Designing for long-tail SEO

As an SEO best-practice, it is a good idea to design for more than a single permutation of a keyword. By designing an SEO strategy around a single keyword, you may miss out on other common queries and fall short on search traffic as a result. Consider a keyword strategy that utilizes long tail phrases, which can be a powerful traffic generator.

Long tail SEO strategy

Let's say for example that your search strategy focused on "website design." This highly competitive term may be out of reach for most companies. Instead, by utilizing long tail search, a marketer can target more niche traffic-referring terms that build upon the semantic concept of "website design." Examples could be: "Website design company in NYC" or "Website design for fashion companies" or "The top mistakes of hiring a website designer." Each of these long-tail search phrases use the core keyword but with a twist.

A website that is focused on a highly competitive keyword or within a competitive industry can use long tail keyphrases to gain traction more quickly for organic search. Website pages can be optimized for derivations of your core keyword, but the additional length provides opportunities to be more specific, focused and precise--helping to build relevancy with prospects and leads. Long tail can actually help increase conversations by offering content more specific to a prospect's interest.

Why long-tail works

• Long tail keywords are generally less competitive
• Long tail keywords may allow you to achieve ranking faster
• Long tail SEO strategy is more specific--leading to increased relevancy and possible conversion
• Long tail strategy can build relevancy for broad keywords on a domain level

Searchers and prospects that visit your website from long-tail phrases generally perform better and convert easier. Many website owners and marketers struggle to build ranking for very broad and highly competitive keywords--wasting months on the fifth or sixth page. By thinking about long-tail, SEO best-practices, marketers may be able find niche phrases that are far less competitive yet still refer traffic. It's a smart, short-term move that helps build momentum for broad keywords as well.

A long-tail website

Remember that SEO must be content centric, but a well-organized and designed website is also vitally important. When designing an SEO-friendly website, it is important to begin with a clear site map that outlines the link references between pages. Additionally by planning out editorial content early for a website and blog, marketers can help strengthen their long-tail link references to more broad keyword pages. During the design process for a website, it is important to focus on more than just the style and color attributes of a website. A website design process is also a marketing planning process. Often businesses ignore the marketing value of web design planning, which can make a website ultimately less successful in-market.

Important SEO attributes for a website

• Page title
• H1 tag (should be related to page title or same)
• Other header tags (H2, H3)
• ALT tags for images: describing image subjects
• Internal site links
• Limit the passing of page rank through external links, unless your business wishes to vouch for that referred website (recommendations reflect back on your business and website ranking)
• Keyword usage and variance in body copy
• Quality of content: Users should want to share, Like, support your web content... Make your content relevant and useful