Most lawyers and law firms may know the importance of keywords in digital marketing. Keywords help your content rank well in the search results and help get your brand message to your target audience.
However, if you run a lawyer SEO company, you know that most of the law firms also fail to understand the difference between short-tail keywords (regular keywords) and long-tail keywords. Sadly, long-tail keywords often get ignored due to their length and low search volume. As a consequence, not many people can successfully rank their law firm in the local search results.
That’s correct!
Marketers often hail long-tail keywords as the holy grail of local SEO and sales conversions.
Why?
Here are four compelling reasons that will encourage you to start using long-tail keywords in your attorney SEO.
1. Get Ranked for Actual Searches
When people search online, they often use actual phrases. For example, someone looking for a divorce lawyer in Arizona will most likely put the following search phrase in a search engine:
“Best divorce lawyer in Phoenix Arizona”
As you can see, this phrase is nothing but a long-tail keyword. In other words, people who are looking for specific information, place, product, or service will usually use long-tail keywords to find it online.
Using long-tail keywords in your content will help you get ranked for actual searches. Furthermore, with these keywords, you can readily optimize your content for semantic searches as well.
According to Statista, 42% of internet users worldwide conducted a voice search within the last month in the first quarter of 2019. With the long-tail keywords, you can easily target voice search users as voice searches are usually nothing but long-tail keywords.
In short, if you can include natural queries like “who is the best divorce attorney near me?” or “who is the best divorce lawyer in phoenix?” in your content, your chances of showing up in local voice searches will go up considerably.
2. Face Relatively Less Competition
Another significant advantage of long-tail keywords is that they are much less competitive compared to the short-tail keywords. They have a low search volume as long-tail keywords are highly niche-specific.
While many people see low search volume as a downside, it also has an upside. You can easily rank your content higher for long-tail keywords compared to short-tail keywords. For example, the short-tail keyword “divorce lawyers” shows around 260,000,000 results.
That means you have to compete with two hundred sixty million sites to rank yours in the top ten search results. On the other hand, the long-tail keyword “best divorce lawyers in Phoenix Arizona” has only 18,400,000 results, which is considerably less. Thus, it is relatively easy to rank for this keyword.
Furthermore, for pay-per-click or PPC users, low search volume often translates into a lower campaign cost and better chances of ranking.
3. Enjoy Better Conversion Rates
When someone types a detailed search phrase into Google, it means they have strong purchase intent. These users are usually further in the sales funnel compared to the ones using generic search terms.
For example, when a user searches for “lawyer SEO marketing agencies near me,” they are explicitly looking for SEO marketing companies specializing in lawyer SEO. So, if you offer these services, and if your content was optimized using this long-tail keyword, they will most probably visit your website.
In other words, if you target the users with long-tail keywords, they are most likely to take the desired action, be it sharing the contact details or buying a subscription. Thus, you will enjoy better conversion rates, which brings us to the next point.
4. Leave Your Competitors Behind
So, far we have seen that long-tail keywords help you:
- Rank for actual searches including voice search
- They have less competition, making it easier to rank
- Their low volume often means lower PPC costs
- They have better conversion rates
As you can see, all of these factors can help you to leave your competitors behind.
For example, if you are a small law firm or a sole practitioner, long-tail keywords can help you compete with the giant law firms. In any industry, the giant corporations can run affordable multiple PPC campaigns and already have considerable organic traffic, leaving the little guy nothing but scraps.
However, with long-tail keyword optimization, your content provides value, which, in turn, helps you outrank your competitors.
Parting Words
As long-tail keyword optimization provides value to the users with strong search intent, they can help you rank higher, especially in the local searches. Hopefully, reading about these four benefits will encourage you to take long-tail keywords more seriously. Of course, you can ask a competent lawyer SEO marketing firm like Gorilla Web Tactics to do the legwork for you. Call us today at (612) 260-1506 or contact us online to know how we can help you.
