person is looking up "Dog training in South Florida", then you should make a page with the look and feel of a 'Florida' Website that discusses training dogs.
THAT is the mental trigger that guides a person thoughts and feeling and lets them know that they've arrived at the right place. This in turn will help you convert your traffic into sales much better - I swear.
Try this for yourself. Look at your analytics (you do have Google analytics don't you?) and start taking the top visited Web pages and converting them into top SELLING pages.
You can use Isis Toolbox's SEO Tools to check your Websites ranking, link popularity and more.
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