Wondering what are long tail keywords and why use long tail keywords in your content? Then you’ve come to the right place.
Long tail keywords, also known as long tail focus keywords, are a great strategy for search engine optimization (SEO). Due to the highly competitive market, it’s often difficult to rank with the short or head keywords. So your keyword has got to be more specific with much clearer intent. That’s where long tail focus keywords come in handy.
In this article, we’ll be providing essential details on what are long tail focus keywords. After reading it, you’ll be able to define long tail keywords and understand their importance. You’ll also know what is long tail keyword research and how to use them in your blog posts.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
A. What are Long Tail Keywords?
Long tail keywords are the specific keyword phrases of the longer length. As the name itself, they’re characterized by more than 3 words in length. Therefore, they’re more descriptive and provide more clear ideas than head terms/keywords.
For instance, here are two keyword ideas “WordPress themes” and “best free WordPress themes for business”. Which of the two do you think is more descriptive and has more clear intent? Obviously, the second one. As suggested before, the long tail keywords are more specific compared to the short keywords.
Similarly, “keywords” is a head term with a vague meaning. On the other hand, “how to use keywords for better SEO” is a long tail focus keyword with a clearly defined purpose.
However, unlike head terms, long tail keywords tend to get fewer search volumes. But the good news is it’s accompanied by low competition. As a result, the chances of ranking in search engines are high.
If you want a refresher on what a keyword is, you can check out our article on Keywords and how to use them for SEO.
B. Why Use Long Tail Keywords?
Long tail focus keywords are specific search terms that effectively communicate with the search engines. This enables you to reach your potential customers who’re truly interested in your products and services.
The top reasons for focusing on long tail keywords are as given below:
1. Easier to Rank
Since long tail keywords are more specific, they usually don’t get high volume search results as vague head keywords. But this provides the benefit of low competition with other similar websites. So, you don’t have to struggle to rank in search engines.
2. Cheaper Advertising
Long tail terms are extremely economical to those who have been involved in PPC (Pay per Click) marketing strategy. PPC is an act of placing advertisements on a search engine results page where you bid for certain keywords. Here, you’ve to pay for each click on your ad by the users.
Since long tail terms are accompanied by low competition and low click-through rate. Therefore, they help to minimize the cost associated with your advertisement.
3. Lower Bounce Rate
Long tail focus keywords provide much clearer intention. So the people visiting your webpage using these keywords are more certain to stay on your page. Because the search results completely favor their search intent.
4. High Conversion Rate
People using long tail terms exactly know what they’re looking for. Therefore, they’re likely to get more targeted search results. Hence, long tail keywords help you get better conversion rates for your site.
5. Rank for Short Tail Keywords
Your long tail keywords also help you rank for your short tail keywords. Wondering how? Long tail keywords are nothing but the more defined explanation for the short terms themselves. Therefore, they include short term within themselves.
For instance, let’s view an example: “WooCommerce themes” and “best free WooCommerce themes with Elementor”. Here, the short keyword “WooCommerce themes” is included within the long tail keywords. Hence, they help to rank for both of the keywords.
6. Provide a Framework for the Content
Long tail keywords act as a framework for your content. You can carve or shape your valuable content around these terms. In this way, you’re optimizing your blog posts to satisfy your customers’ search queries. So, you can drive more organic search traffic to your site.
7. Google Voice Search
Nowadays, people often seek search results using Google voice search. In such cases, long tail keywords are much more suitable than short keywords. As they’re highly specific, they drive more targeted results.
C. What is Long Tail Keyword Research?
Long tail keyword research is the act of finding and analyzing search phrases that best describes the purpose of your content. This activity plays a vital role to build long tail keywords that match your target customers’ search queries.
Performing keyword research can help you find the keywords that your competitors use to rank in search engines. You can also discover popular keywords that you might consider using in your content.
D. How to Find/Research Long Tail Keywords?
Having said about what is long tail keyword research and its importance. Now it’s time to learn about how to find them.
Before running into that, it’s important to keep a few things in your mind:
- The motive of your company
- Recognizing your potential customers
- Search intent of your customers
Keeping these things in mind you can now proceed to find the long tail focus keywords using the following methodologies:
1. Google Autocomplete
You don’t need to purchase an expensive keyword research tool or such to find the best long tail keywords. Google’s autocompleting feature is sufficient on its own to generate perfect long tail keywords ideas.
Whenever you type certain search phrases on the Google search box. It shows the list of relevant drop-down suggestions. It’s the list of the popular search queries that people often search for.
You can input your keyword of interest and see Google auto completing it for you. Additionally, you can add a certain letter or word to get the variation in Google’s suggestion.
For instance, if you type “best free WordPress themes” Google auto completes the keywords in the following ways.
2. Google “Searches related to…”
Another magnificent alternative for long tail keywords research is Google’s related search suggestions. They appear at the very bottom of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Here, the idea is to input your primary keyword of interest and then scroll to the bottom for search-related suggestions. Google provides 8 of the most related searches to the keywords that you’ve entered above in the Google search box.
For example, if you type “best WordPress page builder plugins” in Google search box, Google suggests you following relevant searches.
