What Long-Tail Keywords Really Are & How to Choose Them

What Are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords are terms or phrases that have low competition and high commercial value. The term is used to describe keywords with less than 100 monthly global searches. Keyword research can be done using tools such as Google Adwords, SEMrush, and Keywordtool.io.

A successful example of the use of long-tail keywords is when a company specializing in selling lumber sells lumber for tables and chairs. They might use “lumber for tables” and “lumber for chairs” as their long-term keywords since these phrases have low competition but a high commercial value (i.e., fewer people searching). When people search these phrases, they are searching the specific product type instead of general terms such as “lumber”.

Long-tail keywords are usually found by looking at the search engine results pages (SERPs). The listings that rank on the first page are usually long-tail keywords. To find out more about how to find long-term keywords, check out How Long-Tail Keywords Are Born.

How to Choose Long-Tail Keywords?

You should choose a long-tail keyword for every page of your website. A well-optimized site can have up to 100 or more long-term keywords focused on a specific product or service. This is because you want your website to be successful in most cases and not just some of the time. Having a few long-tail keywords will not help you achieve success. You want to achieve success by having many long-tail keywords on your site.

Not all long-term keywords will be related to your products and services. This is because people that visit your site are looking for information on various subjects and not just one subject in particular. You need to have a mix of keywords that are related to your products/services and unrelated ones. A good example could be the keyword “wood” and the keyword “table” as they are both related, but they aren’t both directly related to the same product or service.

The ideal number of keywords you should have per page is between 5 to 20 words. Each page should have a target keyword that is related to your main product/service. Using the same example as before, on a page about lumber for chairs, the target keyword would be “lumber for chairs”.

Some tips to identify long-tail keywords:

1. Examine autocomplete suggestions in Google directly – This will give you ideas on the search terms people have been typing into Google.
2. Identify a handful of long-tail keywords that have recently had a high increase in searches – You can find this by searching “Google Keyword Tool – Organic Keyword Suggestions” on Google.
3. Search for long-tail keywords in Buzzsumo – Buzzsumo’s search is your best bet to find long-tail keywords that are currently ranking well. It will show you the most searched keyword phrases, and which websites rank for each of these phrases. This will give you an idea of which keywords could be long-term too!
4. Utilize the Google Adwords Keyword Tool – This is a good tool to find target keywords you don’t already know about. It also helps you determine how much each keyword is worth and that this value will vary between different pages on your site (i.e., landing page vs. homepage vs. product description). Also, this tool can tell you if the target keyword can work for multiple products or services on your website and whether it is trending.
5. Create a long list of potential long-tail keywords for your website – This will help you come up with ideas when writing blog posts or creating content for your site.
6. Use question modifiers like “what” and “how” – These will help you generate more long-tail keywords.
7. Use synonyms – “table” and “table setting” are just two examples of synonyms.

When choosing keywords for your site, consider the following:

How many people are searching for each keyword and what type of search are they doing (where are they looking?). Have you ever searched for that specific phrase? See if you find what you’re looking for when you search. Check out top-ranking pages using that specific phrase and other similar phrases. Are they optimized correctly? Which terms do competitors use on their site (and why did they decide to use those terms)? Use tools such as SEMRush and Keywordtool.io to check the competition level of your target keywords.

Although it is important to choose long-tail keywords, there are a few exceptions. These include:

• Keywords with high competition (over 1,000 monthly searches)
• Keywords that have been recently added by Google Keywords that will never be used frequently (e.g., language-specific keywords)
• Keywords that are too specific and might not be useful (e.g., “couch” as a keyword for furniture stores)

Aim to find at least 3 long-tail keywords for every page of your website. This will help you achieve success regardless of how well you optimize your site.

Example

Let’s look at an example website with a single homepage. The website is selling furniture products. It’s optimized to appear on the most relevant pages of Google. It has the following pages:

• Homepage – Contains the target keywords “living room furniture” and “living room sets”.
• Living Room Furniture – Contains all the long-tail keywords related to living room furniture, such as “living room tables”, “living room chairs”, etc.
• Living Room Sets – Contains all of the long-tail keywords related to living room sets, such as “couches” and “sofas”.
• Bedroom Furniture – Contains all of the long-tail keywords for bedroom furniture, such as “beds”, “headboards”, etc.
• Bedroom Sets – Contains long-tail keywords related to bedroom sets, such as “dressers”, and “garden beds”.
• Outdoor Furniture – Contains all the long-tail keywords related to outdoor furniture, such as “patio furniture” and “outdoor benches”.
• Outdoor Sets – Contains the long-tail keywords related to outdoor sets, such as “hammocks” and “canvas chairs”.

