Even if you are an expert or a novice, keywords, among many other factors, are crucial to an improved SEO strategy, especially long-tail keywords that can impact our rankings in the long run. Discover the hidden gem into a solid long-tail SEO strategy that levels the playing field for you and more dominant sites. Get discovered by new and more motivated audiences today.
Do you aspire that high SERP ranking and get more organic traffic? Even if you are an expert or a novice, keywords, among many other factors, are crucial to an improved SEO strategy, especially long-tail keywords that can impact our rankings in the long run.
There’s a hidden gem into a solid long-tail SEO strategy. Focusing on longer search terms helps you zone in your intent on more specific queries, levelling the playing field for you and more dominant sites. So, what are long-tail keywords? Let’s have a look.
What are long-tail keywords?
Long-tail keywords are phrases used in search queries. They are keyword key phrases that use more words than than usual queries, and they’re more specific, thus targeting 70% of search intent.
It is true that long-tail keywords get less search traffic. However, since the competition is way less with long-tail keywords, their conversion value is usually higher. They eventually lead to more stable traffic that has a high conversion capacity. You get discovered by new and highly-motivated audiences.
Often these phrases are in question-form. Questions are the long tails you want to aim in the future. When you provide an answer to someone’s search intent, you are giving them information specific to what they are searching for at the moment. Doing this means a higher likelihood of conversion.
For instance, if you are searching for ‘How to Maintain a WordPress Website,’ and the top result is a step-by-step guide to with infographics, you will probably click through and engage with the content even more.
Why Are Long-Tail Keywords Important For SEO?
You outrank your competition better
Search engines considering the context of keywords through Latent Semantic Indexing. It’s not just about cramming keywords but about the quality of those keywords to the search intent of audiences.
You rank more prominently for short-tail keywords
Creating content around lower volume words ironically helps long-tail keywords rank higher for those short-tail keywords. Since long-tail keywords make themselves a part of the context and more specific content, they register as having more relevance or meaning to broader keywords.
It brings higher traffic to your website and allows for better engagements, link building, and more improved rankings.
How to find long-tail keywords
Free tools for identifying long-tail keywords
There are a lot of free tools out there to find keywords, such as Google Keyword Planner, LSI Graph, Keywords, Ubersuggest, and Answer the Public.
Google Keyword Planner
Google understands that increased traffic is valuable to your business, so it has provided a free tool to help.
You can use it with paid AdWords to make your campaigns run better, but even without upgrading to a paid account, this tool already comes strongly to help you find those keywords that can drive traffic better for your site.
It’s very user-friendly and provides insights into trends so you can improve your SEO campaign.
You can type in several seed words, phrases, or even a URL with every keyword search. Google can show you hundreds, even thousands, of suggestions in response to your search intent.
You’ll also get to view metrics about keywords, like how many clicks and impressions that you may get from your chosen keywords in a month of PPC ads, estimated costs, and the like.
That is why Google Keyword Planner is a go-to for the majority of SEO strategists making use of its free version to deliver winning long-tail keywords.
LSI Graph
LSI Graph is a remarkable tool you can get for free. It is user-friendly and well designed and comes with a premium option.
But just like Google Keyword Planner, if you’re only using it to search for keywords, the free version already packs a punch. On the landing page, you can jump right into keyword research.
For instance, you typed a general query, ‘website.’ You’ll get these results:
You’ll see those long-tail keywords as you move further into the list.
In the free version, you will not get the full data of your search, but you get a lot of material and insight as to what long-tail keywords are trending for your search intent. You can also view search volume, CPC (Cost Per Click), and Competition (Comp %).
When you hover just to the right of a word, a little red box shows up, and if you click it, it gives you more detailed results with more choices of long-tail keywords.
You can keep doing this until you find what exactly you are searching for. It’s precious, endless, and absolutely free.
Paid Tools for Identifying Long-Tail Keywords
The most popular paid tools to date are SEMrush, KW Finder, and Ahrefs. They all produce long-tail keywords and have heaps of other features. They all offer free trial plans so you can better decide before jumping into paid versions.
SEMrush
This tool can elevate your SEO exponentially. The paid version is not cheap, but well worth it. Its content template tool is a crowd favourite, where you can choose focus keywords and paste articles so SEMrush can analyse your content.
You’ll be given an SEO score based on keyword density, use of heading, length, readability, and semantically related words.
What sets it apart from other keyword planners is its ease of use, all-in-one approach, and of course, the content template tool.
KW Finder
This tool is included in the Mangools suite of SEO tools. Its interface is very appealing, but it lacks the functionality compared to SEMrush. It doesn’t provide a content tool nor give the same in-depth analysis that SEMrush delivers.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs blogs are in-depth and highly useful, and so do their SEO/Keyword Tool. It comes with a $7 free 7-day trial. It offers a wide variety of tools, as you can see below:
How to incorporate long-tail keywords in your content
Use them in your headlines
The key is to seamlessly, organically use keywords so that the language looks and feels natural. Keep working on your keywords until it seems like normal speech.
You may have to revise your keywords in the future to stay relevant with trending search queries, as Google and other search engines look for relevance and readability first.
Headlines should give readers a clear preview of what they can expect from your content.
Add them into your introduction
Use your new long keywords into the first 100 words of your article. Avoid keyword stuffing. Again, keywords need to look and feel they belong, so write them in naturally.
These key phrases make your text more relatable and attract your readers to read on.
Use them in your sub-points
Take the chance of putting long-tail keywords in some of your sub-points if possible. You can insert your second or third keyword so you can cover at least two or three variations of your keywords throughout your article.
Use them in your conclusion
It is proper writing etiquette to conclude your articles properly. Use your long-tail keywords as you give a summary of the article or one final point. The conclusion portion helps skimmers of your article to get your points as they quickly scan your article.
If they like your main points, they’ll probably decide to linger and read the rest of your article. As always, avoid keyword stuffing and be creative in crafting a winning conclusion.
Conclusion: Outranking with long-tail keywords is easy with consistent practice
Stop chasing your tail and throwing much in vain when it comes to SEO keyword strategy. Be strategic in incorporating long-tail keywords into your content.
Make it a habit to write high-quality, long-form content with long-tail keywords. As you become consistent with this writing style, you’ll discover that outranking your competition is becoming natural and seamless for you and your SEO strategies as well.
So, start chasing long-tail keywords today.
