Everything you Need to Know about Long Tail Keywords by trafficthat

Everything You Need to Know About Long Tail Keywords

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Introduction: on Books, Specificity and Intent To the Whiteboard! From Head to the Long Tail The Long Tail Is Really Heavy Specificity and Intent, Again Using Long Tail Keywords Step 1: Know Your Long Tails - Explore Google - Use Keyword Software and Online Tools Step 2. Perfect Your Content - Length Matters - Quality Is Quality - Visuals Rule - Frequency Is Gold Step 3: Integrate Long Tail Keywords into Your Content - Target Your Keyword - Craft a Great Headline - Introduction and Subheadings Conclusion Thanks for Reading This Book! Looking for an SEO-friendly Website? Get One from TemplateMonster Sources Images

Introduction: on Books, Specificity and Intent

Imagine you want to buy a book. You go to Google and type in “book”, right? Of course not. You’ll probably type the exact name of the book you need. Also, you will probably want to find a store to buy it from — and the one that offers the best price for the book. With this in mind, your search will be more similar to something like “game of thrones books best price” than to the much more generic “book”. Remember this: you want to buy the book, and your search is very specific. In other words, you’ve got intent and specificity; they are essential for optimizing your keyword strategy. That’s what long tail keywords are all about. Moreover, this is what this book is about — in this guide, you will find the most essential tips and tricks of working with long-tail keywords. Knowing about this aspect of SEO will help you gain a competitive edge over similar business and rank high when it comes to specific high-converting queries. If that’s what you’re looking for, read on. .

To the Whiteboard! From Head to the Long Tail

The term “long tail” refers to the chart-based representation of the numerous small-volume sources of data. We’ll come back to this concept in a couple of minutes, but first, image SEO as an animal. Yep, you’ve heard that right. Imagine SEO as an animal. To make this simpler, here’s a cute SEO-zaurus from Chris Grasso:

Now, imagine that the SEO-zaurus’ head is that single high-volume keyword that many people dream of: “if I could just get my site to be listed under “books”, boy would I sell a lot of them!”. You probably do, too, if you’ve just started with SEO, but the thing is you’ll probably never make it to that dream position. Not with that strategy. If you choose to go for the long tail, though, things will be a bit different.

The Long Tail Is Really Heavy Now, here’s the same SEO-zaurus from the previous page, but in a more abstract graph-like form. Take a look at this beautiful green-and-yellow graph. Imagine the green head as representing the most popular searches; stuff like “books”, and “pets”, and “shoes”, and “smartphones”. Those are really powerful keywords, with millions of monthly searches.

The long yellow tail, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast. Notice how it slithers on towards your right? That’s where the majority of searches are. The long tail is made up of all the diverse, miscellaneous, unpredictable searches that people make. This includes stuff like questions (“how do I fix a leaking tap”), comparisons (“slim fit vs baggy pants”), or specific items (“3G phone for under 100 dollars”). Taken together, this array of specific searches makes up for 70% of the total search volume. Impressive, right? But that’s not where their value lies. Here’s the real beauty: long-tail keywords signify intent.

Specificity and Intent, Again As a matter of fact, head keywords are pretty dull. People may google “pets”, but they don’t necessarily want to buy pets. A buyer googling “shoes” doesn’t necessarily want to buy from the first Google results page – he or she may simply be browsing for ideas. Aside from that, just go ahead and google a head keyword like “pets”. Chances are you won’t see a single sales-oriented search item on the first page of Google:

Unless your personal settings include some sort of an online pet store, you’ll probably see a couple of Wikipedia articles, image and news search results, a couple of social media accounts, and so on. What this all means is that purchase-oriented search queries are a lot more specific. What’s more, people tend to inform Google about their intent to buy stuff with words like “store”, “price”, “purchase”, etc.

As you probably know, the advent of mobile devices and the implementation of Google voice search created a large number of different searches. Many users who are intent on buying or investing time into something will use a much more specific way to phrase their queries. That is, they will use long-tail keywords. They will be precise; they’ll say “Ok Google, what is the cheapest computer service near me?”. Chances are that when they do that, their money-spilling potential will be approaching its apex. If they google “best price for self-help books for entrepreneurs”, and they see your page, you’re very close to making a sale, or to getting organic traffic. Either way, you’re in for business growth. Again, remember those two very important things I told you about long tail keywords: specificity and intent. Long tail keywords, by signaling the customer’s specific needs, drive great sales. Never mind the fact that they’re not terribly popular; they’re likely to generate serious organic traffic to your site – that is, traffic coming in from unpaid searches – and that will increase your exposure and generate website growth. Here’s a punny way to put it: in short, long-term keywords signify serious ROI potential. They will get you some profit. Pretty promising, huh?

