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Long Tail Keywords – What Are They?

Long Tail Keywords

When it comes to SEO, long tail keywords are a real deal that brings quality traffic to the website. Do you want to know how to prepare your website in terms of long-tail positioning and which good practices support it? Are curious about how to define your real long tail? If so, read on!

How to Define Long Tail Keywords?

First, a short reminder. The term “long tail keywords” is used by SEO positioners to define more complex, and therefore more precise and unique keywords that generate traffic to a given website. Such a keyphrase usually consists of a few words and is, therefore, quite specific. While the long tail is responsible for most of the traffic that leads to a given website, it’s internally varied.

Long tail keywords definition

There may be no clear leaders when it comes to the most common keywords – e.g. those with very high search volume. However, when combined, this fragmented pool of terms provides valuable and converting traffic to the website, which means that it is worth taking the time to prepare. Long tail keywords should not be underestimated and they are a part of every well-written SEO strategy.

  • Examples of short tail keywords: stroller, headphones, drone
  • Examples of long tail keywords: grey stroller pumped wheels 8 inches, Sennheiser around-ear headphones HD400S AMC black, DJI Mavic Mini SE

As a rule, long tail keywords tend to be specific and in most cases will not be put into a search bar by accident – search intent is, therefore, more obvious, and as a result, the chance of conversion increases. The only thing to do – and, unfortunately, also the hardest one – is to attract such users and convince them to buy products or use services offered by your business.

Why And For Whom Are Long Tail Keywords Important?

Long tail keywords are especially important for online stores. This doesn’t mean that websites for services will not benefit from long tail keywords – they will surely see a difference, although on a slightly different scale. However, big websites offering lots of products will gain the most. In 2022, online commerce has grown more than ever before, so boosting your store is a good idea.

long tail keywords - google screen

How to Monitor Long Tail Keywords

Can long tail keywords be somehow examined? Definitely yes. SEO experts have specialized industry tools at their disposal that allow them to assess things like how many keywords Google associates with a given website in the Top 10. These tools perform a comprehensive assessment of the website, excluding phrases in the SEO contract which are monitored.

Sounds complicated? We’ll illustrate this with an example. We rank a brand new online store that has just started operating. There’s no traffic yet, and there are no phrases visible on the first page of Google’s search results. Signing a contract with us means we commit to conducting detailed monitoring of positions for keywords selected together with the client. Verseo measures your position daily for these phrases. Information on this subject is visible in the client panel and in the reports that the customer receives periodically.

This way, we know, for example, that after six months – 150 phrases from the 200 phrases (listed in the contract) are in the top 10. But does this fully reflect the scale of the website’s visibility on the Internet? A different tool can tell us the four-digit number of phrases in the Top 10.

  • SEO Free Tools read the article about free tools for monitoring and auditing your website!

Testing the website with SEO tools that do not know the terms of the contract and the list of keywords, we can determine how many phrases related to this website are in the Top 10, that is: after entering how many keywords will the website be displayed in the Top 10 search results for a given phrase?

The number of Top 10 phrases for a given website may change by making a month-to-month comparison. When we are dealing with a website that already has a history and good visibility on the Internet, we can compare the results from before the start of positioning (e.g. a month before signing the contract) with the current ones. Thanks to this comparison, you can see how activities performed by SEO specialists influenced the website and how they increased its visibility in the top 10.

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Both parameters – measurement in the context of keywords included in the contract and measurement made with the use of additional tools and analyzing the website as a whole – do not collide with each other. Their combination gives a more complete picture of the positioning effectiveness.

Find Long Tail Keywords in Google Search Console

Is there any other way to know your long tail without paid tools available to positioners in the pro version? Yes, there is. The free tool – Google Search Console comes to the rescue. It provides a lot of useful information, for example about queries that lead to clicks and visits to the website, and also estimates the position of the keyword generating impressions and clicks. The analysis of the phrases that are visible there allows you to identify those matching the long tail criteria, as well as assess whether they generate clicks and their positions.

For the record, criteria – that allow tracking search phrases that lead to the website – will apply not only in the context of long tail keywords. They will also help you track shorter but valuable phrases that can be used for promotion, and which were not included in the original list of keywords for various reasons.

General Phrases versus Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords vs short tail kewyords

At the outset, we can say that general phrases (also called as short tail keywords) should not be opposed to long tail keywords. They are entered into the search engine by various groups of potential customers and, as a result, have different functions. Long tail keywords indicate more precise expectations regarding the product that our potential client is looking for. Search intent is therefore more specific. General phrases are most often entered at the beginning of your search, before the purchase, when you do not have precise expectations yet. General terms can also mean searching for information or simply browsing the Internet, rather than an immediate desire to make a purchase.

How to Effectively Support Long Tail Keywords?

Effective support for long tail phrases can be done at the level of building or optimizing an existing website. We have selected 4 elements that are important in the context of long tail keyword optimization, and which do not involve complicated interference in the website.

