This is a complete guide to long-tail keyword research. You will learn everything you need to know about how to find long-tail keywords and tips to get lucrative keywords with a higher Keyword Golden Ratio.
Search engine algorithms become harder and harder to understand, right? But, we know one thing…
… that’s never changing.
What is it?
That’s because search engines want to satisfy people. For that, you should provide excellent content. Not only that, a great user experience too.
If you provide these two, you will be rewarded back with tons of search traffic, insanely seeking solutions for their problems.
They are quality traffic (we all know that organic traffic has a higher conversion ratio), and many are buyers.
Your keyword strategy is the only factor that decides whether your content drives buyer traffic or “freebie” seekers.
Without a proven, effective, and lucrative keyword strategy, it is a dream to quickly make money from your blog.
In this scenario, long-tail keywords are essential because they contribute to more than 70% of global searches and conversions, the ability to rank higher in SERPs, and drivability instant search traffic.
What are Long Tail Keywords?
Typically, we can break down the keywords (also known as search terms/queries) into three main parts.
- Head tail keywords
- Middle tail keywords
- Long-Tail Keywords
Head Tail Keywords
These are usually known in SEO and PPC advertising as broad keywords too. Shoes, camera, batman, football, cricket, laptop, girl, man, clothes, shirts, and books are a few head-tail keywords.
As you expected, these keywords generate millions of searches every single month. And also, we can expect that some particular head-tail keywords on some days produce x2, x3 or more times global searches than any other day. Ex: valentine’s day, Mother’s day, fathers day, football world cup, cricket world cup, etc.
Even though these keywords are repeated millions of times each month, it’s hard to rank higher in SERPs for those queries. You can expect billions of search results if you enter a head-tail keyword into the Google search box and find the results. Like this one:
Middle Tail Keywords
These are usually less competitive than head-tail keywords and generate fewer searches than head-tails.
Generally, middle tail keywords are search terms with 2- 3 words. Ex: healthy diet plan, internet marketing lessons, virtual USA bank, winter Olympics, Spiderman games, how to cook, buy TV antenna, watch cricket online.
As you see, these keywords are targeted rather than head-tail keywords. They show a direction. But, it is harder to come up with excellent blog post ideas with these terms as we know these keywords are not well-targeted.
For example, people who search “Spiderman games” could be at younger ages. But we can’t specify their intentions. In other words, the keyword intent of “Spiderman games” widens. Searchers might want pictures of Spiderman games, play Spiderman games online, download Spiderman games or buy Spiderman game CDs.
There are tons of intents behind that keyword phrase. If you use these terms in your SEO campaigns, be careful because Google is more aware of the on-page optimization of your website than years ago.
The best uses of these terms are that your landing page (which is the web page that ranking for particular head tail middle tail keywords) should get a higher organic CTR rate and lower bounce (it depends on a few factors). People shouldn’t click the back button and click on any other result in Google SERP.
As I mentioned, these search terms can generate a bit of targeted higher search traffic, but you should provide all the information they are searching for.
Ex: List of languages
If you optimize your webpage for the “list of languages” keyword phrase, you should provide all the information related to languages; if not, link out to other resources.
Wikipedia is the only website I have ever seen that uses this strategy very well. In fact, I couldn’t find any other website than Wikipedia in the top five results for this search term.
This is another reason why most SEO specialists recommend you to write a 2000+ words long article. Because, in general, an in-depth article takes some width and covers more context than a regular 400-word article.
Long Tail Keywords
This is the last type of keyword as their length. Usually, a Long Tail Keyword is 4+ words long. Ex: best WordPress themes for photo blogs, home-based business opportunities, profitable home-based businesses, compare auto insurance rates, cheapest auto insurance companies, best SEO agencies for an affordable price, how to bake a cake without eggs.
First, you will find that these keywords define a target audience.
- Best WordPress themes for photo blogs: Newbies, experienced bloggers, photographers, freelancers.
- Home-based business opportunities: This is similar to types of home-based businesses. So prospects are startups, experienced webmasters, and freelancers.
- Compare auto insurance rates: Local businessmen, entrepreneurs, and wealthier people.
- Best SEO agencies for an affordable price: Website owners, local businesses, product owners (info and physical).
- How to bake a cake without eggs: Women, housewives.
If your long-tail keyword strategy is more transparent, you can reveal more hidden information about your target audiences, such as demography, geography, interests, and behavioral stats.
