Long Tail Keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important things you can learn if you want to find the fastest way to the top of the search engines. And if you’re not at the top of the search engines (preferably in one of the first 3 positions), your chances of making money online decrease substantially.

What is a long-tail keyword?

• Long-tail keywords are typically two or more words (a phrase) that you type into a search engine to find content, a product, or service.

How to use long-tail keywords?

• Use your favorite keyword tool – like Google’s keyword tool. Search for a phrase like your main keyword, but does has less competition. Think of it as a phrase off the beaten path, but is still used by some.
• Write your post based on the long tail – Make sure to include the long-tail in your title, and naturally throughout the body of the article. Be relevant, and make sure to deliver on the promise of the post title. One thing to avoid is keyword stuffing. Using your phrase will only get you in trouble with the search engines.
• Submit this post to a few Article Directories – This is a great way to repurpose your post while building backlinks. Submit the article to some of the more popular article directories. Make sure you follow the editorial guidelines, and you should have no problem getting it approved. As long as this is your writing, and not copied you can use your post in other places. When done correctly you can avoid the duplicate content penalty.
• The long tail can be utilized to drive small, but loyal readers to your blog. The key to making the long-tail keywords a vital part of your blogging strategy is to use these phrases as the subject of many different posts. Quantity and quality is the main goal.

What is an example of a long-tail keyword for Meta tags?

• Let’s say you have a wedding to go to in Los Angeles and you need to rent a tux. Well, if you just typed in the one keyword “Tux,” you would come up with about 6,870,000 results, which isn’t very specific and is far too broad of a search for you want to find. So if you type in a long-tail keyword, it would be more specific and look something like this: “Wedding Tuxedos is your best place” which will generate about 448,000 results and give you more precise and relevant results that will help you find a tux much faster.

What are the lengths of a long tail keyword?

• Unless your Niche has entirely no competition, the minimum length for the long tail keyword should be least four words phrase. There is no maximum length for the long tail keyword.

What is the difference between long-tail keywords and short tail keyword?

Short tail keywords

• A short tail keyword is a very broad search term, eg. New Cars. If you searched for this term, you would get millions of search The New Cars search term has a lot of competition to reach the 1st-page, and you will be unlikely high up the search engines for this extremely popular term

Long-tail keyword

• Long-tail keywords are a combination of keywords or a phrase which is much more specific to your article, for example, How to Grow Tomatoes. How to Grow Tomatoes will be more specific and searching for only ‘tomatoes,’ and it will be a lot more likely to get on the 1st-page results You can make long-tail keywords by including the local area you are marketing to or the brand name of the product you are selling.
• Long-tail keywords are so specific; there will be fewer people searching for them, as a result, the people that arrive at your site will be more qualified to the article provided.
• A balance of the correct short and long-tail keywords will bring in the best traffic from both sources.

Long-tail keyword rule of thumb

• Natural language search strings are best
• Think in single short questions
• Search string need to be related to the content to be meaningful and produce the correct result
• Exceptional content does not equal clicks
• Keywords still impact search engine results
• Search engines help you get clicks

Benefits of using long-tail keywords in your web content

Higher ranking pages in the search engine results

• The more targeted and specific the long-phrase query, the less demand and competition it faces. For illustration purposes, “cat food,” returns 62 million Google search result pages. However, “Purina wet cat food,” returns 192 thousand search result pages which, though a great quantity, are significantly less than the former. The chances of finding one website among 62 million pages are very much less than finding that same site among 192 thousand pages.
• Less competition very often leads to higher page rank in the search engine results page (SERP). The higher a specific page ranks in SERP, the greater the chance of a searcher finding that page. Using long keyword phrases that help your site get on the first page of SERP will greatly benefit your online endeavors. You can utilize online keyword tools to find the relevant long-tail phrases searchers are querying and incorporate them into your web content.

More targeted traffic to your website

• A long-tail query like “Purina wet cat food,” shows the Purina brand dominating the first page of the search results. On the other hand, the results of the short tail query, “cat food,” give general information on cat food as well as other brands of cat food in the first search results page.
• Therefore, the long-phrase query in this example is better targeted to getting the results to the searcher wanting to purchase or get information on, Purina wet cat food. If you are selling that brand and type of food for cats, you can to sparingly sprinkle this keyword phrase in your web content, and place them in browser titles and page headers. In this way, people who are looking for that specific keyword will have a greater chance of finding your website.

Increased sales

• With increased page views by a targeted audience, increased sales would result, because more people who are prepared to purchase would arrive at your website.
• If you’re an advertiser or trying to make money online, you’ll want to research what Long – Tail Keywords people are typing in so you can build your campaigns around them. And if you can, you even want to take the domain name as it gets more attention from Google.
• Long-tail keywords are a great method to find the “low hanging fruit” or the “little fishing holes” that you can build an online campaign around.