Promoting a site through long-tail queries

Getting the most traffic straight away matters for any young site. Promotion through long-tail queries is one of the most effective SEO strategies for a young site.

 Long-tail queries are search queries used fewer than 100 times a month. Competition for them is lower and a site gets traffic faster. 

The main thing to know about long-tail queries

Long-tail search queries differ not only in being used less often. Such keywords describe the user's task more precisely. Compare the queries "hosting", "order hosting", "order hosting for a WordPress online shop". 

What is the difference between long-tail and mid-frequency queries? 

Telling a long-tail query from a high-frequency one is not hard. But what about long-tail versus mid-frequency? Exact search volume is far from always a reliable indicator. We advise going by the subject matter and by query statistics from Serpstat and Google Keyword Planner. 

Long-tail queries are also called long tail keys. Such phrases consist of four words or more and describe the object of the search completely. Examples: "buy a 2011 Hyundai Accent on credit" or "buy a two-room flat in the city centre". 

Why are such queries so promising? Their detail says that the user has a clear intention to buy a particular product or order a service. Which means traffic from long-tail queries produces better conversion figures. 

Promotion through long-tail queries needs fewer financial resources. And it is by no means certain that reaching the top for high-frequency queries will bring more sales. 

Is it worth promoting a site for a long-tail query your competitors already use? Yes. It makes sense precisely because the query is transactional with high conversion figures. Reach the top for it and you are guaranteed sales, which means the investment pays for itself. 

Strategies for promotion through long-tail queries  

Gathering a large pool of queries. Here the idea is to collect as many long-tail queries as possible. You also have to decide the minimum search volume of the queries you use. 

We recommend queries with a volume of 50 to 150 a month. Separate landing pages can be created for most of the phrases, and queries close in meaning can be grouped. 

When working on product pages, add the main long-tail query to the title. Distribute the queries rationally: a separate page certainly does not need creating for each of them. 

Creating conversion landing pages. Gather 10 to 30 queries with the lowest search volume that are clearly transactional. A separate landing page linking to the site being promoted can be created for each. Every such landing page will be a page of the site and stands a better chance of taking top positions. 

Encourage the creation of user content. Besides optimising pages for particular queries, it matters to support the creation of user content — unboxing videos, reviews, comments and so on. There can be many options, and this approach can be combined with the two previous ones. 

General advice on promotion through long-tail queries 

There are several general rules for promotion through long-tail queries: 

• Gather as many long-tail queries as you can and sift the data you have collected. Decide which queries suit product pages and which are better used in articles.

• Judge how competitive the queries are. Serpstat will do it, showing the difficulty of a phrase and the number of results for that query. The second option is to use data from Google's keyword planner, where you will also see the level of competition for each query. 

• Fit the queries in as naturally as you can, and avoid over-stuffing. 

• Be sure to build internal links between product pages.   

Conclusions 

Promotion through long-tail queries is the optimal strategy for sites that need organic traffic quickly. The main advantages: 

• the site gets visitors who are interested in buying;

• promotion costs less;

• the investment pays for itself faster. 

Several factors can get in the way of successful promotion: 

• Poor content. Articles and sales texts should be of the highest quality, substantial and useful. It is not worth economising on a copywriter. 

• A poorly built semantic core. If the site's queries were gathered without relying on statistics, or grouped incorrectly, the site will not reach the top of the results.

• Too many long-tail queries. Over-saturating the text with key phrases will do no good. The site may fall foul of a search filter, users will lose interest in the offer, and the traffic to the site will be of poor quality.  

 Good luck promoting your sites.