Long-Tail Keywords: What You Must Know On How To Find and Use Them!

One great and beneficial SEO tactic is using long-tail keywords. However, a lot of site owners and bloggers do not utilize the use of long-tail keywords on their websites. 

This article highlights the benefits of using long-tail keywords and how to pick the best combination that will drive the type of traffic that you want to your website. Long-tail keywords have a higher conversion rate value because they are usually more specific than common keywords (head terms). To know more about long-tail keywords, read till the end!

What Do Long-Tail Keywords Mean? 

Long-tail keywords are specific phrases that search engine users use when searching on search engines. These phrases usually contain at least three words. They are usually used by buyers searching for a particular thing, buyers that are ready to purchase at the end of their buyer journey. 

Long-tail keywords are usually less competitive on SERPs and have a higher conversion rate. They focus more on a niche.

To further explain long-tail keywords, it is essential to understand what head terms and tail topics mean.

Head Terms and Tail Topics

Head term is the one major topic that a blog focuses on. For example, a food blog can have ‘food,’ ‘restaurants’ or ‘eating’ as its primary head term or keyword. A website about fashion could have all its publications on the blog centered around the word ‘fashion’ as its head term. An SEO blog would have ‘SEO’ as its head term because that is what it focuses on. 

Head terms are the central theme on your site that you want people to use while searching for your site. It is the number one keyword of your site. 

Tail topics, on the other hand, are long-tail variants of your head term. This is because you cannot optimize all your blog posts for the same head term. For example, a food blog can use long-tail variants like ‘recipe for cheesecakes’ or ‘best Chinese restaurant’ as their tail topics because they cannot keep using ‘food’ as their keyword in all their publications. It makes their search rate more specific to the audience that will interact with their content the way they want. With proper research, finding suitable types of long-tail keywords will be easy and successful. 

How Long Should A Long-Tail Keyword Be?

The typical length of a long-tail keyword is three or more words. Examples of long-tail keywords that are specific to a particular need are:

• Winter jackets for ladies
• Halloween costumes for children
• Best spa in Lagos

Users who use words like this to search are always ready to buy and need little persuasion to convert, as you offer what they need. While researching the right long-tail keyword to use, make sure to carefully select the ones with low competition and higher conversion rates because doing this will bring the potential to drive high quality and high converting traffic. 

How To Find Long-Tail Keywords.

After knowing what a long-tail keyword is, the next question is how to find the appropriate long-tail keywords.

Maximize data from PPC ads in discovering long-tail keywords that convert: 

Data obtained from any previously paid ads you might have done will prove to be very useful when searching for the best long-tail keywords. It gives you a comprehensive report on the past keywords that you have used and which worked best for you and gives you room for improvement and adjustment to focus on terms that convert better. 

Check out quality scores and check for the keyword combination that had both convert and low-quality scores. Consider going for terms like this because they have a low competition barrier and would be the ideal option to use in your long-tail keywords combination. 

Use the PIE strategy:

PIE stands for Protect, Improve and Expand. Using this to create a plan for keywords you already rank for, and those you want to rank for has proven effective. Therefore, applying this to your long-tail research is a good idea. 

• Protect is concerned with the keywords you already rank for and wish to protect their spot. For example, your brand’s head term or name
• Improve deals with keywords that might rank you beyond the first page of SERPs, and you want to improve their rankings. Doing this might need to take a little bit of effort.
• Expand is for keywords that perform well in your marketing campaigns but do not have enough visibility for your business because they are likely new to the campaign. 

Applying this to your long-tail research journey will help you select and use the best long-tail keywords to expand your brand in the long run.

Apply the use of Keyword Planner effectively:

Keyword Planner is one of the best and most popular keyword tools and is an excellent way of uncovering ideas for long-tail keywords. When using Keyword Planner, it is imperative to consider all of these:

• Think like a customer by describing how a customer may think about your product. However, try not to be too specific in what a potential customer may search for because long-tail keywords that are too specific may limit your ability to discover good long-tail opportunities. For example, instead of searching for ‘Halloween costumes for children under five years, search for ‘Halloween costumes for children.
• Use the appropriate amount of detail. Try not to be too specific and not too general. Long-tail keywords that are too general will not give you enough guidance into what your customers are looking for. For example, ‘Halloween costume.’
• Key in your website in Keyword Planner to get more relevant keyword ideas for you. Keyword Planner will suggest possible head-term and long-tail ideas that apply to your website. 
• Make sure to use your location, e.g., ‘Halloween costumes in Lagos.’ Do not include location if your business is solely online.
• Use more than one head term; do not use terms about topics that provide only partial information or unrelated topics

AnswerThePublic can provide long-tail and content ideas: 

AnswerThePublic is the most reliable tool when searching for keywords and content ideas, and it is free! It gathers data from different search engines about what search queries people enter about different ideas and topics. It then presents this valuable data so that you can see how often a question or phrase is being asked. Seeing this gives you a clear picture of the topic you have chosen to search about and will guide you on the following steps to take. 

Measure your traffic with Google Search Console:

It is a free tool that helps you measure the traffic your site generates and its performance, which helps put you on the right track to putting your business out there on search engine result pages. 

Use an SEO tool:

SEO tools are sites that can give you an overview of the overall performance of your website, including the website traffic of your site and your competitors. It also shows how effective your digital marketing strategies are, where your traffic comes from and how visitors engage with your site. These SEO tools are SERanking, SEMRush, UberSuggest, Serpstat, and Sitechecker Pro. You can read more about these sites here. 

Why You Need Long-Tail Keywords for Your Website.

Using long-tail keywords helps optimize ROI, increase conversion rates, and increase search rankings. While using long-tail keywords, optimize your website assets and create high-quality content. Optimize page elements like images, title tags, headings, meta descriptions, etc. 

Using long-tail keywords is a trial-and-error process; sometimes, some keywords will work effectively, and some won’t. You learn along the way until you get so good at thinking like your target customers and get good at satisfying their needs by giving them exactly what they want. 

If you do not want to go through the search for long-tail keywords process on your own, you can hire a team of SEO professionals to do it for you. At the Dik3n Team, we offer services that have to do with digitally helping brands attain the goals that they have set for their business. We are dedicated to pouring all our efforts into helping businesses that have trusted us with their needs. Please book a consultation with us today!