What is a long tail keyword you may ask?
No, it isn’t a word with the letter Q in it or even the letter J.
But did you know that long tail keywords are really very important if you are doing any sort of SEO for your website?
Understanding the long tail keyword is easier than you think, and this is why any internet marketer needs to know about longtail keywords.
So What Is A Long Tail Keyword?
Long tail keywords are keywords or actually keyword phrases that are more specific and usually longer than the more commonly searched for shorter string of keywords.
Long-tail keywords get less search traffic, but will usually have a higher conversion value, as they are more specific.
Long tail keywords are generally three to four-word phrases that narrow down a person’s search. According to Moz.com, around 70% of all online searches are from these types of keywords. A long tail keyword could also be five or six words long in some cases.
Say, for instance, that you are wanting to start an affiliate site selling running shoes from Amazon or some other online vendor. To try to rank for the keyword ‘running shoes’ would be next to impossible. According to the Google Keyword Planner, this keyword gets over 200,000 searches each month and the competition there would be really fierce.
Of course, there are many different types of running shoes. Here is a sample of what Google Keyword Planner came up with using the base of running shoes:
- Men’s running shoes 22,200 searches a month
- Trail running shoes 33,100 searches a month
- Barefoot running shoes 9,900 searches a month
- Best trail running shoes 9,900 searches a month
- Running shoes for flat feet 4,400 searches a month
If you were wondering what is a long tail keyword, there are some excellent examples in the list above. Any one of these long tail keywords would be much easier to rank for than the base keyword of ‘running shoes.’ Are you starting to get the idea now?
Why Do We Need To Research Long Tail Keywords?
The main reason why you need to know what are longtail keywords and why you need to find some good ones is that they are less competitive, which means you can get more visitors to your site from the search engines.
Getting visitors from the search engines is called organic traffic and this is the best type of traffic you can get as it consists of users who are looking for a specific thing.
Why Do We Need To Do Keyword Research?
It seems that everyone online wants to go for the brass ring. You know, that magical keyword that will bring in thousands of fresh visitors to their site on a weekly basis.
Everyone is looking for that one fantasy keyword that will make them rich. There is only one very large problem. This type of keyword is almost impossible to rank for. This means that by choosing a keyword with thousands of searches each week, you will be extremely hard-pressed to get your site anywhere near the first page of Google results.
Does this mean that you should discard your idea for an online business before you even start? After all, you want to make money, right?
Actually, knowing this fact could help you to make your site a success. You simply need to change your keyword strategy. Don’t go for magical, go for realistic and repeatable. In other words, build your website around long tail keywords.
Long Tail Keywords Get More Sales
Think about it for a minute. The more targeted the search, the more the buyer knows just what they want, and the closer they are to buyi
ng. This makes the longer keyword phrases a win-win scenario.
How Do I Go About Looking For Long Tail Keywords?
Well, you can use the Google Keyword Planner Tool, but it is a bit long and cumbersome. I prefer to use Jaaxy, and although I pay a subscription each month to use it, I find it saves me a great deal of time, as it shows me with the click of a button just which keywords I should be targeting and which are a waste of time. To me, this is worth each penny that I pay, because at least now my posts are getting ranked.
If you want to find out more about Jaaxy, you can click here. If you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you get the light version of Jaaxy keyword Tool for free.
For more information on choosing the right keywords to build your site (or even just a page on your site), you can pick up some great free training right here. You can read about what I use to not only host my websites but also to pick up on some great training and tips.
Also, be sure to subscribe to our blog for more tips on how to make a profit online from home.
I trust that I have answered your question on what is a long tail keyword.
Glad I came across this site. I have a website and have been following along with wealthy affiliate tutorials, but as far as I can remember Kyle doesn’t mention anything about long tail keywords, so I have not been using them but have noticed other people have.
I wanted to read all about it. So thanks for the information. Will remember that that long tail keywords need to be three to four-word phrases or longer
Yes Jenny, and long tail Keywords are far easier to rank for in the long run, as they are far less competitive. All the best and hope you are enjoying your training with Wealthy Affiliate.
It’s nice to see good quality post about long tail keywords. This is the life line to more visitors and profitability. Your post goes into great detail helping people like me that are new to website building at WA.
Are your affiliate products doing well? I like how you incorporate the products into your posts.
How long did it take to be profitable using WA?
Just a quick note–like the red color backround that make your visitors eyes focus on posts.
Keep up the good work and help you reach your goals.
Cheers, Tim
Thanks Tim. Love using WA, and I won’t say I am profitable yet, but the sales are coming in now at least.
Excellent information. I didn’t know that most search keywords involve long tail keywords. I just picked whichever keyword was popular without paying attention to the length of the keyword not understanding that I could position myself better with longer phrases as a target. Now that I know that I’ll begin to implement that when I create content. Thanks for the info.
This strategy works quite well, and I hope you have lots of success using long tail keywords.
Using long keywords can be the perfect way to go about using keywords. It helps a lot in keeping the topic unique and more central and it opens better opportunities because it gives a lot of information and also helps in getting better searches and people who are looking for precisely that information. Surely good information you have given here and I appreciate all you said here. Thanks
Thanks for stopping by to comment, and yes you definitely get more targeted visitors by using long tail keywords.
I think my definition would be that long tail keywords are the Spicier ones that our blog posts need for the search engines to certify us great chefs and that in turn gets us loads of customers who want to eat our meal. They make our content unique and draw more people in. It’s very important and I do my research and put them to good use whenever I can.
Thanks for the informative article. Although I endeavour to undertake solid key word research before writing it is always good to learn new tricks and tips. I really like what you said about the more that a buyer knows the closer they are to buying; that makes a lot of sense. I will definitely be paying a lot closer attention to finding really strong long tail keywords in future.
It definitely helps to choose long tail keywords that buyers will use when they are looking to purchase something.
When it comes to ranking my article in search engines, I normally prefer to use long-tail keywords instead of short phrases keywords.
Due to the fact that long-tail keywords are easier to rank for, it is always ideal to use them for search engine purposes instead of shorter keyword phrases.
Jaaxy keyword tool is one simple tool that we can use to look for ideal long-tail keywords to rank for.
Not only it is easy to use, one can easily come up with a list of keywords simply using the application.
I would encourage anyone to give Jaaxy keyword tool a try especially when it comes to finding long-tail keywords.