What are Longtail Keywords, and Why Should You Adopt Them?

When it comes to developing your keyword usage, there remains a great deal of emphasis on targeting the most competitive keywords that relate to your business, and your target market. These short-tail keywords are where you and your competitors’ attention will be focused.

Of course, utilising these keywords in your on-site content and link building efforts will prove beneficial, but progress can be incremental – particularly within the most competitive industries. This is particularly true in iGaming content services, for instance, where companies face global competition for the highest rankings on search engine results pages.

All industries, however, are up against their fair share of competitors, and for many, the some of the most lucrative opportunities lie in another direction.

While a strong SEO strategy will utilise the most competitive keywords within content creation, it will also take into account user intent, and seek to harness this intent by centring much of content creation around longtail keywords.

What are Longtail Keywords?

While some keywords, such as ‘casino’ or ‘insurance’ will prove to be highly competitive on Google’s results pages, others – the long-tail keywords that follow on from the most competitive terms – will be much more specific phrases that are, in general, more likely to reflect a specific user intent.

Put simply, phrases such as ‘do I need roofers’ insurance?’ would be classed as long-tail. They are less ambiguous, and will yield search results much more targeted towards a specific objective than the search term (or short-tail keyword) ‘insurance’.

Of course, this limits the scope of your content, but this needn’t be an issue. If you rely on short-tail keywords, there is an added risk of a higher bounce back rate as searchers find that your content or site is not at all what they are looking for. With comprehensive SEO packages, clients will be placing enough content on a regular basis that your online presence will cover a wide enough range of subjects that you will be able to target all the relevant angles.

What Are the Benefits of Using Longtail Keywords?

Longtail keywords arise from highly focused searches, and entail a much more specific level of user intent than the more vague, open-ended keywords commonly targeted within SEO packages. As a result, content can be driven specifically toward a very particular kind of searcher – one who knows exactly what it is they are hoping to find, and will likely disregard any result that does not seem to cater to it.

They are also better suited for capturing the flow of traffic stemming from voice searches. In the vast majority of situations, users of virtual assistants like Siri and Bixby will ask a question that put their search in context, rather than simply targeting a short word or phrase without hinting at their motive. And, considering the fact that almost 60% of users are thought to have used voice search to learn about local businesses, targeting this market represents a lucrative opportunity.

What’s more, longtail keywords tend to be less competitive; when others are focussing on getting their foot through the door with short-tail keywords alone, taking the less direct approach can prove to be much more beneficial in the long term. The result is that you can climb higher on search engine results pages for highly targeted searches, and that, since they are targeted to a specific user intent, find more value in the traffic coming in via this channel.

Taking the most direct approach toward search engine results pages certainly has its merits, but optimising your online presence should be an ongoing, sustainable practice which gradually asserts your site’s authority on a wide range of relevant subjects.

Should You Use Them?

Absolutely. Link building packages and on-site content should be informed by a comprehensive understanding of your market, and the ways in which they use Google to find what they are looking for, which means that targeting the most competitive short-tail keywords is only half the story.

While they may not reflect the same high metrics of other keywords, they represent an excellent tool to utilise in your on- and off-site content that will stand a much greater chance of appealing to valuable and relevant searches from your market.