SEO Power: It’s All In the Long Tail Keywords

As the web gets more and more crowded, it becomes harder and harder for you to rank your website on Google.

As of December 2014, Netcraft’s annual survey found there are now 915,780,262 websites on the web.

Shocking I know. But don’t fall off your chair just yet…

I know, we are all competing with those billion websites! But there is a solution…

The problem is actually easier to solve than you realize, and it lies with a phrase called: long tail keywords.

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

People are searching more specifically these days, and often with complete sentences.

So instead of: best restaurant Zurich

(yes I live near Zurich)

People are now writing (or talking) : What is the best Chinese restaurant near my house in Zurich?

This trend has been increasing for a quite a few years. And it means that people are typing in longer phrases into Google, in order to find exactly what they are looking for.

This could mean a more specific location, type, piece of information and so on.

These are the long tail keywords. The less common, more specific, keywords people are using. The kinds of keywords not so many people are targeting with their content!

The Benefits of Long Tail Keywords

You can read a lot more about this in this article on Search Engine Watch, but the short version is –

Long Tail Keywords are very useful because:

• There is less competition
• The results are highly relevant
• There is often more specific user intent (they are searching for exactly what they want)

The only downside is you may have to create more content to address all of these keyword phrases very specifically.

But the potential ranking benefits and pay-off in terms of happy customers is there to be had.

So you should seriously consider long tail keywords, instead of keywords like: “lawyer Boston”.

Because you have no chance of ranking for that anyway!

How To Find Long Tail Keywords

As always, I recommend you start out your search using Google Keyword Planner. It is one of the simplest and best places to find keywords for your content.

However, once you have an idea of the kinds of phrases you should be targeting, you can take your keyword research a step further with some of other search tools like:

• Uber Suggest
• Serps

to find more specific (long tail) keywords that people are using.

And although these keywords don’t come with keyword monthly volume of the one or two word phrases, they are more likely to get your targeted traffic.

So why not give it a shot!

More Information:

The infographic below, from a famous long tail tool: Hittail helps to highlight the benefits of long tail keyword use.