Long tail keywords as the name suggests are long keywords. They are a sentence and are longer than 4 to 5 words in total. These long tail keywords are exact phrases used by customers to find their desired products and services.
For example, if you are a car insurance company, your page might not appear in an organic search because let’s face it, competition is at its peak. But, using a long tail keyword on your website such as the best car insurance company in Brooklyn, will help you find customers. It isn’t difficult to figure out how to manage long tail keywords. In fact, they are a gold mine when used properly. It is only a matter of managing communication between your business and the people out there who are looking for the specific product you are selling.
When you use shorter keywords, the competition is fierce since these are generic words that every random customer enters into a search engine. When you use long tail keywords effectively, the traffic might be lesser but you will end up with consumers who make a purchase. This is because you attract customers who are looking for the exact product or service you offer.
Long tail keywords are valuable for businesses who want to rank higher in organic Google searches. A recommendation for those higher rankings is to focus more on developing and improving your content rather than only focusing on long-tail phrases. Google sometimes can group several long tail keywords together. This will ensure that you rank higher for multiple phrases. The key to staying on top in organic searches is to create well-researched, high-quality material. Make sure the content you create incorporates key phrases with a decent search volume. Remember, if you play your cards correctly, you will see a significant increase in organic traffic.
Another important thing to remember is that creating great content or material is not enough, you need to combine this with some effective link building. A study conducted of some 2 million keywords, showed that backlinks are still one of the biggest SEO ranking factors. Consider the chart below.
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Once you have created awesome content, you need to create awesome back-links to secure your place on the first page.
So the question is – how can you create content that ranks high for various long tail keywords? Here are a couple of methods to do just that.
Competitor Research
This is the number one method of ranking for multiple keywords. You need to check out the top pages report in Ahrefs Site Explorer. For everything that you do, checking out your competition is essential. This shows you where you stand and who or what you need to face. These top pages report will show you the list of competitors who are already ruling the search engine for thousands of keywords.
So, once you check out the top pages report, you need to find your competitor’s topmost content in organic research. Having done that, check out the individual keywords a page is ranking for. Then you need to study these keywords. Ideally, export these in a file so you can make a thorough study. The next step is to sort these keywords into headings and subheadings. We have already decided earlier that it is a waste of time stuffing all these keywords into the write-up. Remember, content stuffed with keywords is no good.
You need to go through the keywords carefully and eliminate the ones that are basically similar. So in the end, you will be left with the ones which are all different. This means that the original list of hundreds of keywords will be filtered down to a few ‘relevant’ keywords.
An important thing to remember is that you can still rank for all those hundreds of keywords if you make a smart move. So next, you need to create a list of keywords that will be used as the headings and sub-headings in your content. The result will be that Google will associate all these headers with the main topic and thus, you can rank for all those hundreds of keywords. And these keywords will be long-tail keywords.
It is crucial that you create engaging website content and blog posts that contain the targeted keywords. The next step is to promote your content and encourage your loyal customers to share it.
Parent Topics
Using competitors’ keywords for your website is a good idea. But, since you have to stand out in the crowd to get noticed, choose topics that haven’t been covered yet. To find topic ideas related to your targeted keywords, use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer 2.0.
Enter a basic keyword which will lead to your main topic in keywords explorer. The next step is to create the main topic for the keyword. Check if this keyword has a reasonable search volume or not.
Once you figure out what the main heading or the parent topic should be, check out the ranking facts and figures for this topic. Now you need to verify how many subheadings plus long tail keywords will come under this topic. You need to find long tail keywords which Google will rank under this topic, thus making your content rankings higher. The Ahrefs Keywords Explorer will tell you the additional keywords you can rank for under each heading.
Here’s an image to give you an idea.
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As you can guess, the only thing left to do now is to group these keywords under subheadings and then craft well-researched content.
The bottom line is that excellent keyword research with smart thinking and careful promotion will help you grab the topmost spot in search results. If you need help with keyword research or search engine optimization, it is recommended that you hire an SEO agency. Needless to say, you will get better results when your keywords are handled by experts.
