If you’re starting your keyword research or looking for fresh ideas, long tail keywords will form an integral part of the content strategy for your website. Find out what long tail keywords are and how to use them effectively in our guide below.
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What Are Long Tail Keywords?
Long tail keywords are longer phrases of three or more words that are more specific to a particular service or product offering. The keyword could either have a commercial or informational intent but they will typically have a lower search volume per month due to their modifiers being more targeted.
You can spot a long tail keyword by looking at the following data:
- Search volume: Tools will give an idea of monthly search volume. Long tail keywords will be lower than high competition, broad terms.
- Competition: When you gather your dataset, some tools such as keyword planner give an indication of the competition or difficulty. Long tail keywords will have a lower score.
- Word count: Long tail keywords are usually defined by having 3+ words in the phrase.
Benefits of Long Tail Keywords
Should you really be focusing on long tail keywords? Yes, they will help form an overall content strategy to boost visibility for your website in the results page for relevant search terms! Here are some more benefits:
- Less competitive: These keyword types are generally lower in competition, so there is more opportunity to gain better search results.
- Match search intent: Long tail keywords are more specific, so they match the user query more than broad terms. This generally increases clicks and conversions.
- Utilise links: Generating more relevant content creates internal linking opportunities. Linking to and from commercial pages or other pages in the topic cluster when necessary can create positive signals to a Googlebot about each page.
- For new websites: They can help you generate visibility in the SERP and start to build authority for your website.
- For authoritative websites: This will help broaden your content strategy by looking at other areas of opportunity within your niche.
Long Tail Keyword Examples
Long tail keywords can be presented in a variety of ways and have different modifiers in the phrase to spot. Let’s have a look at some examples.
Locations
For local SEO campaigns, specifying the location in your keyword will attract users from the area your business is based in. This will result in more qualified organic traffic and conversions.
Broad Term: SEO agency
Long Tail Keyword Example: SEO Agency In Sheffield
Specific Offerings
You could have a high competition service or offering but you can utilise your USP in your keyword to attract users that are in the consideration stage of the content funnel rather than general awareness. Not only will this result in qualified leads but also it gives your website an opportunity to break through the noise for specific search intent.
Broad Term: Interpersonal training
Long Tail Keyword Example: Interpersonal training for managers
Topic Clusters
Creating topic clusters is a great way to show your brand is an authoritative website for the offering that is provided. During the research stage, creating clusters of content should be a focus to cover all aspects of information a user may need to capture traffic at all stages of the conversion funnel.
First, start with your head term to start the topic:
- Fruit & Veg Boxes
Then, utilise queries which users may be searching with long tail keyword examples being:
- How to eat more fruit and vegetables
- How to keep fruit and veg fresh for a long time
- Health benefits of fruit and vegetables
- Fruit and veg nutrients
- How many fruits and veg per day
- Best fruits and vegetables for smoothies
- Seasonal chart for fruit and vegetables
Now, we have some examples to start creating great, relevant informational content to cover all aspects of the user journey as they navigate through your website.
Ways To Find Relevant Long Tail Keywords
When researching keywords for your website, there are many datasets that can be utilised including specific research tools or analysing search results page features. Here are some ways you can find long-tail keywords.
Semrush
The Semrush Keyword Magic Tool is a great way to start out your research by looking for long tail keywords. Put your head keyword into the search function and it will bring up a detailed report of keywords.
It is important to utilise filters on tools to get to the long tail keywords you need that are lower in competition and difficulty. Here, you can utilise match types, difficulty metrics, search volume and filters by topic type.
Ahrefs
Depending on your keyword tool of choice, you can also use Ahrefs to discover new long tail keywords. You will get the option to add words into the keyword explorer tool:
Then click search and you will see a dashboard of metrics. Navigate to the ‘Keyword Ideas’ section and you will see reports for matching terms, related questions, also rank for and also talk about terms. This provides a range of keyword ideas that are closely related to the term or industry to give you fresh content ideas.
Again, ensure you use the filter features to get the dataset you need, rather than generic terms.
