Hands down, search traffic is the best traffic source anyone can use to build a profitable blog that makes money.
But there’s one issue with getting more traffic from search engines: it usually takes a lot of time (especially if you’ve a new website). Here’s where long tail SEO comes into play.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve a new blog or an authority site, you can use long tail keywords to generate more organic traffic to your sites really fast. Do you know why? Long tail keywords have low competition and easier to rank for.
In this post, we’ll talk about how to find long tail keywords and use them within your content to drive more traffic even if you’re new to SEO. Are you curious? Let’s get started.
How to Find Long Tail Keywords to Drive More Search Traffic
To find long tail keywords, you need to get access to keyword research tools as they make the whole process much easier and faster.
Personally I use and recommend premium tools like SEMrush for keyword research (but it’s bit expensive which costs you $100 per month), so for this tutorial, we’ll only discuss a few free tools. You can consider using any of the tools mentioned below for finding long tail keywords:
- LSI Graph
- Keywordtool.io
- Ubersuggest
Quick note: Although Google’s Keyword Planner is also a great free keyword research tool but it’s used by too many people around the world (so you’ll mostly end up finding highly competitive keywords) and doesn’t provide highly accurate data. For beginners, you can give it a try as it can help you better understand keyword research and it’s completely free to use.
Let’s pick Ubersuggest (by Neil Patel) tool for finding better keyword ideas for your next blog post. Let's assume that you want to target the keyword “fitness apps.”
To find long-tail variations for that keyword, go to the Ubersuggest tool and enter that keyword. Here’s what we get.
Ubersuggest gives you an overview of your seed keyword (in our case, it is “fitness apps” by giving you all the necessary details such as;
- Search volume
- SEO difficulty to rank for that keyword
- Paid difficulty (to buy ads and get traffic)
- CPC value of the keyword
If you look at the search volume for our example seed keyword, it has over 60,000 monthly searches (it may be mostly even more), so that kind of keywords you should avoid because of too much competition from big brands or authority sites.
When you scroll down the Ubersuggest tool, it also shows you various keyword phrases that you can rank for.
As you can see from the above image, you’ll notice that the tool is also showing us some nice long tail keyword phrases such as;
- Fitness apps under armour (Under armour is a big brand that manufactures footwear, sports, and casual apparel)
- Fitness apps for apple watch (with around 1900 monthly searches and looks like a nice long tail keyword that you can target)
Likewise, you can use any of the other tool such as LSI Graph, Keyword Planner, Keywordtool.io for finding a ton of long tail keyword ideas for your seed keyword.
If you’re still wondering about why you should target long tail keywords, let me explain.
Long tail keywords are;
- Easier to rank for (no matter what industry you are in)
- Less competitive when compared to short tail keywords
- Helpful for lower website bounce rates, higher average time (dwell time) on site and give you better conversion rates
- Helpful for increasing your overall traffic (as you can rank for multiple keyword phrases)
Have a look at the illustration below to understand even better.
So what did you understand? Long tail keywords often have less search frequency and it costs less to rank for such keywords (as you can see from the above image).
Above all, long tail keywords help you increase your overall website sales as the people who use long tail keywords in search engines like Google are mostly tend to buy stuff from you.
How to Use Long Tail Keywords to Drive More Search Traffic
So far we’ve talked about how you can find low competitive long tail keywords, let’s now talk about the most important aspect of bringing more organic visitors through long tail keywords.
There are basically two most important steps involved in increasing your search traffic through your website’s content.
- Finding better keywords (preferably long tail keywords with low search volume) and
- Keyword optimization
Let’s now talk about the second important task which is using long tail keywords to drive more search traffic to your sites in 2019 and beyond.
Always start with the RIGHT title: Whether you know it or not, your title tag plays a HUGE role in bringing you more search traffic. There’s a reason why almost every SEO expert uses their primary keyword within their title tag.
If possible try to include your primary keyword at the beginning of your title so it adds more weightage in increasing your overall organic traffic. You can also use headline generator tools like Portent to easily get a ton of compelling headline ideas for your next blog post.
Your meta description is vital: Your meta description is as important as your title tag and it also shows up in search results. So by using your primary seed keyword or long tail keyword phrase within your meta description, you can better optimize your content for search.
