Convert your portfolio into a lead generating machine with these 50 long-tail keywords.
While you're looking for work, potential clients too, are searching for great web designers. All of them don't post their projects on job boards. Most of them look to make quick hires based on basic online search. By optimizing your portfolio, you can make it easier for them to find and reach you through search engines like Google and Bing.
Long-tail keywords are great for attracting organic leads. They are ideally four words long and are easier to rank for as fewer websites compete for them. Their search volume is way less than that of popular keywords, but they generate quality leads. And that's because the searchers' intent is clear in such queries.
Consider a searcher who is using the keyword phrase "web design for small businesses". His search query tells a lot about his intent. It looks like he's serious about hiring a service provider/designer specializing in web designing for small businesses.
Optimizing your portfolio for long-tail keywords (or keyword phrases) is making it easier for such searchers to find you. To optimize your portfolio for getting organic leads, I've put together these 50 long-tail keywords. Use them judiciously and watch your organic leads skyrocket.
How did I come up with the list?
I followed the conventional four-step keyword research process:
Prepared a list of seed keywords (with some help from Google's autocomplete feature and Ubersuggest)
Fed the list to Google's Keyword Planner
Downloaded Google's keywords suggestions' list
Filtered out the irrelevant keywords
So here goes...
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How do you describe your services?
Clients look for specific services. If you do a quick Google search, you'll see that the websites that rank for "WordPress web design services" do not show up when you search for a query like "web design services".
Adding the right keywords to your service description not only hooks searchers but also lets the search engines understand what you do exactly.
Choose keywords from the following suggestions and add them to your site's title tag and meta-description. While the meta-description field doesn't contribute to SEO, it will be visible to the searchers on the search engine results page (SERP).
Service description keywords
If you specialize in a niche:
01. [your niche] web design services 02. [your niche] web design and developments services
Or simply:
03. custom web design services 04. web design services 05. web design firm 06. web design studio 07. web design boutique 08. web design solutions 09. [CMS] web design services (replace [CMS] with WordPress/Joomla or any other CMS that you specialize in) 10. mobile website design services / mobile website design services (less search volume) 11. responsive web design services / responsive website design services (less search volume) 12. website redesign services
What services do you offer?
Use keywords to list all the products/services that you offer. Ideally, you should create different pages (each with a unique title tag containing a relevant keyword) for your main offerings and add them to your website's main menu.
Product listing keywords
13. logo design services 14. 3D logo design services 15. [your niche] logo design 16. infographics design services 17. banner design services 18. banner ad design services 19. web banner design services 20. flash banner design services 21. brochure design services 22. business card design services 23. letterhead design services 24. brand identity design 25. corporate identity design services 26. landing page design services
Who is your target audience?
Lots of clients prefer web designers who specialize in their niches.
If you specialize in a niche, add it to your website's title tag and let it show up prominently in your service description page.
You could use a title tag that says "Web design services for nonprofits, [Your city]". Try to keep it under 55 characters.
Audience-centric keywords
27. web design for [your niche]
Some generic keywords will look like:
28. web design for small businesses and individuals 29. web design for small businesses 30. web design for startups
Popular searches:
web design services for nonprofits web design for service industry
Is your audience budget-conscious?
It's common for searchers to use terms like expensive or affordable if they're serious about hiring.
If you offer great services at competitive pricing, mention it on your pricing page. If pricing is your unique value proposition, you can place it within your site's title tag as well. These keywords will appeal to your budget-conscious potential customers and might just result in a hire.
Cost-conscious keywords
31. affordable website design 32. cheap website design 33. affordable logo design 34. inexpensive web design
A direct plugin could look like "affordable website design services in [Your city]".
Are you open to local work?
A good number of clients like to meet designers in person for discussing their projects.
If you don't mind such meetings, optimize your portfolio for local searches. You might be surprised with the opportunities around you.
Localized keywords can be easily added to your homepage's title tag. You could use something like "Web design solutions, [Your city]".
Localized keywords
35. web design company [your city] 36. web design agency [your city] 37. web designer [your city] 38. web design solutions [your city] 39. freelance web designer [your city] 40. professional web designer [your city] 41. responsive web designer [your city] 42. creative design agency [your city] 43. web design consultancy [your city] 44. hire web designer [your city]
An alternate and popularly searched format looks like:
45. [your city] web design company 46. [your city] web design agency 47. [your city] web designer 48. [your city] web design solutions 49. [your city] web design consultancy
You can use variations like "An affordable New York web design company" or "freelance web designer from New York" – I added "from" because "freelance web designer New York" sounds spammy. Just make sure that these keywords sound correct to the searchers and feel (and be) natural to the search engines.
Misc
Well, we have just a single term here, and it's pretty descriptive. A person who's looking for "web design packages" clearly promises a lot of business.
So go ahead and add a section with this keyword to your services page.
50. website design packages
Don't use all of them!
Please use keywords to help potential clients find you, and not to trick the search engines into showing your site. Yeah - I'm referring to keyword stuffing.
Choose the keywords that look the most competitive in your case, and add them to all the right places on your site. If the sequence of a keyword phrase doesn't look natural, it's ok to squeeze in a couple of terms to add sense. Using keyword phrases that aren't structured right can turn visitors off and raise red flags for the search engines. Besides, search engines are pretty sophisticated now - they easily understand the context.
If you've any questions or any more keywords or placement tips to add to this list, please share them in the comments!
Oh, by the way; if you want to validate these keywords, select the ones that you'd like to try and paste them into Keyword Planner. To get precise results for local keywords, set the tool to show the stats from your targeted region only.
