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Implementing a strong SEO strategy is important in order for your website to increase visibility and traffic. One of the biggest SEO strategies that websites implement is adding keywords to their content. After all, the search engines crawl through websites in search of keywords, and then rank your website based on the keyword matches when search queries are performed.
Most websites focus on using short-tail keywords, which are keywords that contain one to three words. However, if you truly want your website to rank high on the search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to implement long-tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are keywords that are longer in length and usually make up a complete thought or statement. Long tail keywords focus more on conversational content and are important because the way search queries are performed have changed.
Years ago, people used to search in short-tail keywords. Today, people are searching by asking questions and using longer search queries, which is why long tail keywords have become so important. Plus, the recent change in Google’s algorithm, Hummingbird, focuses more on long tail keywords than short tail keywords.
If you want to capture more long-tail keyword traffic, you need to implement the following three tactics.
1. Add FAQs to your website.
Adding an FAQs section to your website is one of the easiest ways to earn long tail traffic to your site. When you add an FAQs section, you add both the question and the answer, which are both beneficial to your long tail strategy. When adding an FAQs section to your website, you need to think about the most common questions that potential customers would ask about your business, and you need to place those questions and answers on your website. Think about what customers would ask a search engine, and be sure to add those questions and answers to your website as well. The more conversational your copy can be, and the more attractive it is to your audience, the more success you’ll have with your long tail keyword strategy.
2. Format your content correctly.
Most people don’t realize just how important the formatting of their content is to the success of their long tail SEO strategy. Search engines focus on headings and subheads before real content, so it’s important that you add headings and subheads to your content when possible. This way, your long tail keywords will be front and center to the search engines, making them easier for them to locate and use for ranking.
It’s also important that you place similar content on one page. Every page of your website will be ranked separately, so if each web page focuses on a different topic, it will be more beneficial to that page’s ranking. Instead of placing an entire white paper on one web page, break the white paper up into relevant sections and place each section on its own page. This is smart for the long tail keywords of each page, and it also helps improve your content density, which is equally important.
3. Provide transcriptions of multimedia files.
Most websites today contain video or audio files, and while these may be beneficial and attractive to your audience, they’re not beneficial to your search engine optimization efforts. Search engines cannot crawl through the content provided in these video and audio files, so any keywords, whether short-tail or long tail, will be lost.
In order to attract the search engines, make the multimedia files beneficial to your SEO, and provide long tail keywords on your website, you need to provide transcriptions of your multimedia files on your website. If you have your multimedia files professionally transcribed by a transcription service, you can receive the transcription in HTML form, making it easy for you to pop right into your website.
Transcriptions will provide copy that the search engines can crawl through, and because audio and videos tend to use more conversational tone, it easily provides long-tail keywords to your website without you having to change your content.
When you add transcriptions to your website, you want to make sure that you’re adding them correctly. Placing an entire transcription on one page of your website is not beneficial, and as mentioned above, you’ll want to be sure your content is formatted correctly. Don’t be afraid to paginate your transcriptions, especially if they’re lengthy, as this will be more beneficial to your overall SEO efforts.
Jade Biggs is a professional marketing agent. Jade delivers the content and message of her clients through multiple forms of multimedia including video, podcasting and their transcribed form which helps reach the largest possible audience.