The Content Authority Blog

Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that have a low search volume. The reason for their name doesn’t have anything to do with how long the phrase is, how likely the phrase is to convert, or even how specific the phrase is. There are a lot of things that you should know about them though. Why They’re Called Long-Tail Keywords Long-tail keywords make up the majority of Google searches. This is because people are searching for something very specific even though the word combination they’re using isn’t very popular. Many people who do SEO find this surprising because they think that shorter search queries would receive more views. However, the truth is that four or five-word phrases actually get more search volume than two-word phrases. Examples of Long-Tail Keywords When you think about the search term, “running shoes,” some examples of long-tail keywords here would include: Running shoes for bad knees Best running shoes for women Best running shoes for flat feet Road running shoes on trail Best long-distance running shoes 2021 Unfortunately, small and medium-size businesses find it really hard to stand out or rank for generic terms like “running shoes.” This is because big businesses have more money to spend on SEO and SEM. However, these small and medium-size businesses can compete with leading brands when it comes to long-tail keywords. They can even show up on the first page for them. What makes these words especially nice is that it’s easier to understand the searcher’s intent with them. So, while you may not know what someone wants when they search for “running shoes,” when someone searches for “running shoes for bad knees” you can assume that they’re looking for running shoes that’ll support their bad knees. Having this type of understanding enables you to create content that’s better targeted and thus does better in the search engines. Why Long-Tail Keywords are Important Long-tail keywords are important because they’re more likely to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in your website and what you’re selling. There are a few reasons for this: It’s easier to rank for long-tail keywords since there isn’t as much competition for them. With long-tail keywords, you'll be able to bring a lot more traffic to your website. Since long-tail keywords are so specific, people who are searching for them are usually ready to make a purchase. These are the people you want on your website because they know what they want, they just need to find it. On the other hand, someone who searches for a general keyword is either conducting preliminary research or weighing their different options. While competitive keywords cost more with Google Ad, long-tail keywords have a lower search volume so they’re less expensive, and yet they’re also more targeted. When people are looking for specific information in the search engines, they're using long-tail keywords to do so. This is especially true when people are using their mobile devices to conduct a search. Most people are using their mobile devices when searching the internet today because they're looking to learn or do something or they want to go somewhere. Long-tail keywords give your content context. Ever since Google's Hummingbird update in 2017, they've pushed contextual search. This update adjusted search algorithms so they'd be an exact match when it comes to the phrasing and understanding of context. What this means is that Google is focused on long-tail keywords because these phrases make their search results stronger. It's important for us to learn from them and do the same thing too. WordStream has shown that long-tail keywords have better conversion rates. While the top 10% of landing pages convert at only 11% when long-tail keywords are used the conversion rate rises to 36%. Obviously, this isn't something that'll improve for you overnight just because you've added some long-tail keywords to your website. However, by adding them to your site you're helping to increase the likelihood of being found in the SERPs (search engine results pages). How to Find Long-Tail Keywords Now that you know why you want long-tail keywords it’s time to consider some strategies that’ll help you find them. Use Google Autofill The simplest way to find long-tail keywords is to enter a search term into Google. This will give you some keywords that you can use as seed phrases to find additional long-tail keywords. Look at Google’s Related Searches Use Google’s related searches to find additional variations for your search term. This is easy to accomplish since all you do is type your keyword into Google then scroll to the bottom of the page where the related keywords are located. Use Uber Suggest Uber Suggest is another tool that’s easy to use. You simply enter your keywords and are presented with a list of long-tail keywords. Use the LSI Graph Keyword Generator This is a tool that’s meant to help you with semantic SEO and uncovering latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords. However, LSI keywords are similar to target keywords which is why people frequently use them in on-page SEO to support their main keyword and give the page some context for the search engines to understand. However, once you have a better understanding of long-tail keywords you can use this tool to help you find them. Use Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty Tool Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool will help you dig deeper into a keyword to find long-tail keywords. Simply type your keyword into the search field and you’ll find a lot of long-tail keywords. To determine which are the best ones to target you’ll need to understand these qualifying metrics: Relevance: How closely the term is related to your original keyword Popularity: How frequently people search for this phrase Competition: How difficult it’ll be to rank for this phrase Use Alexa’s Competitor Keyword Matrix With Alexa’s Competitor