Keyword Planner
You can utilise the keyword planner on the Google Ads platform to find keywords relating to your topic. For example, when typing in ‘digital marketing’ as our head term, we have 650 keyword ideas available to browse through:
From this we can analyse the data closer in depth to filter out relevant long tail keywords and start to form our strategy. Examples include:
Commercial Keywords
From our dataset, there are examples of relevant service-based long tail keywords where users are looking more specifically for services within digital marketing, such as SEO & social media marketing. Furthermore, users are looking for specialists in website types such as ecommerce.
| Keyword | Search Volume |
| social media marketing agency for small business | 90 |
| search engine optimisation in digital marketing | 20 |
| seo digital marketing agency | 110 |
| ecommerce digital marketing agency | 70 |
In addition to this, we can see from our dataset that users are also searching for specific industries that they work in.
| Keyword | Search Volume |
| healthcare digital marketing agency | 90 |
| digital marketing for financial services | 140 |
| real estate digital marketing agency | 40 |
Informational Keywords
We can also see what users are searching for that is information based that can help form a blog strategy. Our dataset shows users are looking for more insights and how to start a strategy for beginners, for example.
| Keyword | Search Volume |
| digital marketing strategy for beginners | 10 |
| digital marketing insights | 70 |
| digital marketing and traditional marketing | 50 |
This can then form your content ideas, rather than targeting ‘digital marketing’ which has 33000+ searches per month.
Utilise Data On Google Search Console
Option 1:
If you have an established site with some data over time, you can utilise this existing data to spot opportunities that you haven’t yet created content for.
1. Log onto your Google Search Console account and navigate towards the ‘Search Results’ section on the left-hand side under Performance.
2. Toggle your data set (ideally over the last 12 months or longer) as you will have generated enough data over this time period.
3. Add a new query filter and click ‘custom regex’ on the filter options. You can then filter the dataset to include the following:
(?i)^(who|what|where|when|why|how)
You will then filter out all the question based queries your site is generating impressions and/or clicks for. This can help you identify long tail queries that your site has missing content for if you are generating impressions and not clicks, or pages where you need to improve the content to increase the CTR.
Option 2:
Follow the same steps to get to the regex query filters and input the following:
([^” “]*\s){4,}?
This will bring up queries that contain 4 or more words. You can toggle the number to generate results to the minimum number you need.
SERP Research
You can also try typing in your seed or head keyword into Google and look at results page features that appear for that term. Typically, long tail keywords will appear in the ‘People also search for’ that gives more specific queries relating to the term you have searched or ‘People also asked’ which will give you question based queries.
Here, we can see for ‘SEO agency,’ the people also search for shows additional terms that include locations. From here we can run the keywords through the keyword planner or another tool to get an idea of the competition and search volumes.
Google Autocomplete
Before you get to the results page, you can use Google autocomplete to have a look at relevant phrase modifiers that are suggested. For example, if we type in long tail keywords, we can see that users are also looking for specific meanings, benefits, examples and more.
Google Trends
Looking at trending topics can uncover long tail keywords that are rising in popularity, so you can be at the forefront of your niche. For example, when putting the term ‘SEO strategy’ into Google trends, the related queries show breakout terms and the search percentage increase. This data can not only give you new ideas but validate which areas you should be focusing on in line with industry trends.
Refining Your Keywords
Once you have narrowed down your keywords and data, you can then look at keyword mapping and optimising or creating your content. If you have already completed this exercise but not having any luck with generating rankings, it will be good to consider swapping out your broad terms for long tail keywords to have a better chance at success.
Consistently monitoring your data and performance is key to spotting opportunities and seeing what is or isn’t working well to make informed decisions about refreshing or expanding your keyword set.
Final Thoughts
Searching for long tail keywords can be a challenging and time-consuming process, particularly when there are so many data sets to choose from. However, the rewards can be worth the effort to strengthen your keyword rankings, click-through rates and conversions by matching search intent and creating useful content for your users.
If you need help with your keyword strategy and starting your SEO campaign, get in touch with our expert team at SEO Works to see how we can help.
Beth is a Senior Account Executive with a background in the full digital marketing mix. She is passionate about creating content strategies to drive site engagement!
Hi! I’m Ben, CEO of The SEO Works
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