When establishing a search engine optimization strategy, you should focus your efforts on long-tail key phrases. It may be tempting to optimize your website for the search terms that get the highest amount of traffic. You may think that if you can get a slice of the hundreds of thousands of monthly searches, you’ll be winning easy traffic and profitable conversions.
If only it were that easy.
SEO for niche offerings
Many healthcare, technology, and life sciences companies offer niche products and services aimed at a well-defined audience. Even though generic terms have high search volumes, it doesn’t make financial sense to try to rank for them.
Take, for example, a healthcare IT company offering EMR software for dermatologists.
Ranking for the one-word term “software” or even the two-word phrase “EMR software” would be very difficult, if not impossible, and would not attract very targeted website visitors.
A long-tail key phrase such as “EMR software for dermatologists” is a much better choice.
- It will be easier to achieve a higher search ranking for this term
- People who search for this term and visit your website will be much more likely to convert
Search volume is only part of the equation
Selecting key phrases for SEO requires a broader view beyond search volume. Look at the search volumes from Moz for the three key phrase examples above.
You can see how it would be tempting to try to rank for “software” with its 70,000 monthly searches, but don’t discount long-tail key phrases that will have a higher probability of conversion.
A bonus of choosing long-tail key phrases is that they often contain one- and two-word terms within them. Over time and with a proper SEO strategy, your website could start to rank for the more competitive, higher volume terms.
If you are resource or time-constrained, our healthcare marketing agency can help you create an integrated strategy placing SEO as a pillar.
