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5 Techniques to Find Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are specific keyword phrases that describe the focus of your site content. They're 3 or more words that target a specific search query.

Eric Melillo
By Eric Melillo   |  

 Sep 06, 2017

5 Techniques to Find Long Tail Keywords

With their ability to generate highly targeted website traffic, long tail keywords are key to your SEO strategy. If you’re wondering how to find long tail keywords for your marketing campaigns, consider these five techniques:What Are Long Tail Keywords?

Long tail keywords are highly specific keyword phrases used to describe the niche focus of your website content. Typically, they are 3 or more words and are used to target a very specific search query.

How to Find Long Tail Keywords

1. Use long tail keyword tools

When researching long tail keywords, it’s important to utilize different tools. While many marketers start with the Google keyword tool, it sometimes offers too general results.

Typically, long tail keywords are not general; instead, they focus on a specific product or service the customer wants to purchase. The following tools can help you discover these target phrases:

Long Tail Pro

Long Tail Pro includes information about Google Ad data and keyword profitability, allowing marketers to monetize their SEO campaigns better. The tool can help you pinpoint competitive keywords and determine what level of keyword difficulty should be targeted. Pricing for Long Tail Pro starts at $25 per month.

Long tail keywords are more specific than average keywords.

Search Engine Ranking

Keyword research, a backlink checker, and a keyword rank-checking tool are just a few of the features offered by SE Ranking. The tool is available through several monthly plans ranging from $7 to $189. With a broad range of pricing, there is something to suit every organization’s budget.

Ubersuggest

This free tool only provides keyword research but allows you to break your searches down by type, country, or language. This is helpful for companies who sell products worldwide since popular keywords tend to vary by country.

Besides these keyword research tools, a long tail keyword generator can quickly find relevant phrases. These tools suggest long tail phrases by analyzing your existing website content. You’ll find many options for keyword generators online, many of which are free.

While using over one long tail keyword tool may seem excessive, doing so can allow you to find several phrases. Plus, having a variety of useful features on hand can help you make the most out of your SEO strategy.

Of course, keyword research doesn’t end with simply finding the right long tail alterations. When you integrate them into your content, the results may surprise you. It’s also important to be selective when using keywords with a low search volume.

2. Read Forums, Comment Chains, FAQ Sites & Emails

Website visitors' questions often provide excellent insight into what they search for online. A great way to find long-tail keywords is to visit forums, comment threads, company “Frequently Asked Questions” pages, or even emails sent to your company.

Despite readily available information sources, many SEO marketers don’t use these options during keyword research. If your company has blog regularly receives comments or questions, you can find several SEO search words just by reading users’ responses.

3. Conduct Competitor Analysis

Competition is a fact of life for many businesses, regardless of the industry. For finding the right keywords, it’s likely that your competitors have already used long tails to boost their rankings. These findings can be used to your advantage - simply find out what words your competitor uses and implement them on your website.

You can find most of these long tails in blog titles, meta tags from keyword checkers, or by analyzing the content on each page. Professional competitor research tools from SpyFu or SE Ranking can help you speed up the process.

Pro Tip: Finding the best long tail keywords will take some research. Try visiting highly optimized sites like Wikipedia.

4. Check Out How-To and Q&A Sites

How-to sites like eHow and Q&A sites like Quora receive huge traffic from long tail phrases.

With their powerful algorithms, these sites can help you find long tails that can help you improve your targeted content. Even if you aren’t sure what data sources and content algorithms are used, you can still learn from these sites' information.

5. Look at Wikipedia

The king of website optimization, Wikipedia, offers marketers a wealth of knowledge with long tails. When you search for a fairly broad topic, the resulting article will contain several subheads that can be used as long tail phrases. You can also use the Page Search function to find areas of similar search queries.

Over to You

With these useful tips and tools, you can optimize your pages for long-tail SEO search terms. Using these phrases allows you to meet your customers' needs while increasing brand awareness and revenue.

Eric Melillo

Eric Melillo

An expert Growth Hacker helping enterprise companies scale and crush competitors using the full Inbound Flywheel & HubSpot.

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