It is easier to rank for long-term keywords and better convert people. But this statement is true actually?
The answer is it depends. There are 2 different types of Long-Tail Keywords, some are not easier to rank for as compared to their short-tail counterparts.
Let’s dive deep into key important we will cover at starting :
- What are Long-tail Keywords?
- Why they are called long-tail keywords?
- What Makes Long-tail keywords so great?
- How to find long-tail keywords?
- The 2 types of long-tail keywords
What are Long-tail Keywords
Long-tail is search question keywords that get a small no. of monthly searchers. They tend to be more specific, longer than their “head” counterparts, and often have a bigger conversion rate.
For Instance, the “meditation” keywords get 211k searches per month why is it a “head” keyword? The keyword “can meditation make you smarter ” get 50 searchers per month that why
it’s a long-tail keyword.
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Why are they called “long-tail” keywords?
Long-tail keywords get their name from their position on the curve on “search demand”. If er plot all search questions which people have performed in Google in the month of course and order them by their search volumes, it will be somewhat like this:
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We have a tiny number of keywords with very high search volumes at the “head” of the curve,
while the “tail” contains billions of keywords with very less search volumes.
To be clear, in U.S. database Ahrefs (which is by the way, larger in the industry), with a search volume of more than 100k searches per month, there are just 31,000 keywords. There are 3.8 billion keywords that have lesser than 10 searches per month.
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Keywords with less than 10 searches per month account for almost 95% of our U.S. keywords database as you can tell. This should not come as a surprise, given that – given that, ~15% of daily Google searches are new and have never been searched before.
95% of all search queries in the U.S. get fewer than 10 searches per month.
But the quality of “long-tail”, a keyword doesn’t necessarily have to get less than 10 searches per month. And no specific search volume threshold, which would define a keyword as “long-tail”. It depends mostly on the keyword “head” which you are not comparing it to.
Though, is to define long-tail keywords by their word length was a big mistake.
Many one-word keywords are fewer than 100 monthly searches the thing is. There are also keywords 5 words long with hundreds of thousands of monthly searches.
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So it is not keyword length which makes it a long tail. It’s the search volume of that keyword.
What Makes Long-tail keywords so great?
Here is a total of 3 reasons why you should think about making long-tail keywords a basic part of your Strategy of SEO.
Reason 1. Long-tail keywords are a lot less competitive (generally)
Let’s think you have launched a blog article about cryptocurrencies. There are so many well-linked keywords with very high search volumes which can potentially bring loads of traffic to your blog:
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These keywords are attractive to target. But let’s become real. What is the possibility that your blog will rank for any of them anytime soon?
Keyword Difficulty (KD) Score all the keywords above. This means it will very hard to get to the 1st page of Google for any of them. The plan will impossible if your website is brand new.
Let’s now look at some of the search questions that are less popular for the topic of bitcoin:
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Their KD is low As you can see. This means that even a website that is new can rank in the top search results and will get some visitors by using those keywords.
Reason 2. Long-Tail keywords are (generally) easier to address
Let’s carry with comparing the 2 sets of above keywords.
The keyword “How to Buy Bitcoin” seems to be rather a simple answer to the question. 3400 words long the article will be if you look at the top-ranking page for each search question.
Oppositely, the pages which are top-ranking for the keyword “how to cash out large amounts of bitcoin” is just about 1000 words.
The more general the search question is the thing is the more details you have to include when you are addressing it. You can answer often rather briefly and still satisfy the searchers if the search question is specific.
Creating Content for long-tail keywords requires generally less work in other words.
You can look for groups that are similar long-tail search questions and address them with the pages which only have very less differences.
For Instance, check out the following group of keywords:
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A similar website builder software would suit the therapists just like it would suit actors or teachers. This means you are targeting all these different searches which have 80% similar content, and 20% will be tailored to profile users.
You create a lot of pages in a single day to address those similar long-tail searches in other words.
Reason 3 – There are Lots of them
Yes, every single long-tail keyword won’t open floodgates of traffic to your Site. But as your address more and more of them, the search traffic will compound eventually to pretty much something substantial.
And there are so many long-tail keywords since in pretty much every industry, you are unlikely to suffer from a shortage of them.
A search in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer returns over 1000 of them in our example of “best website builder for”
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How to Find Long-tail Keywords
There are so many ways you can use to finding long-tail keywords. Some are a tad “unconventional”, some are more tedious than others and some are just incorrect plain.
Let’s begin with the Incorrect one.
- Use Google Autosuggest…Not
Some experts in SEO give advise you to originate long-tail keywords from Google Autosuggest by putting your target keyword which is followed by unalike letters of the alphabet.
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Google Autosuggest is much more likely to provide you with highlight famous search questions as compared to coveted long-tails.
The same proceeds for Online tools like Soovle or Answer The Public which scrapes Autosuggest to create their list of keyword ideas. A big number of their suggested keyword will turn out to be popular at her and competitive.
- Use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
This way does not require any tedious manual work unlike the previous. Just look for any word which defines your niche in keyword explorer and the filter of search volume to see instantly 1000 long-tail keywords.
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