Why And How You Should Target High-Volume Long-Tail Keywords

Are you having success with your long-tail keyword strategy or falling flat? It is a waste of your valuable time and effort to look for long-tail keywords that have limited search volume. Instead, you need to spend your time and effort hunting for keywords that have high intent. After all, that’s what your competitors are doing. So, if you don’t have a strategy for long-tail keywords, you are essentially missing out and falling behind.

Luckily, it isn’t as hard as you think to research opportunities for long-tail keywords. The key is to focus on keywords with low competition, yet high conversion rates, then turn around and utilize those keywords to get a boost with your content. Read on to learn how to do all of this.

What Exactly Are Long-Tail Keywords?

If you are unfamiliar with long-tail keywords, you need to first fully understand what they are. Long-tail keywords can be defined as search phrases that are highly searched and are specifically based on a user’s search intent. As a general rule, these keywords are low competition and low volume, yet they have high conversion rates.

The reason that they are called long-tail keywords is because, if you were to plot them based on their search volumes, they would be considered on the long tail end of the demand curve of searches, which simply means that very limited users would be search for them on a monthly basis.

Despite the limited search volume, though, these types of keywords tend to be far easier to rank for and and have higher conversation rates when compared to seed keywords. Why? The reasoning behind this is due to the fact that long-tail keywords are able to communicate a clear need that can be solved – in other words, they are intent driven.

The moment you are able to understand search intent, you will be able to develop content that can addresses search queries and successfully converts.

For example, if someone searched for “Grand Theft Auto PS4 Price,” it is clear that the user has an intent to make a purchase. However, if someone searches for “PS4,” the intent is not as clear because the searcher could be looking for a list of PS4 games, information about the PS4 console, or possibly even recent news.

When it comes to the length of long-tail keywords, it isn’t really set in stone. However, it is recommended for them to be a minimum of three words because they should be specific. Of course, extremely specific long-tail keywords with low volume can be just one or two words, such as brand names.

The Importance of Long-Tail Keywords in SEO

Let’s do something really quick. Go sign into your Google Search Console. Once signed in, scroll through all of your search terms. More than likely, you have a large amount of long-tail keywords that you rank for. You probably weren’t even aware.

Believe it or not, as much as 70 percent of search traffic comes from long-tail keywords, and the majority of the ones that you rank for are business-specific.

So, with that all being said, think of what you could potentially do with high-intent search queries funneled brand new leads right to your top-converting resources.

There are three primary advantages to targeting these specific keywords, which are as follows:

Advantage #1: Less Competition

Long-tail keywords are business- and niche-specific. It is for that reason that they carry a low search volume. The great thing about all of this is that it takes less effort to rank high for the targeted keywords.

With a little bit of on-page SEO as well as link building, you should be well on your way to getting your landing pages within the top spots of the Google SERPs as long as your targeted long-tail keyword phrases are specific enough.

Advantage #2: Higher Conversions

To determine the search intent of a keyword, you must do a little bit of homework and investigating – and this is a requirement. Search intent is important, as it helps you determine what the searcher is looking for. Search queries can indicate whether a user has intent to buy (for example, “buy PS4 games” or an intent for more information (for example, “how to play Grand Theft Auto PS4”).

This type of knowledge will help you get qualified leads to your sales funnel, not to mention the fact that it can assist in your content marketing efforts.

Advantage #3: Optimize for Semantic Search

When it comes to optimizing for semantic search, long-tail keywords are essential. After all, 55 percent of today’s millennials are utilizing voice search on a daily basis, and long-tail keywords are more commonly used with these platforms in the form of questions, such as “what are the best Chinese restaurants nearby?”.

You need to attempt to determine the intent behind questions as they are naturally spoken in order to provide the potential answers surrounding your business as a whole and its products/services, which will allow you to better target the long-tail keywords.

Just remember: by targeting long-tail keywords that convert, despite the fact that search volume is low, the potential for your business is high.

How Do You Find Long-Tail Keywords?

It is important that you work to find the right long-tail keywords for your business. It is easy to find them and it takes only minutes to create a pretty substantial list of long-tail keywords. Here’s how.

The first thing you need to do is to get a list together of the keywords that you currently are ranking for. To do this you need to go to your Google Search Console. Once there, click on Search Traffic, Search Analytics, Clicks, Impressions, and Position. Go all the way to the bottom and click on download.

You will then download this same data for your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other accounts. You never know where new terms may crop up from.

Take all of the keywords and put them into a single spreadsheet so that all your potential long-tail keywords are in one place.

Your next step is to uncover potential new keywords within your niche that you may be able to rank for. Here is how you can do that manually:

• Seed Keyword List Preparation – In order to prepare a list of seed keywords, you will need the assistance from a keyword planning tool. While Google AdWords is an excellent tool, it is recommended to avoid it for this task. This is because Google AdWords typically doesn’t pull up the low-volume long-tail keywords, and that’s exactly what we are looking for.
• Take Note of AutoComplete Suggestions from Google – Type your seed keywords into Google’s search engine and add the autocomplete suggestions that pop up to your spreadsheet.
• Don’t Forget the Related Search Suggestions – Then, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and add the related keyword search terms to your spreadsheet.
• Do the Same for Bing – You will want to repeat the above steps for Bing search engine as well as any other search engine that you are interested in optimizing for.

It may sound like this is a lot of work – having to manually locate and input potentially long-tail keywords; however, there is software that makes it extremely easy. Some programs will even do part of the research for you, potentially locating keywords that you possibly overlooked.

Once you have your comprehensive long-tail keyword list, you need to begin going through it downsizing. You need to weed out the terms that don’t communicate clear user intent. Once you have narrowed your list down to the best keywords, you can begin optimizing your pages and adding those keywords to your content.

How Do You Build Your Content Around Long-Tails?

Once you have your list, what do you do? Really, it depends on the number of keywords that you are targeting and whether the topics intersect. If possible, you can dedicate a page for each long-tail keyword; however, this won’t always be feasible. This is especially true if you have hundreds of keywords.

So, you need to break your list down and group keywords together that are similar with a similar intent. In other words, you will want to organize your keywords by topic so that you can give them a dedicated page. If you have existing content on your website, then you may be able to add the keywords into the copy. If not, then the keywords will give you an idea of what your content should be about.

As you begin to publish brand new pieces, make sure to remember to add internal links. This will allow you to naturally include your long-tail keywords.

In Conclusion

Hopefully, you are now more familiar how to find long-tail keywords and use them to your benefit. Just don’t forget that these keywords are of no use to you if you don’t have quality content.

If you are not currently recognized as an expert in your individual niche, you need to start blogging about your business industry, creating valuable assets, and rewriting some of your content so that it better communicates your unique value proposition.

As you are developing new content and working to optimize your landing pages so that they include your long-tail keywords, make sure that you keep a close eye on traffic and rankings. As you do, you may uncover new phrases that can be targeted, which will help you continue to improve you on-page SEO as well as your reputation.