How can long tail keywords and niche marketing grow your business?
The inclusion of long tail keywords within your content often uncovers new client groups within your market. These previously undiscovered leads usually have a high conversion rate due to little competition and targeted interest. The art of ferreting out these hidden customers is called niche marketing. Web Marketers consider niche marketing to be one of their best tools for attracting and converting clients.
What are Long Tail Keywords?
Since this idea of niche marketing relies on the use of long tail keywords, let’s take a look at what those are and how to incorporate them into your content.
In his SEO Empowerment Series, Steve Schmidt, web marketing specialist and owner of Effect Web Agency, defines the purpose of keywords.
Keyword research sets the direction for the rest of your organic SEO strategy. Determining which specific keyword phrases to target is extremely important to your website’s success or failure. During the research process, you will likely learn more about your customers as well. One of the main things to keep in mind when considering which keywords to target is: quality over quantity.
He goes on to say that long tail keywords generate even more traffic than other keywords.
Long Keywords normally show a low number of people searching for them. However, there are so many long keywords being searched that the total traffic from Long Keywords can be big – sometimes 3 to 4 times the traffic of your Target Keywords. Long Keywords are easy to rank for. Write them into your page or blog post. in a few weeks, it’s likely you will have people find you through those phrases in your content.
How Do You Find Long Tail Keywords?
There is no place where you can research long tail keywords. If they were spelled out for people, everyone would use them. Once you have determined the targeted keywords for your site, the best thing you can do is write content. Writing blog posts that answer questions is a good way to get pages ranked for different Long Keywords.
According to SEOMoz.org (the SEO research authority in the US), 70% of keywords searched for are Long Keywords. Not only is the traffic from Long Keywords substantial, but these keywords almost always have a better conversion rate. This increased conversion is because people who search for specialized items are often closer to buying (or submitting a lead).
Niche marketing is nothing more than specialization. For instance, a guitar shop might carry fifty brands of guitars. They can market to guitar players, but the competition will be stiff. However, if they pick a niche, like 12-string acoustic guitars or left-handed electric guitars, then the competitive field narrows. Plus, the people searching for those items already have a good idea of what they want to buy. Conversion is much easier.
Advantages to Niche Marketing
- You speak the language of your customer. If you write content on left-handed guitar playing, a left-handed buyer already feels a connection with you. Your content demonstrated that you understand their needs. Establishing yourself as a specialist in an industry is a proven successful sales technique.
- You don’t want traffic; you want sales. Operating in a large, competitive market costs both time and money. Niche marketing targets prospects closer to the end of the buying journey.
- Specializing Does Not Limit Your Reach. Nobody says you can’t market in hundreds of niches. The scope of your marketing plan does not shrink, but it becomes segmented. In turn, it becomes more efficient.
Evaluate A Prospective Niche Market
Let’s go back to the guitar shop and take a look at their marketing strategy.
The company owns a beautiful website with good images, a strong value proposition, and great testimonials. The site itself is mobile-friendly and up-to-date on all of Google’s newest requirements for ranking. Plus, they optimized their site for local traffic. Everything that could have been done to generate traffic to the website up to this point is in place.
Now, it’s time to send out feelers to niche markets. The best way to accomplish this is with blog content. Blog posts should be informative pieces written on very specific topics.
For instance, our guitar shop might write articles on How to Restring a Guitar, Tips for Transposing Music, or Tricks for Left-Handed Guitar players. Each piece resonates with a different group of people within the market, yet all are tied together by guitars.
The article, if it stays on topic, should be filled with all sorts of long tail keywords, just through the natural writing process. By carefully linking these posts to others on the site, you can create a path for your prospective customer to follow that eventually leads them to the place where they can make a purchase.
Evaluating a Niche Market for It’s Potential
Once you have identified a niche market, assess whether or not your company should invest in it further.
- Is the market free from any outside competition?
- Is the market growing?
- Do you already have customers in this niche?
- Are there any licensing or liability issues?
- Which tactics are available to drive immediate business?
- Is paid search engine marketing a possibility for driving leads?
Niche marketing could open whole new streams of income for your business. Nobody wants to invest large amounts of money pursuing unproven markets. However, with a blog post and long tail keywords, the cost is minimal, and the potential return is significant.
If you want to know more about how niche marketing can help grow your business, then contact us. We would be happy to have either our marketing or content specialists show you what’s possible.
