What if I told you that I had secret keywords that would drive search traffic to your website, Facebook page, or Twitter account. These magic keyword phrases would not only drive traffic, but it would bring qualified customers for your product, service, or idea. Your phone will ring, and your cash registers will click.
Then I would add the kicker…
You can find these keyword phrases today and it won’t cost you a cent.
“Tall order, John,” you would say…
“Can’t be done.”
“Been, there, tried that.”
“Too much competition.”
“Only the guys with lots of money can rank for my keywords.”
Guess what… you’re partially right.
You probably can’t rate for that so called ideal keyword, but you can actually find a better one.
“No way, Richardson,” you scream. “There isn’t anything better than my ideal keyword.”
And this is where I will beg to differ…
Because a truly magic keyword phrase is one that uniquely identifies you.
One that brings qualified buyers and leads. This keyword phrase will work on Google, Bing, Yahoo and business databases like Amazon and LinkedIn.
Here is the added kicker…
You can find numerous magic keywords that will drive traffic for each product, service or location that you have.
The secret is to truly know your customers.
Keywords That Match Your Business
What I’m talking about here is actually really simple. These magic keywords are known as Long Tail Keywords. They are longer and more specific versions of a popular keyword. Let’s look at a few examples.
- Popular Keyword Phrase = Auto Repair
- Mid Tail Versions = Auto Repair San Diego, Auto Repair Ford, Auto Repair Upholstery
- Long Tail Versions = Ford Auto Repair San Diego, Auto Upholstery Repair San Diego, Ford Tune Up San Diego.
It’s pretty easy to see that the more specific long tail versions would certainly bring more qualified buyers for your upholstery or tune up services than the more generic ones, and since you won’t have much competition, it will be much easier to rank for them on Google than the shorter ones. Obviously, the number of people searching for these specific keywords will be limited, but… here is an additional kicker, you can create 30,40, 50 or more of these for your specific site… (starting to see the opportunity here??)
Let’s say you have an Auto Repair Shop in San Diego. Let’s look at three different searches, and see what the top listings are on each one.
Let’s type in “Auto Repair” and examine the result…
Wow.. ranking one the first page of Google for “Auto Repair” might bring a lot of traffic, but it would be the wrong kind. The person searching here would most likely be a do-it-yourselfer working from home. Not your customer.
Let’s get more specific. Let’s try “Auto Repair San Diego”
Now we are getting closer, but we have an additional problem. The first listing is from the business search engine, Yelp, which will list out all our competition and give (one to five) star rankings. Our competitors may rank higher and have better reviews than we do. While we obviously want to rank well on Yelp, this adds an additional degree of uncertainty.
Let’s try a long tail version with the key phrase of “Ford Auto Repair San Diego”
Now we are getting somewhere, but we have an additional problem. The Ford Auto Repair listing is from a company that sells local advertising. Since they get a lot of traffic, the search engines put them at the top of the list. We might have to pay a lot of money to get here… unless we can find a different way… (Hint: Google is looking for an authority on the subject. Hint:Hint: Lots of specific keywords might do the trick…)
So now that we have seen so examples, let’s define what a Long Term Keyword Phrase is…
- Four keywords or more
- Specifically describes a part of our business or service
- Fits your niche
Now I know what you are asking… How do I find good long tail keywords?
Finding Good Long Tail Keywords
There are a couple of easy ways to do this. The first involves the Google Search Bar.
Just type your main keyword in and hit the spacebar. Google will list out suggestions. Here is what “Auto Repair” returns.
In my case, Google knows where my computer is located and my previous search items. It tries to be as relevant as possible. Depending on where my shop is located, I may want to target individual keyword phrases for each smaller city in my area, and also the larger metropolitan area of San Diego.
Now I can get more specific by adding a city. Google will show me items that others have searched for and the way the phrases are worded.
By adding the city I see how people in the area are searching. From the results it appears that adding a zip code, street name, and that the shop is open on Sunday are all long tail options.
Let’s add the make of car (Ford) that we specialize in…
By adding Ford, we can see the actual search phrases people type in. This is key and will make great long tail phrases.
Let’s try a different approach and type in the actual repair that we specialize in
Now we have two additional search terms that people are searching for, mobile and leather. If we offer these services, we should certainly add these to our long tail options. (If we aren’t currently offering them, we might want to reconsider)
By just spending a few minutes with Google we found a half dozen additional search terms that may drive traffic…
- Open Sunday
- Local cities
- Zip codes
- Street names
- Mobile service
- Leather upholstery
Let’s take this a step further. Let’s look at a third party long tail keyword search engine and see what it comes up with. We’ll go to the 7search site and type in Auto Repair. Here are some additional keyword results that we may want to add.
Words like reference center, full service, free repair estimate, cheap are all terms that people search on. If a word like “cheap” doesn’t match your business, you may want to word it as “we fix cheap upholstery repairs.”
