Long-tail keywords seem so obscure and abstract – all we want is traffic! Yet most novice SEOs fail to realize the precise nature and value of long-tail keywords. It is easy to say: I want to fly. It is much harder to determine what that means and how to achieve this. Fly like a bird? Fly in an airplane? Fly the airplane? Fly a kite? Fly in space? Fly with a jetpack? Fly a helicopter? Fly for seconds? Fly for hours? Understanding long-tail keywords is the basis of online success. All of your blog planning, your content calendar, your very posts depend on long-tail keywords. So what are they?
Long-tail keywords are the collection of topics related to a specific search term. They are the actual searches performed by users to fish out the information they require out of the internet. In a mind-map, long tail keywords are a cluster of interrelated topics clustered around a single subject.
What are long tail keywords precisely?
Long-tail is a very misunderstood concept. Many new SEOs believe that long-tail keywords are named due to the length of the search phrases used. While there is certainly a strong correlation between the two, this is not quite correct.
Long-tail keywords are simply combinations of “less focused” words that drive traffic to a specific website in a less obvious way. “Less Focused” is a loaded concept.
If I were to search for “furniture”, I would get back millions of hits. Basically any site that was remotely related to furniture would be presented to me. However, this topic can range from all furniture, to house furniture to bedroom furniture and finally, children bedroom furniture and teen bedroom furniture. As you can see, the search does get a lot more specific.
While house furniture may represent 80% of the searches, country-style female teen bedroom furniture may only be valid in 1% of all searches. Similarly, one could go to modern, classic, tiny room and male teenage bedroom furniture, all of which may drive 1% of traffic towards my site.
Ling-tail keywords are then the combinations of keywords which appear in the lower-end (“niche”) section of a search, which drive a very focused subset of the searches towards my site.
If long-tail keywords drive so little traffic, why should I care about them?
Modern society tends to push the “instant gratification” angle too much. Basically, telling us to do the one thing that delivers the greatest result. Ironically, in the internet, while it is possible to generate the 1-hit wonder that is a viral video, being able to generate small, yet attractive pieces of work is much more valuable.
Going for the main keyword, say “YouTube” means competing against all of the big and well established players. Simply choosing “YouTube channel” already greatly reduces the field and allows you to win traffic for both “YouTube” and “Channel” and “YouTube Channel”, essentially tripling your visibility.
Long tail keywords allow us to capture the low-hanging fruits, the easier, less competitive searches and in so doing establishing our site as an authority, leading to more visibility for the main keywords.
12 reasons to use long-tail keywords:
- Long-tail keywords reflect how people search the web – once upon a time, people had to “think” for the search engine, essentially stringing together enough keywords to make the data pop out. The result was stilted and unnatural search query. These days, we can type the actual question that we are interested in and get a much closer answer. Users want to do one of 3 things online:
- learn something
- go somewhere
- do something
Most SEOs go through a phase of highly optimized headlines, jam packed with keywords designed to trap the search engine into believing this is a valuable piece of content, yet no-one would click on them as the keywords are just nonsense. In response, modern search engines have become much more capable of reading human patterns and therefore the search queries can become even better defined.
As a result, well over 70% of all web search is performed via longtail keywords.
- Long-Tail keywords convert better
A great landing page, in the top 10% of the internet, can have a conversion rate of 11.45%. The top 25% of all pages convert at 5.31% while an average landing page converts around 2.35% of the time. This will naturally depend on theindustry that you are in. The top pages are designed by experts in linguistics, user experience, psychology, graphic design, etc. and usually are implemented after quite a few A/B testing iterations.
But, with a simple trick, using long-tail keywords, along with the right user intent, this conversion rate can skyrocket by 2-3x, putting your site some 11 positions higher in search rankings.
- Long-tail keywords give instant meaning to your content
Users try to determine the best link for their needs. On a mobile device, it can be tiresome to click on a link only to have to return back to the search page over and over while finding a better link. To avoid this frustration, Google, with its 2017 Hummingbird update, has been pushing hard for contextual search answers.
This has allowed Google to outplay the SEOs using keyword stuffing and to promote mechanisms that convey to the end user the content of their page via the headline. Done properly, this usually means fewer people visiting your page only to jump back out instantly as the users already have a good understanding of what your page will provide them with. However, break this contract and you may be penalized heavily by Google.
- Long-tail keywords always beat single word head terms – head terms, or single word searches are very tough to rank for. Search engines cannot decipher your interest or intent from a single word. The head terms of any search typically represent the one or two words that are responsible for 90% of the traffic. This means that they are hugely competitive. If you can capture the top spot for the head term, you are guaranteed traffic. However, the long-tail words will lead to more profit as you can refine user intent and craft a story that entices the user towards a specific action.
- Long-tail keywords are the gateway to single keywords
Most longtail keywords will contain the head terms that you want to rank for eventually. While initially these are too hard to rank for, these are still the highly lucrative terms just based on their search volume. Over time, Google does start to correlate these head terms with your pages. Put another word, Google can figure out that most of your title is fluff and you really wan to rank for “X”. As you gain more authority, Google starts to rank you higher for “X” directly, making it possible to rank for both longtail and head terms.