Using Long Tail Keywords

Now you know what long tail keywords are, and you know they’re helpful. But how exactly do you go about using them? The process is pretty straightforward: you have to know what long tail keywords you want to link to, and then integrate them into your content.

Step 1: Know Your Long Tails So you’ve got a blog or a website that’s about something. It can be anything – from politics to marketing, to books, to phones, to cooking, to fashion, to custom jewelry. The first thing you need to do is understand that your favorite head keywords won’t help much. You’ve got to come up with a list of long tail keywords and make full use of them. And you’ve got a few options for doing that.

A) Explore Google Easy as it may sound, it’s also one of the most effective ways to get a decent idea of the keywords you want to target. Type in an initial question about your product, and Google will generate long tail keywords — you can find them in the “related searches” section located at the very bottom of a search results page.

Pick those that interest you, play with them a little – add a different word, add some context, add a second thing you want it compared to — plug them in again, and repeat the process. You’ll get plenty of useful suggestions to use as starting point.

B) Use Keyword Software and Online Tools Once you’ve got a decent amount of relevant long tail keywords, you can start using a specialized tool to explore and contrast their potential. Do you need to target a 8-word-long string, or would a simple question do the trick? Here’s where you want to use specific tools that will analyze search data and provide you with an overview of the best keywords. In her great article, Jo Cameron suggests using Keyword Explorer to get a comprehensive chart of different keyword metrics: volume, difficulty, opportunity and potential. It’s really the opportunity and potential that you want to consider as the main signs of a great keyword.

You can also try other resources, such as KeywordEye and Semrush. This article recommends a great free keyword resource and this one is a great treasure trove of online services you can use for keyword research. Once you’ve got a decent batch of relevant keywords, you can start thinking about how to apply them to your content. After all, you want to have your blog or page link to those keywords.

Step 2. Perfect Your Content

Now that you know where to look for long tail keywords, let’s talk about the specific ways to include them into your content. I know you’re eager to get there, but there’s one thing you need to understand: quality content is essential. Content is the heart of your website; without quality content, you’ll likely be ignored by people and, consequently, by search engines. Therefore, any keyword strategy has very little impact without decent content. There are several issues that you need to address if you want quality content on your website. By quality content, we mean valuable, exciting, and useful content, not just unique-but-run-of-the-mill texts. Before getting to the specifics of integrating long tail keywords in your articles, let’s make a brief detour to the key principles of quality content.

A) Length Matters

It really does. Search engines are known to have a preference for lengthier articles, with somewhere over 2000 words per entry. Even mobile users prefer longer pieces, though the threshold is roughly 1000 words. Your target audience is essential, and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plenty of information out there on selecting it. The important thing is that once you have a clear public in mind, you have to adjust the length of your articles to that specific public. Go by the rule of thumb Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve just mentioned: if you want to increase your search engine ranking, aim for longer articles. If you plan to target mobile users, go for relatively shorter pieces; but never go under 1000 words.

B) Quality Is Quality

Rand Fishkin from Moz put it beautifully: “Good, unique content needs to die”. If that intrigues you, check out his video. “Good, unique content” is, in fact, mediocre content; stuff that “will do”. But “will do” is not enough. There’s no reason for search engines to favor your blog if the same info can already be found in tons of other places. Or if your writing is full of language errors and typos. But we don’t need to mention that, do we?:) That’s why you have to make sure that you’re really good at what you’re writing – or that you’re working with great writers. If you can’t provide high-quality content, you should focus on other keywords. Pick out that area where you feel you can make a substantial contribution; only then will you get rewarded with a high search ranking.

C) Visuals Rule Most people are visual learners. You have to remember that every time you publish something. Of course, theoretically, you can have quality content without any visuals – but you’re not there yet.

You need to understand how the world of online text goes. According to Mashable, people like image updates twice as often as text-only updates. When it comes to shares, the success of the visuals goes rocketing up, with video being shared twelve times more than text and picture combined. Of course, not any type of visuals will do. Make sure that you’re using something relevant for your content and stick to some clear formatting principles.

D) Frequency Is Gold

Keep posting quality content regularly and you’ll gain credibility with search engines, your public will share your articles, and you’ll increase your influence in your industry. Of course, if you’re in the early stages, you need to make your site visible by other means, as well. This article will let you in on some exposure tips for a new blog. Once you get going, you don’t have to publish every day; a few times a week will suffice, provided, again, that your content is great. If you want quality content, you have to choose an appropriate length, address relevant, useful and interesting issues, include visuals and keep posting regularly. Still, you also need to integrate those long tail keywords into your content. Okay, let’s move on to step 3.

