Use Long-tail Keywords to Ensure Your Content is Found: 7 Critical Points

A long-tail keyword is just a longer SEO keyword, like a phrase. (In fact, they are also referred to as keyphrases.)

Perform a search on “cloud solutions,” and the results will probably be too broad to find what you’re looking for quickly.

But, narrow that search to something more specific like, “open source cloud storage,” and you’re more apt to find the information you need.

It makes good sense if you think about it. You just have to reverse-engineer this idea for your critical website pages.

If the SEO applied to your current website is based on keywords that are two words or less, it will be hard for your content to ever rank well in search results.

Although long-tail keywords attract less search traffic overall, the quality of your visitors increases because the intent of their search should more closely match your content.

“70% of all search traffic stems from long-tail keywords.”¹ –Search Engine Journal

Before we explain how to identify and use keyphrases that will work best for you, here are a few more benefits:

Less competition

The more specific your keyword, the better chance you have to rank higher on search results pages.

Higher conversions

If your content and offerings truly deliver on what your visitors are looking for, you have a better chance to convert them into a customer.

Increased traffic

Long-tail keywords help you generate more organic search traffic for your site. It probably won’t happen overnight. But if you serve specific niches and use long-tail keywords that match up to those areas well, your traffic should grow over time.

So, if you want an effective SEO strategy, use keyphrases. Ultimately, you should get more visitors who have a deeper interest in your content and offerings.

“Brands need to alter their content strategy. They can start by using long-tail, semantic keyword phrases to create content.”² –MarTech Advisor

How to identify and use keyphrases:

Align long-tail keywords with what you deliver.

What’s your niche? If you offer “website security solutions,” you might be tempted to compete for traffic on that term. But it’s worth taking a closer look at your content and offerings.

What’s the unique angle you offer potential customers?

What if, after evaluating your sales, closed deals, and solutions you realize that most of your success comes from e-commerce websites that use Shopify? Then, building high-quality content around a long-tail keyword like “shopify ecommerce website security” might help your content rank higher.

Find long-tail keywords people actually search on.

There are a number of services you can use to help identify long-tail keywords that are worth your effort to rank for. But if you’re just getting started, I have good news for you. You can find more specific (less popular) long-tail keywords just by plugging searches into Google.

People tend to forget this, but as you type in a query, Google will present a list of autocomplete results. Not only are these long-tail keywords, but they offer you great insights toward the specifics people are looking for beyond a broad term. You can also check the “People also ask” and “Searches related to” suggestions that Google will present for you.

If one of the suggested phrases really lines up with the value you deliver, consider adopting it as the long-tail keyword you’ll focus on for a particular page.

Focus on semantic keyword phrases.

There’s a statistic posted on nearly every online article about voice search claiming that by the year 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice-based.

Now, I don’t believe that’s true, but it may not be long before it is. For more reliable stats, I’d look to what’s happening with Millennials and Generation-Z. After all, they grew up with technology all around them, aren’t afraid to use it, and their behaviors will increasingly shape search trends. “45% of millennials use voice assistants while shopping.”³ –Voicebot

Optimizing your content for on-SERP voice search is really a topic unto itself – and as such, deserves more space. The point is, by using long-tail keywords that also line up with how people are likely to search by voice, you position your content to rank increasingly well going forward.

Integrate long-tail keywords throughout your blog posts.

Though this tip is a bit more foundational, it’s always good to reinforce SEO best practices.

Make sure you weave your chosen long-tail keywords through the technical aspects of the blog post they are aligned with. That means including it in the title of the post, the URL, image alt descriptions, and of course the body text.

Summary & Takeaways

Bottom line? Use long-tail keywords. They should serve as the foundation to your content marketing and SEO strategy. There are some very powerful benefits to using them and the basics aren’t that difficult to achieve. Remember:

• Long-tail keywords enable you to narrow your focus to where there’s more interest and less competition
• Align long-tail keywords with your content and offerings.
• Zero-in on long-tail keywords that people actually search on.
• Factor voice-searchers into the long-tail keywords you select.

Sources include:
1. “Long-Tail SEO Strategy: Why & How to Target High-Intent Keywords,” Aleh Barysevich, Search Engine Journal, July 2017
2. “5 Content Marketing Trends for 2020,” Indrajeet Deshpande, MarTech Advisor, February 2019
3: “Voice Shopping Consumer Adoption Report 2018,” Voicebot.ai, 2018