How to Use Long Tail Keywords for Dummies

Have you ever wondered how people generate a lot of traffic in just the first few months of their new website?

No, I am not talking about the paid traffic but organic traffic. Just a simple strategy to target all those people who are a bit specific in their searches.

Most of the people search with two or three terms but there are also others who use a long termed keyword to get more specific results.

The short term searchers are mostly taken away by the top websites of the niche but if I say that you may get the rest to your blog.

Yes, you can get them with a simple long tail keyword strategy.

Let’s explain it in more details, 2 out of 10 people search for long tail keywords and if you manage to get on the top ranks for a certain long tail keyword then you’ll get the 20% of the traffic and let the other websites fight for the rest 80% (smart move). But as you’re not the only smart one in the group, others might also try to target your audience, so you’ll need to act smarter and create a better strategy to grow.

Let’s see what else you’ll need to grow more than the other competitor websites apart from the superb idea of targeting Long tail keywords.

Now the question arises,

What are Long Tail Keywords?

There are many definitions if you Google about it but as this guide is for Dummies, I will try to give the simplest definition ever.

Long Tail Keywords are at least or more than three words. They are more specific, having a low volume of searches than that of one or two words long keywords.

How to Use Long Tail Keywords(Source- Neilpatel.com)

Why should you use Long Tail Keywords?

If you are not convinced by my example of 2 and 10 then let us see the other benefits of using Long Tail Keywords.

Get higher rankings on search engines.

The best one, but using a good long tail keyword strategy, you’ll get higher rankings on Google. You must be very annoyed with the websites that always ranks top for the most searched keywords of your niche. How would you compete with those who have a way higher PAs and DAs than yours?

You’ll need to be more specific than them and target all those people who are in the less searched terms category.

Use the long term keywords and get higher rankings for them and build your own audience and finally try to steal the top positions for short terms.

Get Higher Rankings in short time.

Yeah, you heard me right. If you use long tail keywords strategically then you’ll be rank higher in a short period of time. So if you have a new website and want to get organic traffic, shake hands with long tail keywords.

Improve CRO.

If you are an eCommerce website owner then I must say that a good long tail keyword strategy is a must for you. Long Tail Keywords help you a lot in increasing your Conversion Rates.

If people wish to buy something they search terms like “Buy a black denim jacket” rather than just “Denim Jackets”.

Now you need to target the whole phrase “Buy a black denim jacket” because people who search with these kinds of terms are more likely to buy than those who search for just “Denim Jackets”.

How to find Long Tail Keywords?

This is the most important question. I hope you are convinced to create a good long tail keyword strategy. Now let’s tell you how to find them correctly.

Finding the right keywords, trick no. 1.

Google it.

The easiest and the simplest one, Google will tell you the right long term keywords.

Go Google the main seed keyword.

Suppose you are searching for a long tail keyword related to “Content Marketing Tips”, when you type it on google you’ll be provided with a list of keywords that Google thinks you might be searching for. That’s Google AI for you, you’ll see keywords like “content marketing tips 2017”, “content marketing tips for startups” and so on.

The plus points of these keywords provided by Google is that they are the most searched terms and if you succeed to rank for them then you’ll get a lot of traffic.

Finding the right keyword, trick no. 2.

Google it Again.

This time, you’ll again Google the seed word. Now scroll to the bottom.

These are the searches related to our seed keyword “Content Marketing Tips”.

Finding the right keyword, trick no. 3.

Use BuzzSumo.

Most of the marketers advice to use BuzzSumo for finding the right keywords.

Go to BuzzSumo and type your seed keyword “Content Marketing Tips”

Now you’ll be provided with a list of most shared content on the web related to your seed keyword.

So you’ve got the list of the most shared posts that are related to your seed keyword.

What I don’t like about it is that it confuses me more. I don’t know why when I try to find the best keyword for my blog posts, it creates a lot of Buzz in my head but that’s totally my problem and BuzzSumo is a great tool for no doubts.

Finding the right keyword, trick no. 4.

Use SEMRush

This is my favourite one and I use this tool to find my keywords. The tool is not completely free but you can use the free version of it for finding the right keywords at least.

Go to SEMRush and type the seed keyword.

This will just not help you to find a good keyword but will also let you find the keyword that has low volume. so that you can rank higher in minimum time using that keyword. Moreover, it will also tell you the top ranking websites of that certain keyword, all at one place.

Now if you want to find some more keywords, click view full report.

In the free version, you’ll only be able to see 10 keywords.

Now, what else do you need in your Marketing Strategy to grow more than others who might also be using a good Long Tail Keyword Strategy?

How to use Long Tail Keywords to Grow your Organic Traffic?

Let’s check out the other SEO factors that will make your Long tail keyword strategy stand out of the crowd.

A Headline that Rocks-

• Use words like How, Why, Best, Top, etc.
• Put your target keyword in the first half of the headline.
• Not too lengthy but short and simple.

Links Juice-

Internal linking has always been a great SEO practice. Link up your old blog posts to your new one but be genuine and don’t add links that are not related to the topic.

Outbound links-

Another good SEO practice, use outbound links that have higher PAs and DAs and no spam scores. Also, tell the owner that you’ve linked to them through a sweet personal email. Maybe they would link back to yours, who knows?

Keyword Percentage-

A very common question, what should be the keyword percentage in the whole post. If you ask me then I would suggest it to be 2–3% of the total word count. If you think that stuffing a lot can help you rank higher than you are wrong. Don’t ever think that you can fool Google rather Google will penalize you for doing keyword stuffing.

Images and visual content-

People tend to read, like and share those contents that are more visually rich. Add Images, infographics, charts, etc to make your post more attractive. When you use visual content, add the target keyword in the alt tag and caption as well, this will help your image to rank higher in the image search. Moreover, use copyright free images and in case you need to use someone else’s image put the source in the bottom.

Social Media Marketing-

Now that if you are done with your post creation, it’s time to promote it in Social Media. Don’t just promote your post but also all the info-graphics, images, etc.

Get more Social Engagement and hence more traffic. Moreover, Social media engagement is also one of the ranking factors of Google, maybe not directly but indirectly it affects the rankings.