Ever wondered how the SEO professionals get results? Well one ways to boost website traffic is to target Long Tail Keywords.
What are Long Tail Keywords?
A “Long Tail Keyword” is a set of keywords grouped together to form a phrase. For instance I wrote an article where one of my target long tail keywords was Best Balance Boards. My thinking was that I probably wouldn’t be able to rank for the more competitive term “Balance Boards”, but I might be able to rank for “Best Balance Boards”. Adding the term Best obviously made a difference. Now if you search for Best Balance Boards or Best Balance Board, my article usually shows up on page one of google. You can also search for “Top Balance Board” and the article is usually in the top 5 of Google.
Examples of even longer Long Tail Keywords include
- best balance boards for surfing
- best balance boards for snowboard training
- best balance board for core strength
The opposite of these long tailed keywords are Head Terms, which are short, phases such as “Weight Lifting” or “Balance Board”.
In general, Long Tail Keywords consist of between three to five words and should be relevant to your site or the article being written.
Advantages Of Using Long Tail Keywords
The biggest advantage of using a Long Tailed Keyword approach is there isn’t as much competition, thus each phrase is easier to rank for. Another advantage is you can actually target multiple Long Tail Keywords in the same article.
Many SEO professionals use the Long Tail Keyword approach to help boost an article ranking and eventually rank for the shorter head terms words.
Advantages of Long Tail Keywords
- Avoid direct competition from big sites or competitors
- Long Tail Keywords searches result in increased sales potential
- Search results are usually highly targeted traffic
When coming up with these longer keywords, make sure they are relevant to your website and niche.
Improving Local SEO Using Long Tail Keywords
Obviously there are lots of ways to improve local SEO, including fixing citations, working with local businesses and engaging in local campaigns.
When
Long Tail Keywords Boost Sales
Since Long Tail Keywords are highly specific, and draw less traffic, they tend to draw more quality hits to an article or page, which leads in more conversions if products are being sold.
Think about it. In many cases people who are searching using long tail keywords are normally looking for something pretty specific, thus are usually more interested in purchasing what they are looking for.
Let’s take for example a person who types in “Used Car” vs “Used 1990 Toyota Land Rover”.
Obviously the 2nd query is very specific and there is high probability that the person is either doing some research on their own vehicle or looking to buy that specific vehicle.
Optimizing For Long Tail Keywords
When optimizing websites or articles, the first step prior to writing them should be to perform keyword analysis. Using the Long Tail Keyword approach should help you rank high once the article or webpage is written. There are various tools out there that will help you perform and find Long Tail Keywords.
Some of my favorite ones are
- Answer The Public
- Google Adwords Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
- Google Auto Complete
- HitTail
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- UberSuggest
I am not going dive into each of these in this article, but here are some rather unique ways in which some of these work.
Answer The Public
Answer The Public is a wacky name, but it is a fantastic tool for finding those Long Tail Keywords. In this example I entered “Austin Texas” and ATP came back with all sorts of suggestions pertaining my search criteria. As you can see, may of the results are 4 or more word topics which is exactly what you would want when setting up your Long Tail Keyword campaign.
Google Auto Complete
For those that may be wondering what Google Auto Complete is, just open up Google Chrome and start typing. Don’t hit enter. You should see so words appear below your text. These words are Google’s auto complete and sometimes that can be extremely helpful when looking for Long Tail Keywords.
UberSuggest
Rather than talk about it, here is a video that walks you through some of the functionality.
Please let us know what methods you have found beneficial in your Long Tail Keyword approach.
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