Step 3: Integrate Long Tail Keywords into Your Content

Theoretically, this should be easy. You have to make sure that you include the desired keywords into your writing. You may have to repeat the keyword a few times, but make sure you don’t sound unnatural. Badly included keywords will make your content read awkwardly and it may drive your popularity south. That’s why hiring or consulting a professional copywriter is not such a bad idea. They’ll know how to optimize your content for the desired keywords, and they’ll make sure your articles don’t sound like that primitive keyword-stuffed “google language” from 2005. If you can’t have that, though, here are a few principles that will guide you through the process.

A) Target Your Keyword Pick a long tail keyword that sounds promising and address the issue behind it. Let’s take the leaking tap example: “how do I fix a leaking tap?”

If you take a look at the results page, you’ll see that Google has already suggested a simple solution to this issue. If yours is just a repetition of that, you’d better choose a different topic to write on. To make sure you’ll address the issue in the optimal way, you’ll have to take a look at the top 10 results and see what they have in common. Once you’ve done that, add something of your own. Only then will your content be valuable.

B) Craft a Great Headline There’s no way to overemphasize the importance of the headline when it comes to getting traffic. If you can get your long tail keyword into your headline without sounding weird, you’ll be that much closer to getting some good organic traffic to your website. To achieve that, you need to study headlines. Here’s what buzzfeed has to offer:

Use such resources and model your headlines accordingly. For instance, let’s stick to the leaky tap example. You could model it on the first headline: Here’s How To Fix a Leaking Tap Today Or on the second one: 17 Ways to Fix a Leaking Tap Today Obviously, the third one won’t work for this specific keyword, but you can always use it for another one. The point is, you have to keep getting ideas. Always get inspired. There are plenty of great headlines all over the Internet, and if you spot one that you like, you can always use it to create your own. Another great way to integrate long tail keywords into your headline is to simply open your headline with the target keyword.

Take a look at these headlines, for instance:

Notice how effectively they go about integrating their targeted long tail headlines. No wonder they’re one of the Google’s top 10 results! Do that with your headlines as well. To pick another one of our examples: Slim Fit Vs. Baggy Pants – Which Are More Popular? Once you study enough headlines, you’ll be able to craft a variety of titles for your articles, including your target keywords.

C) Introduction and Subheadings You’ll have to use the desired long tail keyword in the introduction and in your subheadings. Not only will that raise your search results position, but it will also create a feeling of achievement in your readers. After all, you’re answering their questions, right? Take a look at this article (it’s one of the pizza results we’ve already referred to):

Notice how the keywords are integrated in a perfectly natural way in a span of no more than 100 words. Again, this is one of the most popular results for a “pizza vs burgers” query, and even for variations of this, such as “is pizza better than burgers”.

Conclusion

Long tail keywords are essential when it comes to growing your traffic and expanding your business. Though less popular than head keywords, they are more efficient in that they attract organic traffic and they signal the user’s intent. Remember those two key features that we’ve mentioned? Intent and specificity? If you forget everything else you’ve read so far, remember these two. Why? Because you want to address an engaged public who has specific needs. Google doesn’t like generalities, and neither should you. If you want to get real traffic to your website, you’ll have to write for real people with real concerns. Similarly, if you want to sell something, you have to know who you’re selling to and why you’re selling. Get an idea of the long tail keywords that are relevant to your site – there are plenty of ways to do that – and then include those keywords into your material. Tailor your content to answer the specific issues that those keywords signal. Finally, make sure that your content is better at answering those specific issues that any other piece of content on the Web. Remember: people don’t want to know what a book is. People want to buy books, to exchange books, to read books, to join book clubs. All of the above are long tail keywords. That’s where people’s interests are. And if your helpful, quality content becomes visible to them, that’s where your money is.

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Sources How User Intent Will Forever Inform Successful Keyword Strategies (searchengineland.com) Why Long-Tail Keywords Are Still Important to Your SEO Strategy (socialmediatoday.com) Beginners Guide to SEO: Keyword-Research (moz.com) Diving for Pearls: A Guide to Long Tail Keywords â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Next Level (moz.com) Long-Tail Keywords: A Better Way to Connect with Customers (wordstream.com) A Step by Step Guide to Integrating Long-Tail Keywords Within Blog Posts (neilpatel.com) How Important is Content Length? Why Data-Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions (blog.serpiq.com) How Mobile Readers Engage With Long- and Short-Form Content (pubexec.com) 5 Critical Tips For Identifying Your Target Audience (technori.com) Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Whiteboard Friday (moz.com) For Brand Engagement, Visuals Rule (mashable.com) 15 Essential Elements of Our Most Engaging Content (wpcurve.com) Why Infographics Rule (forbes.com) How Often Should You Update Your Blog? (diythemes.com) How Often Should You Blog? (Hint: The Answer Might Surprise You) (problogger.net)

Images pexels.com unsplash.com stocksnap.io socialmediatoday.com moz.com sciencenode.org google.com