Focusing on long tail keywords is a great SEO-tactic for blogs. A long tail keyword strategy makes it easy to keep the structure of your blog in good shape. Also, it allows you gradually to get more traffic and to be found by new and motivated audiences. In this post about blog SEO, I will explain the importance of long tail keywords for blogs.
The term long tail keyword comes from the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. In this book, Chris Anderson shows there is a market for virtually every product. In some cases, however, this market is really, really, really small. The vastness of the internet, though, makes your niche product, or your niche blog post profitable. Long tail keywords are more specific and less common than other keywords. They focus more on a niche. Read more about long tail keywords in this post or enroll in our interactive SEO copywriting course.
One head theme, lots of tail topics
Most blogs have one main topic – this is called the head term, or main keyword. Mom blogs are usually about children and family life; food blogs are about eating, restaurants, and recipes. Our blog is all about SEO. We even named it SEO blog. So, all of our blog posts are about SEO, or about SEO-related-topics. We most certainly want to rank for the term [SEO].
The main topic or theme of your blog is the number one keyword (or key phrase) you want people to use to find you. In our case SEO. Imagine yourself having a food blog about homemade Italian food. You would then like to be found on a search term like [homemade Italian food]. That would pretty much be the number one.
You cannot, however, optimize all blog posts for the term [homemade Italian food], even if all your blog posts will be about homemade Italian food. Instead, you should write a whole number of blog posts about all kinds of long tail variants of your number one search term. In the example of the food blog, you could write about all kind of delicious things: homemade Italian pasta, homemade Italian salads, homemade Italian pie. These could be your main categories.
Your blog posts could even be more long tail. You could write about: homemade Italian spaghetti bolognese, homemade Italian lasagna, homemade Italian penne carbonara and so on. You will find all of these keywords if you have done your keyword research correctly. 
Link from the tail to the head!
If you optimize your blog post for different long tail variants, you should link from these blog posts to your more ‘head’ category pages and from these category pages to your most awesome pages: your cornerstone content. Remember: always link from the tail to your head! That way, you show Google what your site structure looks like and which of your pages is most important.
Make sure your most amazing pages rank high in Google! Perhaps you have a fabulous page with your most delicious recipes, which will immediately convert passing visitors into loyal blog followers. Make sure your different long tail optimized blog posts all link to this most important ‘head’ pages of your blog.
Why are long tail keywords important for blog SEO?
In our view, there are two main reasons why a blogger could focus on long tail keywords: easier ranking and higher conversions.
1. It is much simpler to rank for long tail keywords than for more common head keywords because fewer websites compete for high rankings in the result pages of Google. The longer (and more specific) search terms are, the easier it is to rank for the term. Because of the vastness of the internet, it is easier to find your audience for your particular niche. Focussing on a group of long tail keywords will result in a great deal of traffic altogether. Read on to find out how to choose keywords that’ll attract traffic.
2. Another benefit for blogs of concentrating on long tail keywords is that visitors that find your website are more likely to become regular visitors of your blog, maybe they even subscribe to your newsletter. The longer and more precise the search terms are, the higher the chances of conversion are. People who use a very particular term have a clearer idea of what they are looking for. And individuals who know what they’re looking for are much more prone to become frequent visitors! So, long tail keywords focus on an audience, even on a very motivated audience. And this makes that focus a very, very profitable SEO-tactic.
Keep writing those long tail posts!
Focussing on long tail keywords is a great SEO-tactic for bloggers. Doing it the right way (linking from tail to head), will help you to rank for specific keywords, to increase your traffic and to attract new and motivated audiences.
Another advantage of long tail blogging is that it can help you come up with ideas for new posts. For bloggers, it can be quite a challenge coming up with another subject for a blog post. Making a list of all the possible long tail variations of your number one keyword helps you to come up with new ideas! So start writing those long tail posts!