It’s all about your keyword strategy. As we expected, without long-tail keywords, it isn’t easy to count the profit for keywords. Here’s a chart that demonstrates the effectiveness of long-tail keywords. Learn more about the importance of using long-tail keywords in your content over here.
How to Find Long Tail Keywords
Now that you know what long-tail keywords are and the benefits of using them on your content let’s move into the next segment: How to find long-tail keywords.
In my previous articles, I explained how to find long-tail keywords with higher search volume and rank on Google. It’s specifically tailored towards competitor long tail keywords research. But, in today’s article, I will show you how to find lengthier keywords with several methods.
There are several ways to find long tail keywords. I will list them accordingly and explain why I prefer the particular way.
Semrush
If there is a list of the world’s top 5 SEO tools every SEO and content marketer should use, Semrush is definitely up there at the top. Semrush is a lot of things. One area Semrush dominates is competitor analysis.
That does not mean it cannot generate long-tail keywords for you. In fact, the Semrush database has been vastly extensive and ever-growing since day one.
How to find long tail keywords using Semrush
Semrush can help you find long tail keywords in three different ways.
- Domain level — Get to know which keywords your competitor domains rank on Google search.
- Page URL — Find keywords that any popular web page ranks precisely on Google SERPs and their rankings.
- Based on a Keyword — Enter a keyword, generate keywords, and filter based on word count and keyword difficulty.
First of all, you have to create a Semrush account. Semrush prices have got several tiers. You can sign up for free from here.
Once signed up, visit the Semrush Keyword Research tool section and enter a keyword.
You can enter up to 100 keywords. But I recommend typing one head-tail or a medium-tail keyword to get started. Select the Google database (i.e., Google region. the United States is selected by default) and click the “Analyze” button.
You can clearly see Semrush’s powers in terms of the data capacity by looking at the keyword variations and questions it shows at a glance. Also, you can get to know an overview of the seed keyword on this page. Click on the “View all keywords” button to move forward.
Now you will be redirected to the Keyword Magic Tool page. In this part, you can filter keywords to get the most relevant keyword ideas for your content marketing campaigns.
In our case, we want to generate profitable long-tail keywords with low competition. Use the Advanced Filters and utilize the ‘Word Count’ option to get keywords with a certain length.
Also, I recommend further narrowing down the results by adding a keyword difficulty filter. This way, you can generate long-tail keywords with low competition.
How to find long tail keywords of a domain
One of my favorite parts of using Semrush is the ability to analyze competitors’ keywords. I have written a detailed guide on competitor keyword research before. I will show how to find long-tail keywords for a competitor site.
Go to Semrush and enter a domain you want to fetch its ranking keywords. Here I entered Pitiya’s domain.
On the domain overview page, you will see details such as the Semrush Authority Score, Organic Search Traffic, Backlinks, etc. When you scroll down a bit, you will find a section called “Organic Research.” Click on the view details button.
Now you got to heaven! 😀 Just kidding.
On this page, you can get many statistics. Some of them are:
- Top organic keywords, search positions, and the ranking URL
- SERP rank changes month by month
- SERP features
- Search volume
- Keyword Difficulty
- Search keywords for each region.
- Mobile and Desktop keywords
If you wonder how to find long-tail keywords of a domain, just like the previous method, use the ‘Advanced filters’ and the ‘Word count’ options.
WriterZen
WriterZen is a content creation platform with compelling keyword research features. Learn more about WriterZen.
One of the exciting features of WriterZen is the Keyword Explorer.
You can:
- Find long-tail keywords on Google for SEO campaigns
- Digest long-tail search terms based on location and language. Perfect for finding long-tail keywords for local SEO
- Get SERP metrics such as search volume
- Get Keyword Golden Ratio
- Get ESPK and keyword clustering data
How to find long-tail keywords with WriterZen
First of all, create your WriterZen account and verify your email address. Once signed up, log into your account and go to the “Keywords Explorer” section.
You will see there are two ways to get long-tail keyword ideas.
- Keyword
- Domain
According to my experience, finding long-tail keywords by entering the domain is on par but not as great as Semrush.
Therefore, I will use the ‘Keyword’ option. Enter your seed keyword and select the country and the language. Please note that you will get keyword ideas and search volume data based on the country selection made at this point. Once done, click on the “Search” button.