Now let’s look at how to optimize these pages on the search engines.

Read Also: 10 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Tons of Organic Traffic Easily

Tools to Find Long-Tail Keywords For Free

There are several ways to find long-tail keywords for your site:

• Using Google’s Keyword Planner Tool
• Webmaster Tools Search Queries
• keywordtool.io
• Long-Tail Keyword Generator Tools (e.g. Long Tail Pro)

Why Long-Tail Keywords Are Key for Boosting Traffic and Conversions?

Long-tail keywords are a great way to improve your ranking in search engines. You will be able to appear on relevant pages of the search engines by using long-tail keywords. With this technique, you are sending searchers to the pages that have relevant information about your products and services. There are many reasons which state that Long-Tail Keywords Are Key to Boosting Traffic and Conversions:

Easier to Rank:

With the use of long-tail keywords, you are sending searchers to pages with a high “Domain Authority”. The domain authority is determined by the number of referring domains that link to its website.

The more linking domains pointing to your site, the higher your domain authority. Since a lot of people are linking their websites to other sites and ranking them (i.e., “backlink”) on Google, you don’t need high search traffic to start ranking well. You just need good content of relevant information (which is the reason why long-tail keywords are important).

So, if there are fewer links pointing toward your site, it will be harder for Google to identify it as an authority in your niche and rank it higher in search results. (NOTE: Google takes into account the number of links pointing to your site when ranking your page. The more backlinks you have, the higher you will rank in search engines. This is a common myth about the internet today and it will be covered in a later guide.)

Better Quality Traffic:

Using long-tail keywords, people searching for specific information on Google will land on your site instead of landing on pages with irrelevant information. If you use long-tail keywords, you’ll send searchers to high-quality sites where they’re more likely to purchase products and services from you.

For example, if someone searches “buy canopy”, that person is likely looking for outdoor camping goods for their outdoor activities.

So instead of sending them to a page with a poorly-written article about the benefits of having a canopy for your patio, you would send them to a page about camper vans. This way, your site gets the high-quality traffic that it deserves.

More Money and Conversions:

Your conversion rate will be higher when you use long-tail keywords because you are sending searchers to high-value pages instead of sending them to pages that are low in quality. Since the long-tail keyword is more specific, people who search for this keyword will be more likely to take action on your website (i.e., buying products and services).

More Pages for Your Site:

When you use long-tail keywords, your site will have more relevant content on it. This way, you will have more pages of high-quality content to refer traffic from and more time to research more keywords that you can also use in your content.

Better Positioning:

The longer a keyword is, the higher it’s ranking on search engines when people type the keyword into the search engine. That is because the longer a keyword, the more of an authority it is in that field and it’s considered a better-quality product.

People are more likely to take action when they are sent to a page with relevant content about what they were searching for. The reason for this is that the Google search engine has confidence in sending you to the right page whenever you type in a long-tail keyword.

As mentioned earlier, people looking for a specific product or service and typing keywords into Google will most likely be looking to buy something related to what they typed in. When people use a specific long-tail keyword, they have high intent to buy.

The higher the intent of buying, the more action that you can expect from the searcher. The person is looking to buy something specific because they searched using specific keywords on Google. This is why you want to use keywords that have a high level of intent to buy.

Niche Credibility:

Long-tail keywords are more credible than shorter keywords because it contains more information. The longer the keyword, the more credible it will be in relation to its specific niche (i.e., person’s intention/need).

Higher Quality Pages:

Search engines ignore short-tail SEO and they will only rank your pages with long-tail keywords since they have specific information of what the person searched for in their own niche (i.e., people searching for “buy canopy” are most likely looking for outdoor camping goods). So, by using keywords that have a high level of intent to buy, you will rank higher in search results compared to pages with lower-quality content.

In some cases, competitors are using long-tail keywords as well and if you use these keywords, you will appear on top of their results. For example, if a competitor using the long-tail keyword “sofa” is ranked on the first page, then you can use the keyword “sofa” as a targeted keyword on your site and you will appear on top of his or her page. Many times, you can even appear on the first page of Google in the specific country from which people are searching for the keyword.

Some Related FAQs:

Conclusion:

Long-tail keywords are part of your overall SEO marketing strategy. They will boost traffic to your website and increase conversions from it. You need to use long-tail keywords in order to improve your branding on Google and get more out of it as a result. In the next guide, we will see how you can use long-tail keywords with the “Meta Keywords” section of Google.

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