Target Longer Search Terms to Drive More Traffic

We run into this a lot. Customers want to show up in search terms for the types of goods or services they offer, so they go out and optimize their pages for that keyword. The local bakery down the street makes sure they use the work “cupcake” in their page title, and repeats it 100 times on the page. This is the wrong way to optimize your pages for the following reasons:

• Unless it’s a national chain, the baker may only sell to customers in the local area. Even if they dominated search results, they’d attract a lot of interest from customers they can’t serve.
• The competition for one-word (or even three-word) search terms is tremendous. Your chances of getting on the first page are very low, unless you’re in an obscure market or have a ton of budget to throw at expert search engine optimization.
• Customers rarely use short search terms anymore. For example, a recent Hitwise report shows that longer search queries (those averaging five or more words) increased 10% in January, compared to a year ago. During the same time period, short search terms (one to four words) decreased 2%. Consumers are using longer (and more geographically focused keywords) to find what they’re looking for.
• Customers are searching locally. It’s estimated that more than 86% of all Web searches are now local. Many of these consumers are searching for a local vendor to make a purchase offline. Why optimize your site for broad generic terms when customers are looking for long, descriptive terms?

Combine Long Search Terms With Your Location

One approach that works great for small businesses serving local customers is to target longer search terms with a geographic reference – for example, “cupcake bakery in atlanta georgia” rather than “cupcake bakery specialists.” While the bakery in this example may bake much more than cupcakes, they can target specific terms one at a time to attract traffic across different interests. You should generally have a different section of your site that talks about each of your unique product or service offerings individually.

Another example would be in the auto repair industry, where we current manage local search for more than 1,500 customers. We help customers optimize their websites for local searches across their most profitable jobs. Rather than optimize a site for “atlanta auto repair”, we might focus in on “atlanta transmission repair” or a specific make or model related repair.

The key with these tactics is not to use one laser-focused tactic, but rather hundreds (or more). While there may only be 3-4 unique searches per month in your local area for a highly-targeted term, multiplying that across 1,000 search terms can generate significant traffic for your site.

Want to learn more about local search engine optimization for your small business? Please visit http://www.radiusonline.com.

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