Keyword Matrix, you can run an analysis of your competition to see what keywords they’re using to get traffic. You can also use Alexa’s Audience Overlap tool to find your competitors. Once you know who they are, here are the steps to take: Enter the websites into the tool and select the keyword cluster view. You’ll get a cluster of related keywords. The biggest bubbles have the most keywords in them. Select a keyword cluster to find the keywords that your competition is using. View the individual keyword data to find long-tail keyword opportunities. Look for Questions on Answer the Public Look for what questions your audience is asking pertaining to your topic. To do this enter your search term into Answer the Public. Once you’ve found them you can create long-tail keyword phrases from them. Look for User-Generated Questions on Quora Quora is another Q&A site you can use to find long-tail keywords. Here you can search a topic to find popular keywords that may include such phrases. See What People are Discussing on Forums Look at online conversations that your customers are having in forums. It’s easy to find these forums. Just search for “[your generic search term] + forum.” How to Use Long-Tail Keywords Targeting long-tail keywords will help to greatly increase your search traffic. These keywords are easy to find and quite profitable too. This is something that many people are starting to understand today. Many of them are finding that their blog posts are actually starting to go viral just because they’ve taken the time to find these long-tail keywords and carefully integrate them into their content in one of the following five ways. Define Your Content’s Purpose Before you’re able to integrate your long-tail keyword phrases into your blog posts efficiently you must first define your content’s purpose. This is a step that will show that you’re actually serious about your blog. It’ll also help in regards to getting you a better ROI. In fact, Oracle has discovered that “per dollar spent, content marketing generates more ROI than paid search.” Smart marketing is more than simply having skills or using the right tool. You’ll need a content strategy here since success is determined by how quickly you’re able to take your published content and get thousands of people to read it. Ideally, you want your readers to use long-tail keyword phrases to find this content by conducting an organic search. For this to happen you’ll need to use these phrases in your content. To create content that gets a lot of social shares you’ll need to learn to use your long-tail keyword phrases in your headlines. You’ll also want to make sure that your blog posts ask questions and encourage people to share their opinions regarding the topic. Take the time to do these things and your traffic will slowly start to improve to the point where you won’t need to spend so much time actively marketing your blog. Understand Buyer Personas By taking the time to create buyer personas you’ll be better equipped to understand who the members of your targeted audience are. Simply put, a buyer persona is a visual tool that represents your ideal reader - someone whom you’d like to attract to your website. When you have a buyer persona in front of you it’ll be easier and more effective for you to market your content. It’ll also help you find what long-tail keywords you want to use in your marketing efforts. You won’t spend any more time creating content for the wrong audience because now you’ll have a solid understanding of what your buyer is thinking about. This will enable you to easily integrate your long-tail keywords so as to improve your search traffic. In fact, you may see as much as a 14% improvement in your click-through rates simply because you took the time to create and use buyer personas. Write Content Based on Selected Long-Tail Keywords Effective content creation means answering long-tail search queries because when you take the time to do this you’ll find that Google will reward you by sending you more targeted traffic. This is something that many businesses learned in 2011 when Google had their Panda update. However, being rewarded for your content marketing will require you to do more than simply reiterate the same keywords repeatedly. You need to target your customers which is where long-tail keywords come into play. Learning how to use a keyword research tool and then targeting those keywords in your content is still the basis of good SEO. You’ll also want to continue tracking how your keywords are ranking in Google. However, just by using your long-tail keywords naturally, you’re bound to see some growth in your organic traffic. This is because there are people who are searching for these keywords because they’re interested in the product or service you’re selling. Therefore keywords are still important when it comes to Google’s ranking algorithm. Regardless of anything else, the keywords you use are going to boost your content’s search performance by 15%. Use Long-Tail Keywords in Your Headlines Regardless of what you’re writing the headline is a crucial element. Make a mistake here and you may lose your reader. Nail the perfect headline and you’ll rank higher in the SERPs. This is because a magnetic headline will prompt people to want to click to read and respond to your offer. To improve your rankings in the SERPs and increase the likelihood that people will actually engage with your blog you’ll want to use long-tail keywords in your headlines. Remember, your target audience wants to find information to solve their problems. This is why they’ve typed a specific phrase into the search box on Google. While they probably don’t even realize it, they’re actually conducting a long-tail keyword search so when you create a headline in this fashion you’re actually speaking directly to their needs. This is something that’s actually been shown to quickly increase organic traffic by as much as 70% because the keywords aren’t