Now you will see a screen similar to the one below. You can find numerous things about the keyword on this page, such as search volume, SERP overview, search volume trend, Google Trend, and more.
Scroll down to the bottom, and you will see the keywords data section.
You will find several options to filter keywords in the Keyword Data section.
You can:
- Include and exclude specific keywords
- Filter based on the monthly search volume
- Get keywords with a particular CPC (Cost-per-Click) value
- Get keywords with a specific word amount
If you are wondering how to find long-tail keywords now with WriterZen, we will use the “Word Count” search filter.
Enter a minimum and/or maximum word amount to get long-tail keywords.
If you take a closer look, I have filtered keywords with a minimum of five words. WriterZen found 346 long tail keyworsds. If I sort long-tail keywords by the search volume, I can see which keywords have the most average monthly search volume.
Be aware that the search volume is country-specific. Therefore, the Global search volume would be higher.
But, the longer the keyword does not mean it has got a lower keyword difficulty. For example, according to WriterZen’s Keyword Difficulty (KD) algorithm, the “Best web hosting for WordPress” keyword phrase has an overall 35 KD score.
But, If I want to go beyond just keyword difficulty checking for a long-tail keyword, I would follow this step as well. It checks how many exact pages compete for the targeted long-tail keyword in Google SERP.
I can identify it via a simple Google search operator called Allintitle. But, in my example, I cannot practically check the Allintitle values for all 346 long-tail keywords. Luckily, WriterZen makes this easier!
Click the “Allintitle” button to command WriterZen to check Allintitle values for keywords in Google SERPs.
Now WriterZen will analyze the Google SERPs for keywords and calculate how many results have the exact keyword phrase in the title. In my example, I wanted to check how many websites have the actual “best web hosting for WordPress” in their SEO titles.
According to WriterZen, 2,270 pages have the ‘best web hosting for WordPress’ as the exact SEO title. This gets to our next step.
How to find best long-tail keywords with the ‘Keyword Golden Ratio’ metric
I bought WriterZen, specifically for finding keywords for content. One feature that caught my attention is the Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR). WriterZen has developed an internal structure/mechanism to calculate a score that represents the value of a keyword phrase based on:
- The orgnic competition
- Search volume
- CPC
- PPC competition
How does WriterZen calculate the Keyword Golden Ratio?
KGR = Allintitle / SearchVol x ClassRatio
Whereas:
ClassRatio Ratio WriterZen developed to classify value for 3 different keywords levelLevel 1: Top value keywords – Low allintitle competition & high search volume
Allintitle < 100 & Search Vol >100: KGR range 0 – 30Level 2: Medium value keywords – Low allintitle competition & low search volume
Allintitle < 100 & Search Vol < 100: KGR range 30 – 70Level 3: High competition keywords – High allintitle competition
WriterZen
Allintitle > 100
It is very easy to do if you are wondering how to find long-tail keywords with high KGR. Just filter the keywords with a less than 30 KGR value and a minimum of four words.
As you can see, there are many keyword ideas with clear intent.
- Woocommernce print on demand
- Elementor landing page templates
- adobe xd to WordPress
Not only many of those long-tail keywords with high ranking possibilities, but also blog post ideas.
WriterZen has other amazing features, such as keyword insights and clustering, that you can use to find more long-tail keywords.
Now since you know how to find long-tail keywords with WriterZen, let’s move to the next tool.
BrandOverflow
BrandOverflow is another search engine optimization tool that lets you do many tasks, such as finding keywords for YouTube videos, analyzing backlinks, checking SERPs, and tracking Google keyword rankings. I have written a dedicated article that reviews BrandOverflow SEO tools and their benefits. In this article on finding long-tail keywords with BrandOverflow, I will easily explain how to get keyword ideas.
How to find long tail keywords with BrandOverflow
Create your BrandOverflow account and go to the “Longtail Keywords Generator” section.
Enter the keyword, select the country and language and click the “Generate Report” button.
Once BrandOverflow finishes the report, click on the report name to get access.
Unlike WriterZen, BrandOverflow does not support filtering keywords based on the number of words. That is a huge downside. However, you can use BrandOverflow to check the global search volume, which WriterZen currently does not support.
Your Tracking reports
One area most content marketers ignore when researching long-tail keywords is their own tracking reports. For example, if you have set up Google Analytics, you can see which keywords drive traffic to your site. And you will see most longtail keywords that are ranking but not optimized internally and contextually.