Further, you can click on any of those relevant keywords to get another fresh list of the related searches. You can explore all of them and find the most specific keywords that you can rank with.
3. Google “People also ask” Boxes
There’s no comparison to Google when it comes to offering valuable suggestions for the long tail keywords.
Another useful feature of Google is the “People also ask” box. As the name itself suggests, it’s the box containing the most frequently asked questions by the people. The question is relevant to the primary words/phrases that you input above in the Google search box.
Let’s take an example of the same keyword “best WordPress page builder plugins”. For these keywords, people also ask box displays the following relevant questions.
When you click on the dropdown menus near these questions it shows the answer as well as other few related questions. So, you can surf them as per your desire or requirement for a better long tail keywords plan.
4. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most popular keyword research tools out there, and for a good reason. It helps you discover tons of popular short or long tail keywords related to your seed keyword. You can also find keywords based on geographic locations.
Besides, it enables you to find the search volumes, keyword difficulty, keyword CPC (Cost per Click), and so on. SEMrush is not only limited to keyword research. It’s an all in one tool that allows optimizing SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, competitive research, and more.
All you need to do is enter your main keyword and it will give you all the long tail variations that you could ever ask for. For instance, if you enter ‘foam mattress’, here are all the keywords it could provide you.
SEMrush has three pricing options: Pro $99.95/Month, Guru $199.95/Month, and Business$399.95/Month. You can choose any one of these options as per your convenience for accessing the exciting features of this tool.
5. Answer The Public
Answer The Public is one of the best free tools for finding the long tail keywords. It displays tons of questions relevant to the search terms that you’ve entered. So, it’s perfect for finding keywords in the question form.
This free tool permits you to assemble the data alphabetically for your convenience. It also permits the comparison of keywords. So that you can find the best long tail term that provides an opportunity for a higher ranking. Besides, it allows downloading your data as CSV.
You can also upgrade to pro-version to get access to more of its awesome features. There’re three pricing options for Answer The Public: Monthly $99/Month, Annually $79/Month, and Enterprise $399/Month.
6. Google Trends
Google Trends is a free keyword research tool by Google with ease of use. You can go to Google Trends and start typing your search term in the search field. All the relevant keywords will be displayed in the related queries section. It also displays the related topic to your keywords which might be useful to you.
This free tool has brilliant functionalities. It allows you to filter your keywords based on the geographic region of your interest. You can also filter your keywords by categories like arts and entertainment, health, sports, finance, and so on.
Besides, it enables you to know the interest for your keyword over time to find out if it’s in an increasing trend or decreasing. Also, you can compare two keywords to target the right keywords based on their popularity.
E. How to Properly Use Long Tail Keywords?
After understanding what are long tail keywords and why use them. You’ve now known the ways of finding the long tail keywords too. But your knowledge would be incomplete if you don’t know how to properly use them in your content.
So, here we go.
1. Create a Content Optimized Around Your Long Tail Keywords
The foremost thing that you need to do once you’re done finding your keywords is creating high-quality content. Your content should be optimized around the keywords that you’ve found from your extensive research.
High-quality content optimized with the long tail keywords work wonders for ranking in the search engine. As a result, your site can gain a huge amount of search traffic.
2. Incorporate the Long Tail Keywords in the Important Places
It’s essential to incorporate the keywords to the following places to strengthen your content strategy for SEO.
Title Tags and Meta Description:
Using the long tail keywords to your title tag ensures your customers that they’re on the right page.
Further, using them on meta description convinces them to visit your webpage.
URLs:
Including the long tail keywords in your URLs can provide a hint to the search engines about your content. This means better crawling of search engines for your webpages.
If you’re a beginner and don’t know what URL is. You can give a quick read to our guide on what is a website URL.
Headings and Image Alt Text:
It might not be possible to incorporate your long tail terms to every headings and image alt text. But it’s really good for your site’s SEO if you could use keywords to your headings and images whenever it’s applicable.
3. Distributing Long Tail Keywords Naturally
Incorporating the long tail keywords is both an important and delicate task to be precise. Since long tail keywords are longer they might seem reluctant and hamper readability if you don’t use them naturally. Therefore, you should use them carefully in your content so that they sound natural.
Even with normal keywords, its well known that the Google search algorithm doesn’t take too well to keyword stuffing. As a result, its recommended that you don’t go overboard while adding your long tail keywords.
Wrapping Up
It’s high time to start using long tail keywords if you’re having difficulty ranking with head keywords. They might have a low search volume. But the benefit of having low competition is immense. You can easily rank on the search engines and better ranking means higher search traffic.
We cannot deny the fact that keywords are the inevitable part of SEO strategy. But just finding and using those keywords to content isn’t everything to SEO. There are many other things to be considered to make the site completely optimized for search engines.
If you want to know more about optimizing your site you can check our article on SEO techniques that can work wonders for your website. You can also check our collection of best free SEO friendly themes as well as the best WordPress SEO plugins for better ranking.
We expect that after reading this article your queries on what are long tail keywords and why use long tail keywords have been solved. Also, you might have understood how to find and use them properly in your content.
If you have any suggestions please write to us in the comment section below. And don’t forget to share our articles if you think it was informative.
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