as competitive and they’re also highly targeted. While there isn’t a rule for how to incorporate long-tail keywords into your headlines, there are some tips that’ll help ensure that your content flows naturally (exactly what Google is looking for). You should start by creating a list of the long-tail keywords you want to use in your content. Choose one of these phrases that you’ll want to write content for. At this point, you may even want to take a look around on social media platforms to see what headlines are being shared thousands of times. Take a look at the strategies they’ve used and incorporate them (don’t copy or steal them) into your content so you’ll enjoy the same great results. Of course, you also want to make sure that you’re writing content that’s closely related to your niche. As an example here you may find that “How to Start a Small Business on a Shoestring Budget” is a piece of content that’s doing fairly well on social media. If this is related to your own niche, you may want to further inspect the headline. In doing so you’ll discover that they’ve used the keyword phrase “steps to starting a small business.” This is something that you can also use in creating unique, keyword-rich blog posts with titles such as “10 Steps to Starting a Small Business on the Cheap” or “Top Steps to Starting a Small Business on a Budget.” This is a great headline because it’s clickable, answers your reader’s question, and includes a long-tail keyword phrase in it. What a lot of people don’t realize is that many of the blog post headlines that generate the most shares on social media have been modeled after headlines that other people have crafted. So, the next time you see a headline that you find yourself needing to click on, take a moment to write it down, study it, and create your own headline from it. Oftentimes the headline you create will be even better than the one you initially jotted down. Another great place to visit with this idea in mind is BuzzFeed.com. See what’s popular and trending there then create your own long-tail keyword-laden headlines based on those. Use Long-Tail Keywords Naturally Throughout Your Content When writing content for your website you shouldn’t focus on using keywords throughout it. Instead, you should focus on sounding natural. This is especially true when you’re working with long-tail keywords because they typically sound unnatural since they don’t read or flow well. Using long-tail keywords without properly formatting them first may get you penalized by Google. It’s much easier to understand when you take a moment to consider how this works. For instance, you wouldn’t want to say “web design New York.” Instead, you’d want to format it to say “web design in New York.” Even if you’re using these in your headlines you don’t want to simply slap another word on them like “Top Web Design New York.” Instead, you’d want to say something like “Top 10 Web Design: New York Web Designers You Can Trust.” (Note that the use of a colon here doesn’t change the keyword at all in the eyes of Google but it does make it much easier for your readers to understand and thus increases the likelihood that it’ll be shared.) Use Long-Tail Keywords in Introductions By taking the time to write a good introduction to your blog post you’re taking your time to prepare your reader for the information you’re about to present them with. Unfortunately, many content creators don’t take advantage of this though. You can’t just write an article and not take the time to market it and look at the results you’ve achieved once you’ve done so. All of this is made easier when you write a truly captivating introduction to your post. This is what will attract search users to your content so you’ll want to include your long-term keyword phrases here. Doing so will help your visitors find you since this is the information they’re using in the search engines. While the search engines have any rules regarding how long an introduction should be if you’re trying to target a specific long-tail keyword phrase you’ll want to aim for 100 - 200 words. You’ll want to make sure that what you write is both clear and interesting to your readers. This means that any keywords you use here should flow naturally. With this in mind, here’s the process you’ll want to undertake the next time you want to naturally incorporate your long-tail keyword phrase into the introduction of your blog post: Take the time to do your keyword research to find the long-tail keyword phrase that you want to write about. One way to do this is to use the Google AdWords Keywords Planner. You’ll simply plug in your keyword and click “get ideas.” For instance, you may type in “search engine optimization” and be given long-tail keyword phrases like “search engine optimization companies,” “affordable search engine optimization,” and “local search engine optimization.” Once you have a list of long-tail keyword phrases available for you to choose from you’ll want to take some time to consider your users’ intent. Before you start writing your introduction you’ll want to understand why someone has typed these words into the search engine. Are they facing a major challenge? Do you have some solutions available to share with them? For instance, if someone is searching for “search engine optimization companies,” they’re probably trying to find a company that can help them improve and manage the performance of their website. Here they aren’t looking for the best company, they’re simply trying to determine what their options are. They’re not ready to make a decision yet so it’s your job to educate them. With this intent in mind, some of the headlines that you might use here are “Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Companies” (a top list), “What to Look for in Search Engine Optimization Companies,” or How do You Know the Best Search Engine Optimization Companies in the U.S.?” (answering a question). Now you’re ready to write your blog post’s