Therefore, you can dive into search queries and optimize already ranking pages or create new ones.
However, there is a caveat. Google Analytics stopped providing all keywords your site ranks for in Google SERP.
Why?
Well, their reasoning was “making search more secure.” But, you can unlock those “no provided” keywords using a tool.
It is Keyword Hero. I have already compiled a detailed tutorial on setting up the Keyword Hero for your site. Check it out in this Keyword Hero review.
The downside is that KeywordHero only supports Google, not other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, eCosia, Duckduckgo, and Baidu. But, if you want to do SEO right, you must first optimize your site for Google. The rest will follow.
Google Search Console
Another reliable way to find longtail keywords is through your Google Search Console and other webmaster tools’ keywords insights.
How to find long tail keywords with Google Search Console
Log into your Google Search Console (GSC) and select the property you want to check its keywords data. Next, navigate to the Search Analytics section.
One downside of using GSC is that the keywords column will be limited to 1,000 rows. One way to overcome this is to dive in through the web page.
Also, you can utilize search filters to find keywords with prepositions to discover unused long-tail keywords in your content.
Your pages might have already been optimized for some of those keywords. But chances are there will be a lot of golden keywords that your pages do not even mention at once, but Google still ranks your site for them. Dive a bit deeper and identify those long-tail keyword opportunities.
Here are more keyword research and SEO guides you might be interested in:
- Four Ways to Find Your Competitors’ Keywords in the Next 5 Minutes
- Best Keyword Research Tools Every Blogger must Know of
- The Importance of Keyword Research in Search Engine Optimization
- Content Theft is illegal. Here’s How to Steal Traffic Instead!
- 25 Best SEO Tools That Can Change Your Blogging Career
Conclusion on How to find Long Tail Keywords
Long Tail SEO is practical, not just because long-tail keywords are less competitive and the possibility of ranking your landing pages higher on SERPs in a quicker time, but also because they can drive high-quality traffic + sales. Unlike head-tail keywords, you can target multiple long-tail keywords in one article.
The easiest way to rank for long-tail keywords is to find low competitive long-tail keywords and optimize each keyword for your target landing page. Use proper on-page optimization tactics such as interlinking, titling, creating SEO-friendly URL structures, and other content marketing SEO strategies.
Although you can use Google Keyword Planner for keyword research, we already know that it has become less webmaster friendly and more advertiser-friendly. Yes, it is a fact. So for content marketing campaigns (blog post creation, video marketing projects, presentations, eBooks, PDF files, micro-blogging), you should pay close attention to other top-notch SEO tools.
In this article, we discussed how to find long-tail keywords properly.
So how do you research Long Tail Keywords for SEO? Do you use any other keyword research tool?
Nice Post Chamal,
I would like to add that there is also a service called HitTail which provides a one year free trial for Bloggers and performs exactly as your premium service.
Also it is a believed fact that all these services pull out data from Google Adwords external tool.
What do you believe ?
Yes, I have heard that HitTail is a perfect long-tail keyword search tool. But, i haven't tried it out so far. Yes, every tool, even some other top-notch SEO tools fetch data from Google servers. It's a clear sign that many SaaS companies and other services depend on Google!
As i showcased in above, why i like LongTailPro is that it has a few tools for niche marketing. It's a perfect tool to find target audience without using any web-app. In these days, a lot of SEO tools come into play. But, still many professional bloggers use LongTailPro to find long-tail keywords.
Thanks Rachit for sharing your valuable comment.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful and helpful post about keywords.
Mohinder, Glad you found it helpful. Let me know if I can help you in any other way. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts about the post.
I have download LongTail Pro’s demo version but it is now opening in my pc. It is showing ‘This Installation of This Application Is Damaged.
I don’t have much knowledge about Keyword research but today when i read your post seriously i learnt many new things. But i want to learn to use Google Adword Planner, can you tell me that Does Google Adwords Planner work better than LongTail Pro?
Make sure you installed the original longtailpro software. If the problem still exists, contact the longtailpro support team and they will help you.
In fact longtailpro fetches the keyword data from Google. So you can get same keyword from Google keyword planner too. But longtailpro has more tools such as compettior research. On other hand, longtailpro has more controls such as filtering keyword data. If you want to learn more about keyword research, do a simple search on this site.
Hi thanks for interesting content, when you have long tail keywords, you can try free php kgr reasearch tool with tutorial which i develop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQsGHZSY64I