Images are golden: Don’t publish another blog post without using images as they not only make your blog posts appealing but you can optimize them with alt tags (by using your primary keywords) to generate more search traffic.
Keep your URL well optimized: Always keep your URL short and sweet and ignore stop words (such as “and”, “the”, “a”, “an”, and so on) and make sure to include your primary keyword within your URL so it gives more exposure to your content.
Don’t ignore meta keywords: While optimizing your content with long tail keywords, don’t ignore the importance of meta keywords such as subheadings including h2, h3 and so on as they play a vital role in boosting your organic traffic.
Pro tip: If you’re a WordPress user, you should definitely use a free plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast as it helps you with all the above mentioned things and you can use it insert your primary keyword in prime locations like title, meta description, image alt tags and so on.
Essential tips to remember while finding long tail keywords
Let’s now discuss about some of the most effective tips you can use to find low hanging fruits i.e long tail keywords.
Keep an eye on the keywords your competitors are ranking for: This is probably one of the most easiest and effective tips to find traffic generating keywords. If you find out the keywords that are bringing your competitors the most amount of search traffic, you too can give a try to using similar keywords to create better content and get more traffic.
Find the seasonality of keywords: Seasonality simply means the short period of time each year when things pick up and get interesting such as black Friday deals that usually come only once a year and offer huge discounts.
By targeting such keywords you’ll not only get seasoned traffic but most importantly you can increase your overall website sales (by promoting affiliate programs). So always be prepared for such days if you want to find profitable keywords that increase your bottom line.
Don’t ignore the keyword difficulty: One of the most effective ways to increase your search traffic is to find keywords with less difficulty. There are so many tools out there such as Ahrefs, KWFinder, Ubersuggest and so on that provide you keyword difficulty score so you can easily filter out all the keywords that are difficult to rank for.
As a rule of thumb, you should always target those keywords with a keyword difficulty below 50 so that you will have higher chances of getting into top 10 search results even if you’ve a new site.
Find LSI keywords: LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing) are simply those keywords that are semantically related to your primary keyword. For example, “Apple” and “iPhone” are LSI keywords because they share the similar context and they are often searched together.
You can use tools like LSI Graph or “Searches related to” (Google results that you can find at the bottom of SERP) to easily find LSI keywords related to your primary long tail keyword.
By using LSI keywords, you can easily optimize your content without actually stuffing the same keywords again and again. Not only they help you optimize your content better but they provide you additional traffic.
Keyword research is a marathon: Just like any other thing that brings you long lasting results, getting better at keyword research takes time especially if you’re new to SEO. So don’t get confused or panic when you hear most of the things explained here for the first time.
Remember that, keyword research is a marathon and not a sprint. So give some time, analyze how your competitors are optimizing their primary keywords within their blog posts, read more content around keyword research to get better at it.
Also make sure to avoid the following mistakes while doing keyword research.
- Relying heavily upon free keyword research tools like Keyword Planner. Whether you know it or not, most of the free keyword research tools don’t provide you accurate data as they don’t get updated frequently (when compared to premium SEO tools that spend literally thousands of dollars in updating their databases with frequent crawling and keyword data). So it’s always better to invest in premium tools if you want to really increase your search traffic through keyword research.
- Not finding LSI keywords which are related to your primary or seed keyword. This is one big mistake most bloggers make as they often find one primary keyword and use it everywhere within their content. Instead of keyword stuffing with one keyword, you can get better results by using LSI keywords sparingly within your content.
- Not focusing on the searchers intent while doing keyword research. Remember that, not all keywords are the same. If you target keywords without knowing your audience intent, you’ll struggle with conversions on your site. Find out whether they are looking to buy products or just researching more about the product before making a purchase.
- Not considering the CPC value (also known as the keyword value). If you’re aiming at low competitive and high CPC value keywords, you can make much more money even if you get less traffic from search engines. So keep an eye on picking high CPC keywords.
Final thoughts about long tail keywords
Long tail keywords send you the most qualified visitors from search engines like Google and they are really easier to rank for no matter what industry you are in.
Just make sure to find long tail keywords with low search volume (below 1000 searches) and find out how your competitors are ranking for those keywords.
Do you still have any more questions related to long tail keywords?