Digital marketing professionals know that targeting keywords related to potential customers who are in the “late” stage of the buying cycle is a wise strategy. So how do you discover what these keywords are? What is the importance of these keywords?
In professional terms, what we are talking about here is the concept of targeting called long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases that are very specific to the products you sell. You see, whenever a customer uses a very specific search phrase, it is assumed that they know exactly what they are going to buy and are searching for it. Almost in every case, these very specific searches are more likely to convert into sales compared to general generic searches, as they are more aligned with the type of research consumers typically conduct before making a purchase decision.
To help explain this phenomenon, let’s take a look at the typical step-by-step purchase journey a customer follows for a transaction.
- 1. The consumer becomes aware of a product.
- 2. The consumer seeks information about this product in preparation for a possible purchase.
- 3. The consumer evaluates alternatives to the product (features, pricing, etc.).
- 4. The consumer makes the purchase decision.
- 5. The consumer takes out the credit card and completes the transaction.
- 6. The consumer then evaluates the product after purchase and decides whether they want to keep it or return it.
In our model, by using the above six-step path to purchase, you can see that we likely need to target the consumer who is somewhere around the fourth step.
The consumer makes the purchasing decision.
…because when they have made the decision to purchase something, they begin to use very specific search phrases to find their target purchases.
Good news…
Highly specific multi-word phrases tend to be easier to rank for compared to more general single or double keyword phrases.
Here is an example. Let’s say you sell Black Sea sightseeing tours on your website. At first, you might think of targeting a generic phrase like travel. Ultimately, an adventure tour is typically a type of excursion that people enjoy doing while traveling.
However, if you tried to go after this phrase, you would face direct competition from big sites like Mynet.com, Hurriyet.com and Trivago.com. Unless you want to spend a pile of money, you can eliminate any of these sites from the top ten.
But, more importantly, travel is still not the best expression for your targeting. This is because many people using this phrase in their search are looking for items like airline tickets, cruises, or just conducting very general research about where they want to go.
Even if you aim for a more specific phrase like sightseeing tours, you will still be competing in the same league as the heavy hitters. Additionally, unless you sell everything related to all the tours around the world, the traffic you receive for this keyword is unlikely to convert into many sales.
So, let’s look at some keywords specific to what you sell—keywords you can start ranking for immediately and begin generating traffic and sales.
Here are some search phrases that are likely to be much more relevant in the purchasing cycle:
- -Black Sea sightseeing tours
- -Black Sea region trip
- -Guided tour of the Black Sea region
- -Black Sea region sightseeing tours
Of course, these are just a few examples. I am sure you can think of many other things. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for.
People who search using long-tail keywords are much more likely to be buyers!
More good news...
Of course, this implies that you need to create pages that mimic searchers using long tail keywords. Additionally, since there are numerous different long-tail combinations that searchers might use to find and purchase your offerings, this likely means you’ll need to create more pages.
