If you’re not doing keyword research, don’t expect to explode your website with search engine traffic. Keyword research is the first step to more organic traffic.
But most people are doing it wrong.
If you’re struggling to increase your search traffic or keyword research, this post is for you where you’ll find a secret recipe most SEO experts use to bring more traffic to their sites.
So what is it? It’s long tail SEO, let’s explore more about it in this post so you can get more traffic to your sites from search engines by using long tail keywords.
What is long tail SEO?
First let’s talk about what long tail SEO is all about. Long tail SEO involves in using long tail keywords within your content.
Long tail keywords usually contain 4 or more keywords.
For example, “how to reduce my belly fat” is a long tail keyword with 6 words in it. It’s much easier to rank for long tail keywords than aiming to rank for short tail keywords like “reduce belly fat”. Are you getting me?
Did you know that 70% of search traffic comes from long tail keywords? Have a look at the following image and you’ll know!
So there you go! Long tail SEO is all about using low competitive long tail keywords so you can rank higher and easier in search engine results.
How to find great long tail keywords easily?
Let’s now talk about how you can find highly profitable and low competitive long tail keywords in any industry that you are in.
Get access to the right tools
The first step to finding great long tail keywords is to use the right keyword research tools.
Google keyword planner is one of the most used tools all over the world to find great keywords which I also recommend for beginners because it’s not only free but gives you great combination of keywords.
Apart from keyword planner, you can also use premium tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs etc where you’ll get more insights and accurate data with search volume and keyword competition while doing long tail SEO research. These tools are worth paying if you are really serious about increasing your search engine traffic and website sales. You can also view any of these top SEO blogs for tips and guidance on how to best use these tools as well.
But if you’re looking for free and better alternatives to Keyword Planner from Google, you can give a try to keywordtool.io or Uber Suggest (both are really great). With Keywordtool.io you can easily find hundreds of long tail keywords along with search volume at one go.
Here’s a list of few tools that you can use for long tail keyword research.
- Keyword Tool
- Ubersuggest
- Keyword Planner from Google
- SEMrush
Let’s now talk about how you can use these tools for finding long tail keywords easily.
Build a list of seed keywords
The best way to find long tail keyword using the tools mentioned above is to first create a list of seed keywords. Seed keywords are considered as foundation keywords which give you a better idea to boost your long tail SEO research later.
For example, “copywriting” is a seed keyword.
Likewise, create a list of seed keywords that are relevant to your blog audience and topics as much as possible in a spreadsheet so you can expand them later.
Expand your seed keywords
Expand your keywords list with long tail keywords, search volume and competition.
In the above example, we assumed “copywriting” as a seed keyword.
Here’s where you need to expand those seed keywords into bigger keywords so they will become long tail keywords.
For example, here are few long tail keywords around the seed keyword “copywriting”.
- Copywriting tips for real estate agents
- Best copywriting agency in New York
- Copywriting tutorial for beginners in India
Here’s an example of how it looks like;
In the above example, I’ve used Google autosuggest and it gives me instantly a ton of new ideas for the seed keywords I enter (‘how to create’ is the seed keyword here). Likewise, you can find a variety keywords for any number of seed keywords that are relevant to your blog topics.
You can enter the keywords using any keyword research tool (keyword planner, keywordtool.io, SEMrush etc) to expand them into long tail keywords.
I personally use SEMrush for keyword research and it allows me to easily expand my seed keywords list so that I can filter out unwanted keywords with high difficulty.
So that’s how you can find long tail keywords in any industry. Let’s now talk about how you can use them within your content so you can increase your search traffic.
How to use long tail keywords within your content?
Your job is not done by finding great long tail keywords. You also have to know where you put those keywords within your content to get higher rankings on Google. Here are few ways you can use long tail keywords within your content.
Use your keywords naturally
Most people make a huge mistake of keyword stuffing. Gone are the days where you can get top ranking by using the same keywords multiple times. You have to use them naturally within your content if you don’t want to get penalized by Google.
If you’re doing long tail keyword research, also focus on finding LSI keywords which are relevant keywords aka synonyms for the main keyword you want to rank for. That way, without keyword stuffing, you can easily use a ton of similar keywords to increase your search engine traffic really quickly.
Install WordPress SEO by Yoast
Proper on page optimization is the key. Here’s where an excellent plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast comes into play. It’s free, fast and really effective when it comes to on page optimization.
You can use this plugin for placing your long tail keywords in;
- Title tags
- Meta description
- Sub headings
- Image alt tags etc
It shows a green color signal if your content is properly optimized with your primary keywords. So make sure to use this plugin if you want to do on page SEO in a better way by using long tail keywords to boost your search traffic.
3 simple tips you can use for better long tail SEO research
Here are 3 simple yet most powerful tips that you can use for finding great long tail keywords to skyrocket your website’s traffic from search engines.
#1. Write really detailed content
Did you know that you can get first page rankings on Google by writing 2000+ words blog posts? Have a look at the image below.
According to serpIQ, the average content length of top 10 results on Google is over 2000+ words. So what can you learn?
If you want to get the most out of long tail SEO, make sure to create detailed content so that you can sprinkle your long tail keywords easily to boost your organic traffic.
#2. Always focus on low competitive long tail keywords
As a rule of thumb, if you’ve a new blog with mostly no quality backlink profile, aim to find long tail keywords with a monthly search volume between 300 to 1000.
This makes it easier for you to rank for those keywords because less people are searching for them so you’ll have less competition to rank for those keywords even if you’ve a new blog.
#3. Track your keyword rankings
The most important step of all for better long tail SEO is to always track your keyword rankings on Google. Without keyword tracking, how can you even find how your keywords are performing on Google search?
You can use tools like Word Tracker, keywordtracker.io etc for tracking your keyword positions on Google. Track your keyword rankings every single month to know their performance and you can make any changes that you need to your content accordingly.
Last but not least: always build quality backlinks to your site. It doesn’t matter what your niche is, you need a ton of links to your site if you want more traffic from search engines like Google.
Final thoughts about using long tail SEO for more traffic
Increasing your website’s traffic from search engines is easy when you target long tail keywords. Unfortunately, most people still don’t perform long tail keyword research and often struggle to increase their search traffic.
If you’re looking from search engine traffic, make sure to focus on long tail SEO for better results. So what are your thoughts? Share your thoughts in the comments below.