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How to Use Long Tail Keywords to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Ranking for a keyword is harder than ever. More people create more content than ever. The number is only expected to rise as more people gain Internet access.

Long tail keywords may be the answer to this problem. They can drive organic traffic to your website and let you target potential customers who’re looking for what you offer. In fact, statistics show that over 70% of search queries are for long-tail keywords.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss what long tail keywords are and how you can start using them.

Let’s get started.

What are long tail keywords?

Before we discuss how long tail keywords can benefit you, let’s define what they are.

Short tail keywords are composed of three words or less. Examples of short tail keywords include “basketball,” “basketball game” and so forth.

Long tail keywords are composed of four words or more. Examples of long tail keywords include “how to choose a suit,” “different types of keywords” and so forth.

Short tail keywords get a lot of traffic, but the competition is fierce. Most short tail keywords search rankings are dominated by large companies. They spend a lot of money to rank in search engines, and it would be difficult to compete with them.

Long tail keywords get less traffic than short tail keywords. However, there’s less competition, and you can target a specific type of customer.

For example, entering the keyword “clothing” in Google gives you more than 6,490,000,000. On the other hand, the keyword “men’s clothing store in sydney” generates 99,300,000 results.

Yes, both numbers are still in the millions, but competition is significantly less for the long tail keyword.

Your Customer Avatar

If you’re trying to find long tail keywords, you should start with an ideal customer avatar.

Your ideal customer is the person you’re trying to reach online. From choosing keywords to creating content, you should keep them in mind in every step of the way.

Get to know who this person is. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

• How old are they?
• Where are they located?
• Where do they spend most of their time online?
• What are their likes and dislikes?
• What are their common pain points?

Answer the above questions and create a customer avatar. Your customer avatar should serve as a guide for creating content. It dictates which words, images and colours you use.

Let’s say you’re a wedding planner. Your ideal customer could be a 30-something professional located in the same city. She has a lot on her plate, but she still wants a gorgeous wedding that reflects her style.

This is where you come in. You can plan the wedding with minimal input from them but still make sure it reflects her personality. Since your customer spends most of her time on Instagram and Pinterest, you focus your marketing efforts on those channels.

Your customer avatar also determines which keywords you’ll target. A 50-something CEO will phrase things differently than a millennial would. Keep that in mind when creating a list of keywords.

Tools for Finding Long Tail Keywords

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free tool that tells you how easy it would be to rank for a keyword. It shows you the traffic a keyword gets in a given time period as well as how competitive it is.

In an ideal scenario, a keyword would have a high search volume and low competition. However, that’s rarely the case.

Refine your keyword list.

If you have a list of keywords, Ubersuggest refines it for you. For example, if you enter a keyword in Ubersuggest, it may show you that it has low search volume and a lot of competition. That tells you it might not be worth including in your final list.

Ubersuggest also shows you keyword suggestions along with their search volume and difficulty. The keyword you’ve chosen might have a high search volume and moderate difficulty. A keyword suggestion may have the same search volume but it’s easier to rank for.

You can pick and choose from the keyword suggestions based on information provided by Ubersuggest.

Check the competition.

Aside from showing you the traffic and difficulty, Ubersuggest also generates the top-ranking content for a specific keyword.

You can then study the top-ranking content and create a better content marketing strategy. Carefully analyse those blog posts. Take note of the word count and the language and images used.

The top-ranking content should be your benchmark for creating blog posts. If the top search result for your keyword provides ten tips, attempt to provide fifteen tips in your own blog post. Better yet, try to come up with twenty.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is another free tool that provides keyword suggestions. All you have to do is enter your keyword and hit enter.

It will then generate a bunch of related keywords you can choose from. You can also download the results in CSV or image files.

This tool also gives you more ideas for things to include in your content. It generates plenty of search queries you could answer in your blog post, things your competition may have missed.

Conclusion

Long-tail keywords are key to rising in search engine results.

They get less traffic than short tail keywords, but they allow you to target your ideal customer. There’s less competition which means your content gets a bigger chance to shine.

If you’re unsure about finding long tail keywords, there are plenty of free tools online that can help. Ubersuggest and Answer the Public are only two examples.

Need help with keyword research? Cornerstone Digital is an SEO agency in Sydney that can help you find your ideal customer via SEO. Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us atinfo@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Michael Lam

Co-founder of Cornerstone and web junkie, Michael knows just how to diagnose your online problems and remedy the issue. An online enthusiast who believes in technology as an enabler of growth, Michael worries about all the details so you don't have to.