- Long-tail keywords make it much simpler to develop a blog strategy
Most people try to push a blog strategy around a head term, which makes it hard to develop ideas for lots of content. it is much easier to look at an overall topic such a “SEO” and then branching out into the basic “why”, “How”, “What”, When” and “Who” segments. With this, one can then come up with subtopics which cross-reference with the initial topic. So, “longtail keywords” is related to “how to perform SEO” and this gives me a blog post to write about. This now vies me an idea of a longtail keyword to pursue with subheadings, each of which are composed of longtail keywords.
However, I can also take each of the subheadings in this post and develop a calendar for material referencing that subheading, each bringing the user back to this page. So, from 1 head term, I have 5 themes, perhaps 20 cross-topics and 50 potential pieces of material that can be output. The question now is just how to prioritize each item.
- Long-tail keywords build a strong conversion tunnel
Your target audience is not always at the same spot in their online journey. Some may be bored and just looking around, others may be ready to commit to an action. A single catch-all landing page may irritate those ready to commit by bringing in too many already understood items while the more focused page may confuse the novices who still need to develop an understanding of the subject.
By using several different longtail keywords such as “How To XXX” or “What is” for a general introduction to “The best YYY” for people almost ready to commit, it is entirely possible to have 3-4 different sets of longtail pages ready to catch various users at their level of comfort and push them gradually towards committing to a specific action.
- Long-tail keywords enable structured data and drive rich data to outrank SEO on SERPS
This probably works best with niches where structured data can be used such as recipes. While it is possible to write a blog about “the best ice-cream”, the user is probably not as interesting in your trip to Italy as an actual recipe for ice-cream. By using long-tail keywords, it is possible to refine the actual search into a a specific landing page where a specific data structure is used to serve up the information. As a result, Google will often return an extract of this structured data in the search page rather than just the basic title, making it even more likely that you will be seen.
This is such an important topic that Google’s own search console will flag pages not using the structured data formats from Schema.org. Not adhering to these will not trigger a failure in the website crawl, but will make it less likely that your page will be on page 1. Google also has a tool, to test just how well your page or post will do in this regard.
- Long-Tail keywords help voice assistant searches
In the near future, voice assistants will be ubiquitous. Already, many people are switching over due to the challenges of typing on a tiny screen. As voice recognition becomes more optimized, the success rate of these voice assistants will become even better.
People often talk differently to how they write, with sentence structures being more broken and less linear. As a result, voice assistants will have to determine the key intent of your instruction and match it to a source of information. Using a long-tail keyword in your page or post means that the voice assistant has a better chance to match the intention to your particular page. This essentially reverses the tendency of SEOs to stuff their titles and first paragraphs with a series of convoluted keywords, making properly prepared sites more relevant.
- Long-tail keywords deliver more value to the reader
For several years, the trend by various platforms has been to retain users for longer, serving all of the relevant information as required without leaving the platform. Readers have a specific answer that needs to be addressed and by making sure that the information is easily digestible and available, a website can ensure not only that the user is satisfied, but that they will sped more time exploring the site and will return in the near future.
In addition, if the site has a chatbot, it can scan the various posts for matching keywords to serve up when a user is frustrated.
Long-tail keywords help by making sure that the information being present matches the intent of the reader and is at the right level to assist them on their decision making journey.
People are in a rush. Make the information bite-sized, easy to digest and most importantly, simple to discover.
- Long-tail keywords drive your analytics
In the end, all of the effort put into a project needs to be measured. How can you determine who your audience actually is and how they react to your content if you do not measure their interaction with the site.
By using more longtail keywords, it is entirely possible to dive deeper into the data and develop a better understanding of your users and their journey through your website. The keywords that yield higher returns should be maximized upon and the pages that do not provide value should be updated until they too perform.
- Long-tail keywords drive your organic traffic and keyword research
When researching a topic, it is natural to look for an angle to make the information more relatable. all keyword tools will have a section where they will suggest longtail keywords that drive traffic. Even Google’s search page provides a hint of these by using a section “people also look for”. This is a big hint…
Keyword research will yield not only the head terms but also all the types of queries surrounding those head terms and how hard it would be to rank for these.
Your website will eventually be the mind-map that you used to develop the topic.
Simply put, there is just too much information out there and by using long-tail keywords in both the research and the answers, you will be able to delineate your particular online niche. “Retire early” is different to “retire by 40” after all…
How to tell if a term is a long-tail keyword or a head term?
The following rules of thumb can easily be applied:
- Does the term have at least 3 words in it?
- Does the term have at least 10,000 searches? If yes, then it is a head term – the length is irrelevant.
- If not, then it is a long-chain keyword.
- Does the term have less than 3 words in it with at least 3,000 searches per month?
- If yes, then it is a head term.
- If not, then it is a long-tail keyword.
Simple, right?