I am sure you know about the importance of the keyword research process for the SEO of the website. However, knowing the importance of the keywords isn’t enough. You must also know what the types of keywords that you should be targeting are. In this article, I will show long tail keywords benefits, and explain how the differ from broad search term keywords.
If you have a website in the digital marketing niche, some of the keywords that would always be on your mind would be PPC ads, SEO, digital marketing, digital marketing agency, and alike.
However, did you ever wonder how much competition and websites are already available for these terms? There are over a million websites available, and hence the competition on these terms is massive.
To overcome this situation and tap on more traffic, you need to know and understand the need for long-tail keywords.
Thus, to profit from the long-tail keyword strategy, you need a clearer vision of your product, your company, and obviously, your website. So, here, we’ll take some time and discuss:
- What are long-tail keywords?
- How to select the long tail keywords?
- The tools that can be helpful and used while working with the analysis of the long-tail keywords.
Now, let’s start discussing all these three-pointers, one by one, in detail.
Table of Contents
What Are Long Tail Keywords?
In general, the long-tail keywords are believed to be more specific and less common keywords in comparison to the other keywords. These keywords are mainly niche-specific. However, in some cases, the market for the long tail keywords is really tiny. It is, in reality, the vastness of the internet that makes your niche blog, niche product, or niche post profitable.
Usually, you can recognize the long tail keywords by their length. Though they are less common and more specific, these are keywords people know will bank for them as not many people are targeting them with their content.
What Are Short Tail Keywords?
How are long tail keywords different from short tail keywords? But, before we get to the difference, let’s understand what the short tail keywords are?
Short tail keywords are the broad phrases that people use when searching for something in a search engine like Google. These keywords usually comprise one or two words.
Short tail keywords are nothing but your regular search phrases with one or two words only. It is their short length, which makes these keywords less specific than the searches with more words.
For instance, “Mobile phone” is two words and an example of a short tail keyword. On the other hand, “Best Samsung mobile phone under $500” is 6 words and an example of the long tail keyword.
Difference Between Short Tail & Long Tail Keywords
Here is a table representing the difference between the short tail keywords and the long tail keywords.
Point of Distinction | Short Tail Keywords | Long Tail Keywords |
Volume | High | Low |
Competition | High | Low |
Focus | Low | High |
Cost | High | Low |
Conversion Rate | Low | High |
Based on the distinction stated above, there is no doubt that the long tail keywords are better than the short tail keywords.
Long Tail Keywords Benefits
We already know that the long tail keywords are better than the short tail keywords. So, now let’s individually study the benefits offered by the long tail keywords.
The primary benefits of the long tail keywords are:
- In the case of the long tail keywords, there is fairly lesser competition.
- The results of the long tail keywords are definitely more relevant than the ones given by the short tail keywords.
- The conversion rate by the long tail keywords is massive.
- The headwords are already included in the long tail keywords.
- These keywords are pretty easy to optimize for.
- In the case of the long tail keywords, the user intent is mostly specific since they mostly get what they are searching for.
However, with all these benefits, there is one downside associated with the long tail keywords. With the long tail keywords, you will have to create more content to address keyword phrases specifically. Also, long tail keywords don’t have so much traffic as broad terms (short keywords).
Why Focus On Long Tail Keywords?
Long-tail keywords are a crucial part of your SEO. And if you haven’t yet realized, it is fairly easier for you to rank for the long tail keywords in comparison to the short tail keywords. This is because fewer websites are competing with you for high rankings in the case of these keywords.
The longer or rather, the more specific your keyword or search term is, the easier it becomes for you to rank for this term. As a result of the vastness of the internet, it becomes straightforward for you to find the audience for your specific niche. Thus, you need to focus on the group of long-tail keywords as these keywords will definitely bring in a lot of traffic for you.
When you focus on the long tail keywords, though these keywords are used fairly less in the search, you are more likely to convert visitors into customers.
With the growth in mobile phone use for searches by people, there has been a noted increase in the results, which are related to the questions, which are again a type of long-tail keywords.
Voice search is in significant raise too, so long tail keywords can help optimize site for voice searches.
How Can You Find The Best Long Tail Keywords?
There are a variety of ways for you to locate the best long tail keywords. You need to perform keyword research in order to find gold keywords. So, to help you with the same, here are some keyword research tools that can be used. You can either use all of these 4 tools mentioned below or a combination of them, depending on your requirement of the long tail keywords for your website, blog, or content piece.
1. Google Related Searches
Did you ever notice that when you head to the bottom of the Google search result page, there is a small section showing related search terms? This area is actually your gold mine for the long tail keywords.
Firstly, you need to type in the keyword that you wish to rank for. Next, you will have to head to the bottom of the page. There, towards the end, you will see the related searches for the input keyword. In this section, you can get quite a handful of the great long tail terms you can target.
There is a small tip that I would like to add here for you. You can pick any one of the keywords mentioned in the related searches section, and then you can enter that keyword term in Google search. Then again, scroll to the bottom of the page, where you can see the related searches part.
This related search has all the related searches related to your newly inputted long tail keyword. You can repeat and rinse the process as many times as you like. By the end of it, you’ll have a humongous list of the long tail keywords for you to target.
2. Google Auto-Complete
I believe that you have already seen the Google Autocomplete in action before. In Google Autocomplete, the best part is that you’ll get the suggestions coming straight from Google. So, how do you use Google Autocomplete for keyword research?
All you have to do is enter a keyword or type in a keyword along with a letter. For example, “keyword a,” “keyword b.” However, there is one problem with this approach. When you type in “keyword a,” “keyword b,” etc., it feels like a giant pain.
But, fortunately for you, the long tail keyword generators such as the keywordtool.io and the AnswerThePublic, both scrape Google Autocomplete data for you. So, all you got to do is, enter your seed keyword and click on the search button. You’ll be flooded with the results.
3. Google Search Console
A lot of you might have a handful of pages already sitting on the 2nd or the 3rd or the 4th page of Google. If you see through these, you will often notice that you rank in Google for long-tail keywords, which you might not even optimize for.
If, without optimization, they are doing so well, imagine how are they going to do if you give them some extra SEO attention? It is straightforward for you to locate these 2nd and 3rd-page keywords in the Google Search Console. To see the same, all you have to do is login into your Google Search Console account and head straight to the Performance Report.
4. Long Tail Pro Tool
Long Tail Pro tool primarily focuses on the extraction of the long tail keywords. When you use this tool, you will have to input the seed keyword, and based on your input, the tool will show you a list of long-tail keywords and their search volume and difficulty.
It will offer you details such as SERP comparison, competition, volume, etc. For more info, you can check my Long Tail Pro review. For long tail keyword research, you can also use KWFinder, Keyword Revealer, Semrush, SEO Power Suite, SpyFu, or Serpstat.
What After You Have Long Tail Keywords List?
After all the keyword research work is done and you know which keywords you would like to rank for, you can begin with your content creation. Again, the process of content creation can be pretty challenging here. Thus, to get the best results, you need to give your content the proper time and space.
DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.