Nowadays, all online businesses and website owners strive to achieve higher rankings in search engine results. The competition in this field is fierce, and if you aim to secure a favorable position for a simple search query, you need to stay updated with the latest techniques. One crucial step in keyword research involves searching for longer and more specific phrases, commonly known as long tail keyword.
Many believe that long-tail keywords are easy to rank and convert, but is this really the case? In this article, we will explore the key aspects of this concept, including the definition of long-tail keywords, their etymology and significance, how to find and use them, and the criteria for selecting them.
What Are Long Tail Keywords?
Long-tail keywords typically consist of questions, phrases, or sentences containing three or more words, capable of driving substantial traffic to your website. However, it is essential to note that not every long search phrase qualifies as a long-tail keyword.
Long-tail keywords are particularly valuable for retail businesses because they tend to have high conversion rates. This means that a large percentage of users who reach a target page through such queries are likely to become actual customers. The specificity of these keywords indicates strong purchasing intent. In fact, long-tail keywords account for 92% of the typed search terms in search engines, giving them a higher ranking potential compared to their more common counterparts.
Why Should We Focus on Long Tail Keywords?
In the competitive world of digital marketing, smart strategies are crucial. You must look for ways to outperform competitors, but without resorting to unethical tactics! Long tail keywords provide an excellent opportunity for healthy competition.
As illustrated in keyword distribution charts, competition for long-tail keywords is significantly lower than for other categories. By carefully selecting the right long tail keywords, you can position yourself effectively in the market and increase your visibility among your target audience. Using long-tail keywords strategically allows you to bypass unnecessary competition and guide potential customers directly to your products or services.
The Importance of Long Tail Keywords in SEO
Most of the points we’ve discussed about long-tail keywords are closely tied to SEO. In this section, we will highlight three major reasons why long-tail keywords are crucial for search engine optimization.
Long Tail Keywords Are Generally Less Competitive
As we explored in the previous section, competition and audience targeting play a key role in digital marketing. Imagine you’ve just launched a blog about cryptocurrency. There are numerous popular keywords with high search volumes that could potentially drive significant traffic to your blog. Using all of them may seem tempting—but let’s be realistic.
These keywords tend to have high keyword difficulty (KD), meaning that if you target them directly, you have almost no chance of ranking on the first page of Google search results. This is why it’s wise to shift your focus to long-tail keywords and test your chances in this area instead. The lower keyword difficulty of long-tail keywords means that even if you own a brand-new website, users can still find their way to your website through these terms.
Targeting Long Tail Keywords Is Easier
To illustrate this point, let’s compare two sets of keywords. Consider the phrase “How to buy Bitcoin” a relatively simple question. However, the top-ranking page for this search query is 3,400 words long. In contrast, the top-ranking page for a more specific query, such as “How to cash out large amounts of Bitcoin”, is only 1,000 words long.
The takeaway is clear: the broader a search query, the more details you need to provide to comprehensively address it. However, if a search query is more specific, users are often satisfied with a shorter, more direct response. Additionally, creating content for long-tail keywords typically requires less effort compared to broad, highly competitive topics.
There Are Plenty of Long Tail Keywords Available!
While not every long-tail keyword will lead to an increase in website traffic, the more long-tail keywords you target, the greater your chances of boosting your search visibility. Since a large number of long-tail keywords exist in virtually every niche, you can capitalize on many of them to expand your reach.
How to Find Long Tail Keywords?
There are many methods for discovering long-tail keywords. Some of these techniques are not very appealing, some are a bit unconventional, and others might even be misleading for your strategy. Let’s start with an example of an ineffective approach:
Avoid Using Google Autosuggest!
Some SEO experts suggest typing a keyword followed by different letters of the alphabet to generate long-tail keywords using Google Autosuggest. Be cautious! While this method appears simple, it is not the most effective approach. Google Autosuggest is designed to provide quick access to popular search queries, but it does not give you a strategic roadmap for finding valuable long-tail keywords.
In other words, Google Autosuggest primarily offers popular search terms, rather than the long-tail keywords that could benefit your business. The same applies to online tools like Answer The Public and Soolve, which filter out Autosuggest results and provide more competitive keyword lists instead.
Use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer!
Unlike the previous method, this approach eliminates manual work. Simply enter a relevant keyword into the Keyword Explorer section, then use the search volume filter to instantly view thousands of long-tail keywords. If your website is new and has low domain authority, we recommend applying the KD filter to find keywords with minimal competition. Additionally, take advantage of the “Questions” feature, which helps identify common user queries that could be valuable for your keyword strategy.
Analyze Which Keywords Your Competitors Rank for!
Another excellent resource is competitor keyword analysis. The Ahrefs tool allows you to examine which long-tail keywords your competitors rank for. By reviewing multiple competitors’ keyword strategies, you can generate valuable insights to refine your own approach to long-tail keywords.
Don’t Overlook Reddit, Quora, and Industry-Specific Forums!
When Google fails to provide relevant answers, users often turn to communities like Quora and Reddit to find solutions. By studying discussions in these forums, you can identify potential long tail keywords. The challenge with this approach is that manually browsing and extracting long-tail keywords from forum discussions can be time-consuming. To streamline the process, consider combining forum research with browser tools mentioned in the previous sections.
Criteria for Selecting the Best Long Tail Keywords
To establish criteria for selecting the best long-tail keywords, we must first understand their different types. Not all long tail keywords are the same. Some represent popular search queries, while others are simply less commonly searched variants of more popular keywords.
Let’s start with an example. The phrase “best healthy treats for dogs” is undeniably a long-tail keyword since it receives only 100 searches per month. However, there are several other related search phrases with higher search volumes that convey the same intent. If you search for any of these keywords on Google, you will notice that the same pages rank at the top for all of them.
Google is smart and recognizes that different users may phrase their searches differently, even though they are essentially looking for the same thing. As a result, Google categorizes and ranks pages that contain similar keywords. Therefore, when choosing among long-tail keywords on a specific topic, it is best to prioritize those with higher search popularity. However, this does not mean you should ignore optimizing your page for other relevant variations of those keywords.
If you use Ahrefs’ Parent Topic feature, you can discover popular long-tail keywords along with their closely related variations. However, be mindful that blindly following Parent Topic suggestions may occasionally mislead your strategy.
How to Use Long Tail Keywords?
The process begins by identifying long tail keywords using the recommended tools. Once you have your list, select the keywords that best align with your products, services, or website content. Then, think about what type of content would be most appropriate for those keywords.
Below are some additional best practices for effectively integrating long tail keywords:
- Diversify title tags and headings: Every piece of content includes titles and headings. Since users search using different word combinations, try incorporating a variety of long-tail keywords within your titles and headings.
- Use long-tail keywords within the body of your content: To better direct users to your website, don’t limit keyword placement to just titles and headings. Instead, organically embed diverse long-tail keyword variations throughout the text.
- Include long-tail keywords in internal links and other elements: When optimizing content, don’t overlook non-textual elements. Use long-tail keywords in image titles, ALT tags, and internal linking strategies to enhance ranking potential.
Conclusion
Long-tail keywords are one of the most effective methods for improving website ranking. Identifying long-tail keywords that fall within the “long-tail” section of the search volume distribution chart can precisely direct your audience toward your products or services.
If you neglect long-tail keywords, your website may struggle to compete against shorter, high-volume keywords. To establish authority and relevance in search rankings, Google and your audience must perceive your website as uniquely valuable. Strategically using long-tail keywords helps highlight your distinct offerings and enhances your chances of landing on the first page of search results.