introduction. This won’t be too challenging for you to do since you now have a better understanding of what your readers are searching for. You’ll be able to find a variety of keywords that you can incorporate here but just make sure that they sound natural when you do so. Your readers won’t move past your introduction if it is difficult for them to read or understand. It’s also important to remember that the search engine spider is looking to make sure that your introduction is relevant to your headline. If it is, you’ll be able to move up the SERPs. Remember, you don’t want to stuff keywords into your introduction. Doing so will get you penalized. The point here is to write naturally. In doing so you shouldn’t worry about keywords because they’ll take care of themselves - they’ll still make their way into your blog posts even without you focusing on making sure they do. However, if you do want to write your blog post with specific keywords in mind, you need to take time to make sure that your content flows naturally and doesn’t look like you’ve manipulated it in any way. Use Long-Tail Keywords in Subheadings Any subheadings you use while writing your content should serve to clarify the promise you made in your headline. This is important because most visitors will actually scan through your content before they take time to actually sit down and read it. If you’ve created subheadings that are either weak or off-topic, your visitors are going to leave. Once they do leave it’s possible that you may have lost them for good - they may never return to your website again. This is why it’s so important for you to take the time to create strong subheadings. To make sure that your content is easy for your visitors to scan you’ll want to make sure that your subheadings are bigger than normal text and that they’re also in bold. It’s actually recommended that you use either the or tag here. This is something that Google will also take into consideration as it reviews your subheadings. Besides trying to use your long-tail keyword phrases whenever they sound like they’ve been naturally placed throughout your subheadings, there are a few other things you’ll want to do here as well. They include: Make sure your subtitles are relevant to both your topic and your headline. For instance, if you’re writing about website design you’ll want to make sure that each of your subheadings is referring to website design in some way. Use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) strategy. Basically, this means that you shouldn’t only use the specific long-tail keywords you’ve chosen for this piece of content but that you should also consider using any synonyms that you can come up with. LSI can help you avoid keyword stuffing and indirect search manipulation - things that the search engines will look for and penalize your site for. Make sure that any synonyms you do use in your subheadings flow naturally with your content. Google’s algorithm will treat these keywords the same way it treats your long-tail keyword phrase. For instance, if your long-tail keyword phrase is “generate website visitors” but you use the synonym “drive online visitors” Google will still see and credit it as “generate website visitors.” Use Long-Tail Keywords in Your Conclusion Your conclusion is where you have the opportunity to reiterate what your content is about. You should try your best to naturally integrate your long-tail keyword phrase into this part of your content as well. Not only will this help your readers tie things up in their minds but it’ll also help you with ranking in the SERPs. Use Long-Tail Keywords in the Anchor Text Throughout Your Content When you create a text link, the part that’s actually clickable is what’s known as your “anchor text.” As your mouse clicks on this part of the text, you’ll be taken to another web page that’s part of the same domain or to a different domain altogether. In the past, before Google’s Penguin update, you could successfully rise in the SERPs by building a lot of low-quality links that had exact-match anchor text. This doesn’t work anymore though. Now you must use a variety of different keywords in the anchor texts you create. For instance, if you want to work with three different website owners to build links to your website you may choose to do this by creating guest posts that target the keyword “dropshipping business.” You can’t use this phrase on each of these websites though because then it won’t look natural and so it won’t be considered Google-friendly. Instead, you’ll need to use a variety of synonyms as your anchor text here. When you want to create some variety in your anchor texts there are a few different ways in which you can do so: Site URL + exact keyword Brand name keyword Generic texts + domain name Whenever you’re creating content for your website you should remember that Google pays attention to your anchor text. These links are important to Google because it knows that they’ll be willingly shared by your customers as long as you’ve provided them with the high-quality content they want. If your visitors share your content in the right places your website may get picked up and syndicated by bigger, more important websites. Obtaining such a link from a trustworthy expert in your niche will not only get you more traffic but it will also get you a better standing in Google’s SERPs because they’ll recognize you as a leader in your niche. Conclusion There are a lot of great reasons why you should be using long-tail keywords in your website’s content today. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much time or expertise for you to be able to do so. In fact, it’s relatively easy to use them in a variety of different ways throughout your content. Now that you have all the information you need to do this, it’s time to get started using long-tail keywords so you can start reaping the benefits of them as well.

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