Let’s try the same engine with upholstery and see what we get.
More terms that may be useful. Items like carpet, cleaner, design, supplier, fabric, auto upholstery are all additional words we can add to our keyword phrases.
So in a matter of minutes we can easily create 30 to 40 long tail keywords we can use. If we can rank for them in the search engines, Google will send traffic to our website. So how in the heck can we accomplish this? Adding 30 or 40 of these phrases to the short description text on our website will make it sound like a promo page out of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. No matter how we word it, it won’t sound good to our customers, and Google may penalize use for keyword stuffing.
There has to be a better way…
How To Get Listed For Your Long Tail Keywords
Common sense would indicate that we ought to use them in our social media posts on Facebook and Twitter. This is a good start, but Google may not index them there. We can add them to a blog post, but research has shown that most common blog posts don’t rank very well. Here is a graph from Kevin Delaney at Quartz which illustrates the problem. Most blog posts are 600-800 words. As you can see from the graph, social media shares are almost non-existent at this length.
The Secret is Long Form Content.
Writing authoritative posts that are 1600 to 4000 words in length are now what Google and the social media universe are looking for. SEO guru Neil Patel has done a lot of research on this and came to some startling conclusions…
Looking at data from SerpIQ, he found that the average content length of pages in the number one position on Google is 2450 words. This is over twice the length of the average blog post of 800 words. He started a new blog last year, focusing entirely on Long Form Authoritative Content and has had amazing results.
His numbers absolutely blew me away. In less than a year he has gone from zero to almost 100,000 visitors a month to his new site.
Most new blogs struggle to just get a few hundred visits after a year. What in the heck is his secret?
When you look at his website you’ll notice that he has a limited number of posts. The secret to blogging used to be volume. For years, most popular bloggers have delivered posts daily or even multiple times a day. But Neil took a different approach. He blogs just once or twice a week. The secret to his success; each post is long form (2000+ words), contains substantial data, and has compelling graphics, charts and info.
So now a picture is forming…
Let’s go back to our Auto Repair example.
If you have an upholstery shop in San Diego and want to start a blog, you’ll want to start with a list of possible long tail keywords. Let’s look back at our data and come up with list.
Start with a list of local cities that you serve…
- San Diego Auto Repair Upholstery
- Chula Vista Auto Repair Upholstery
- Claremont Auto Repair Upholstery
- Kearny Mesa Auto Repair Upholstery
- Miramar Auto Repair Upholstery
Then you can add makes of cars that you service..
- San Diego Ford Auto Repair Upholstery
- San Diego Ford Upholstery Services
- San Diego BMW Upholstery Repair
- San Diego Lexus Upholstery Leather Repair
Notice that you can add options to our list and tweak the way they are written.
Now add some of the options you discovered on your keyword search
- San Diego Mobile Upholstery Services
- San Diego Leather Upholstery Repair
- Kearny Mesa Upholstery Repair Open Sunday
- BMW Upholstery Cleaning Serving San Diego
As you can see, you have a lot of options. You’ll need to come up with a workable strategy to create a content rich blog that will serve your community and bring in customers. If you are starting from scratch, plan it out for a year. To make sure you can actually pull this off, you’ll need to set aside time each week to research and write your posts. You’ll want to make it customer centric and do interviews with some of your real customers. By providing pictures, video and location shots to each post, you’ll make it come alive.
Here is a short list you might want to consider…
- Plan to blog once a week for a year (52 posts), based on a long tail keyword association
- Each post will be customer centric
- Have real customer interviews, case studies, and outcomes
- Feature customer cars from each local city you serve
- Feature different upholstery fabrics and colors
- Create an in-depth post each week with a length of 1500 to 2500 words.
Long Tail Keyword Post Example
With a keyword rich title and a customer centric approach, you can easily create a blog post once a week that features a specific set of long tail keywords, but written in a format that is easy to read and has information that is useable for your customers. To easily use your keywords, you can include helpful subheads throughout the article such as…
- Kearny Mesa Resident Loves Our Mobile Upholstery Service
- We opened Sunday for an upholstery class for a British Car Club
- Only the Finest Leather was good enough for Kearny Mesa Resident
Putting up a graphic rich, customer centric post each week, with detailed samples of your work, you’ll soon become the online authority for upholstery in San Diego. Adding specials, and introducing your staff will really help your potential customers see your work and hear testimonials from your customers.
After a year of these posts, when anyone searches for automotive upholstery in San Diego, your business will have a good chance of coming up at the top of the search list. While blogging takes time and effort, writing authoritative, customer centric posts with long tail keywords will most certainly be worth the investment. Broadcasting each post using these same keywords to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, you’ll reach hundreds of local customers ready to do business with you.
Now the only question is… When will you start?
Your Turn: What long tail keywords will you apply to your business or brand?