With the increasing competition for core keywords that everyone needs... SEOIf you want to appeal to practitioners, it seems necessary to find more creative solutions to stay ahead. The solution? Long-tail keywords.
Expert teams offering SEO services have been using long-tail keywords for some time now. When used correctly, they can be an effective way to leverage search traffic with high success.
Long-tail keywords are search queries that receive only a small number of searches per month (monthly search volume, MSV). They tend to be longer and more specific than their "head" counterparts and therefore often have a higher conversion rate.
For example, the keyword "meditation" is a primary keyword because it receives 211.000 searches per month. The keyword "Can meditation make you smarter?", on the other hand, is a long-tail keyword because it only receives 50 searches per month.
Long-tail keywords often already contain the main keyword you likely want to rank for. This makes it easier to achieve both goals: improving your ranking for these main keywords as well as for your specific, targeted long-tail keywords. Higher website rankings mean more organic traffic.
One of the easiest ways to improve your website's ranking is to create blog posts. Long-tail keywords can help you with writing and guide readers through your articles.
They can give you insights into what your audience is looking for and enable you to create valuable content that addresses some of their problems while using those keywords.
Long-tail keywords consist of four or five words (sometimes even longer) and usually contain descriptive words such as gender, nationality, or geographical location.
You can leverage this to your advantage by creating diverse content that supports the various categories and services your company offers. This allows you to work more effectively with your content strategy and take advantage of contextual marketing.
Keyword research for long-tail terms isn't that complicated, as some of them can be sourced directly from your web analytics service, such as Google Analytics. Combined with Google Search Console, you can also see the performance of your chosen long-tail keywords, such as search volume and conversion rates, allowing you to select the best ones for your SEO strategy.
Long-tail keywords are more conversational, and that's a crucial ingredient for your SEO strategy. They're at the heart of Google's latest search engine algorithm, as it focuses on natural language processing (NLP) and the intent behind the search. Even voice assistants that read answers from featured snippets prioritize results containing long-tail keywords.
Ultimately, it is necessary to adopt long-tail keywords for the future of your blog or website.
There are a number of methods you can use to find long-tail keywords. Some are more tedious than others, some are a little "unconventional," and some are simply wrong.
Let's start with a false method.
Some SEO experts recommend obtaining long-tail keywords from Google Autosuggest by entering your target keyword followed by different letters of the alphabet.
Well, Google Autosuggest is a feature that gives you quick access to popular search queries. So, if we check the search volume of keywords in the screenshot above, most of them will have a fairly decent number of searches.
In other words, Google Autosuggest is much more likely to offer you highly popular search queries instead of the coveted long tails.
The same applies to online tools like Answer The Public or Soovle, which use autosuggest to generate their lists of keyword ideas. A large number of their keyword suggestions will turn out to be quite popular and competitive.
Unlike the previous method, this method requires no tedious manual work. Simply search for a word that defines your niche in Keywords Explorer and use the search volume filter to instantly see thousands of long-tail keywords.
If your website is brand new and has little "authority", I recommend using the KD filter, which helps you find the least competitive keywords.
Also, be sure to try the "Questions" button. It often returns some cool long-tail search queries phrased as questions.
Another great source of long-tail keywords is your competition. Ahrefs' Site Explorer helps you see which long-tail keywords they rank for.
Simply take a competitor's website, enter it into the Site Explorer, and go to the "Organic Keywords" report to see which long-tail keywords are driving traffic to their website.
Repeat this with 5-10 of your competitors' websites and you will generate enough long-tail keyword ideas to keep you busy for the next few months.
Depending on the topics your website covers and the number of pages, you'll want to compile a fairly large, relevant list of long-tail keywords that you can use across your entire site. It's neither realistic nor SEO-friendly to optimize your website for the same keywords on every single page. Therefore, you need an ongoing list of great keywords.
If you are a local brand looking for local foot traffic, adding "near me" to your long-tail keywords is good practice.
For example, long-tail keywords such as "organic coffee shops near me" or "buy Guiana chestnut plant near me" are good examples when users search in the later stages of the buyer's journey by using long-tail queries.
Using specific keywords like "organic coffee house" and "Guiana chestnut plant" will help you rank better because they are further away from the common keywords that larger brands try to rank for.
Over 70% of search queries are conducted using long-tail keywords. This has become particularly common with voice search. Users now enter search queries into Google using the same phrasing they would use when speaking to a friend.
This is known as natural language. Therefore, using long-tail keywords makes your content more likely to attract these users to your website and initiate the buyer's journey.
Because long-tail keywords consist of several but fewer words, they are much more specific. This means that both users and website owners generally achieve better results.
Brands receive traffic that is better aligned with their content, improving their ability to effectively bring new customers into the sales cycle. Customers also receive content that is closer to their goals, leading to greater satisfaction.
The specificity of long-tail keywords also means there is less competition for each keyword phrase. Brands can better tailor their specific keywords to offer users what they need.
The term "long tail" is a visual metaphor for the shape of a distribution chart. If we were to represent the popularity of keywords on the web on a chart, some words and phrases (Facebook, sex, Justin Bieber) would show an enormous number of search queries.
But here's the surprising part: These search terms, the "head" of the dragon, actually make up an astonishingly small percentage of all search queries, about ten to fifteen percent, depending on the measurement method.
A further fifteen to twenty percent of search queries come from medium-length keywords, which means that about seventy percent of page views are the direct result of – you guessed it – long-tail keywords.
It's like a Chinese dragon: The tail just keeps going and going.
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