Long tail keywords optimization - checklist

Meta Title and Meta Description

The fact that the meta tags or meta title and meta description are particularly important for positioning has been mentioned more than once in our publications on SEO. Since the long tail keyword optimization concerns mainly subpages with products and subpages related to product categories, it is important to remember about meta tags for these subpages. It would be a big mistake to set the same meta tags for the entire website. Such a duplicate is undesirable from an SEO point of view.

However, we know that setting up unique meta tags for each product manually is quite a challenge. Therefore, it is necessary to automatically generate meta tags, which will use, for example, a unique product name (or product category – in the case of category subpages), and at the end, there will be, for example, a suffix with the name of the store or company.

If you use pagination and products from the same category are visible on more than one subpage, then you should also take note of the uniqueness of these meta tags on subsequent page views. The solution may be to reach for notes like “page 2”, “page 3” etc. What can be done in terms of unique and non-duplicate descriptions? In this case, you can use unique content published on subpages, which will become the basis for meta description. It is worth emphasizing that the meta title tag is more important than meta description in the context of SEO.

Headers on the Page

We write about the importance of headers in terms of diversifying the content in section 4 dedicated to content issues. It’s a good idea to place headers on your website and use keywords in them. If we have a subpage dedicated to, for example, women’s tracksuits available in our offer, then instead of the “women’s”, it is best to place keywords describing our offer in the Hx headers: women’s tracksuits – cotton, pastel, oversize, printed, etc.

Of course, all the keywords that form a long tail do not need to appear in one header. In such a situation, it is worth dividing them among several headers. Of course, there may also be a header that does not include keywords. However, it is worth using keywords at least in some of the headers – Google’s algorithm will be satisfied.

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URL Address

Keywords and search terms that are used to search for products from our offer can also be placed in the URL of subpages. We do not encourage the machine to change the current, even imperfect addresses of subpages – a bad approach to this may damage the website. However, if we have to add new subpages or rebuild the website, then when planning a new structure and addresses of subpages, we need to take into account that they contain important terms.

Referring to the example from the previous section: it is better to have the term “women’s tracksuits” in the subpage address of the category than “women”. The subpage of the product should also have a user-friendly URL that takes into account specific terms. However, do not go overboard with the length of the URL, an address of more than 100 characters is too much. This problem affects blog posts more often than product pages.

Content Matters

Of course, in the case of an online store, you can indicate the best-selling products and product categories. This is most often reflected in the keyword list that is added as an attachment to the SEO agreement. These are also phrases whose positions will be monitored – daily research that allows to track drops and increases and whether the phrase entered the top 10. Potential customers, however, usually enter more variations of the search queries than are included in the list of keywords selected for monitoring. They add some features that they find important – the product’s color, texture,

As a rule, start with keyword research. When analyzing the keywords that led to the website, it’s worth knowing what words and terms to use when describing the available product or service. Rich content corresponding to queries – not only the most popular ones – supports positioning, taking into account the long tail. The best place to introduce content supporting long tail phrases is the subpage of the product categories or the products themselves. Being aware of the size of the project, which is content optimization (not only for long tail phrases), we encourage you to do it in stages. It is better to gradually implement new content, even in small portions, than to abandon the idea.

The content published on the page must be visible to web crawlers to be indexed. It must also be unique content if it is to positively affect the SEO process. It can be said that all the rules for good content that apply in the context of optimization also support content in terms of the long tail keywords. As a reminder, it will be:

  • uniqueness – the text on the website shouldn’t be duplicated,
  • do not skimp on words – an extensive text will usually be better than just a brief mention,
  • text should not be a monolith, it is worth dividing it into paragraphs, use headers and include keywords,
  • text should be linguistically attractive and correct, encouraging people to read it and at the same time providing information that will facilitate the client’s decision process,
  • availability for web crawlers,
  • systematic development – update your content regularly, do not let it get out of date, analyze its performance and modify keywords list.

Taking all information mentioned above into consideration, you can update content on your website. Consider also other methods of content creation and enrichment – you can (and should!) also…

Start a Company Blog

Content marketing is not just a popular trend in digital marketing that gives your business a PR boost. Setting up a blog on your website gives you the space to write quality posts and, in consequence, to put keywords in order to attract search traffic. When writing a blog post, use keyword research tools, take keyword suggestions into consideration (apart from some tools mentioned above, sometimes even Google’s autocomplete suggestions can be very useful), see related Google searches, and don’t undervalue SEO good practices.

Keywords with lower search volume can be very beneficial if used correctly – all that matters is to understand what your target audience is looking for in Google (or other search engines). Just like any other keywords that bring quality traffic, long tail keywords work on your behalf and for your profit.

Interested in cutting-edge long tail keyword strategy?

You have gained some useful data about long tail keywords (and SEO in general). Search engine optimization and website positioning is a very complex issue – Google’s algorithm analyses over 200 different factors when setting website’s position in search engine results and is evolving every day. Work with the best – let Verseo Ads take care of your website and boost your business with SEO!

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