Are you struggling to get traffic from Google?
Maybe it's because all of those juicy keywords are dominated by mega publications and authorities
in your niche.
Well, I've got two and a half words for you that's going to help you solve this problem.
Long-tail keywords.
And in this video, I'm going to show you how to find, choose, and rank for long tail keywords
to get a crazy amount of search traffic.
Stay tuned.
[music]
What's up SEOs, Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic,
research your competitors, and dominate your niche.
Now, today, we're going to dig deep into the growing your search traffic part with long
tail keywords, and the byproduct will be dominating your niche.
Now, I'm excited and I hope you are too, so let's get to it.
So what are long tail keywords?
Long tail keywords are search queries with low individual search volume but can have
an enormous total search demand as a group.
The name comes from the "long tail" of the so-called "search demand curve," which is
a graph, that plots all keywords by their search volumes.
For example, if you look at the topic of cute cats and a few long tail variations in Ahrefs'
Keywords Explorer, the first keyword would be at the head of the curve because of its
popularity, the cutest cat in the world would be a long tail keyword somewhere further down,
and the other two phrases would be at the end of the tail since they're unpopular ways
to search for the topic, but there are numerous variations that would likely add up to a massive
cumulative search volume.
So long tail keywords are defined by search volume and not because the actual keywords
are long or have X number of words in them.
But naturally, in most cases, long-tail keywords are going to be lengthier since more words
often communicate a more specific query, right?
But let me quickly bust a myth on keyword length vs. search volume because longer words
don't always mean lower search volume.
If you look at these 3 keyword phrases in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer, you'll see that
the 4 and 5-word phrases have significantly more search volume than the two-word phrase,
"lose weight."
And I'm not just picking a topic that I know fits the bill.
In fact, we studied 1.4 billion keywords and found that 9.3% of keywords with over one
million monthly searches have 3 or more words.
And if you look to the other side of the graph, you'll see that there are still a good number
of unpopular one-word keywords that have less than 50 searches per month as indicated in
purple.
So Ha!
Myth busted.
Now every single topic has a search demand curve and they fall into two distinct buckets.
So topics that fall into bucket #1 are usually broad and have a very long tail with a ton
of relevant phrases.
Looking at the top 10 ranking pages in Keywords Explorer for the query, "hairstyles," you'll
see that most of these pages rank for thousands or tens of thousands of different relevant
keywords.
And bucket #2 are usually topics that are much more focused and will have much fewer
long-tail keywords.
So for example, if you look at the SERP for, "squeeze page", you'll see that the number
of keyword rankings is significantly less because the topic is so focused.
Now, these two types of long tail keywords are clearly quite different and it's important
that you treat them differently too.
So let's explore these buckets and I'll show you how to choose and find long tail keyword
phrases for each one.
Bucket #1 is called "the long tail of broad topics".
And these tend to have a few high volume search terms and a ton of long-tail variations.
So the search query, "how to lose weight," is the perfect example.
If you look at keyword rankings for Healthline's weight loss article, you'll see that they
have around 9500 keyword rankings in the US that rank in a top 10 position in Google.
People are essentially looking for the same thing, but they're typing in all sorts of different
variations with the same or similar search intent.
So the head term here is clearly, "weight loss," which has 109,000 searches per month,
meaning that any queries with let's say, 500 searches per month are 100% long-tails right?
So let's filter for these keywords that still rank in the top 10 and you'll see that there
are still over 9100 keywords.
These are the long tail keywords for the topic on weight loss and they account for 96% of
this page's keyword rankings.
But this is much more than just another "fun fact."
There are two very actionable tips to take away from this:
Number one, by ranking high for this "head term," you'll almost always rank for the thousands
of other long tail searches.
So when you pick your topics, always look to the ones that have the largest total search
traffic potential.
And number two is equally important.
If Google "merges" a long tail keyword into a bigger topic, then there's no point in targeting
it, right?
Think about it:
we already know that Google will rank one broad article for thousands of search queries.
So by trying to publish dedicated articles that target a single long-tail keyword within
the broad topic, you'll achieve nothing but wasted time.
Here's some proof.
This article from Healthline generates around 490 thousand search visitors globally, each
month.
And they rank for a ton of keywords.
But here's the thing:
not all topics with a ton of long tail keywords have super high search volumes.
For example, if you look at these search volume metrics, then you'll see that SEO tips has
more than double the search volume of "submit your website to search engines."
So at first glance, it seems like a better topic to target, right?
Not necessarily.
If we look at the SERP for SEO tips, then you'll see that the top ranking pages get
significantly less traffic than the search volume for the main keyword, and they don't
rank for that many different keywords either.
Now let's look at the SERP for the query, "submit website to search engines."
You'll see quite the opposite effect.
The traffic numbers are more than triple the search volume of the top keyword, and most
of these pages rank for thousands of keywords.
So again, always analyze the SERP to see the total traffic these pages generate and look
at the number of keywords these pages rank for.
An easy way to find these long-tail topics is to look up a popular website in Site Explorer.
So I'll search for healthline.com.
Next, I'll go to the top pages report, which will show us their pages that get the most
search traffic.
And since we're talking about topics with tons of long-tail keywords, let's sort the
results in descending order by the number of keywords each page ranks for.
In order to identify these long tail topic opportunities, you want to look at these columns:
traffic, keywords, top keyword, its volume, and position.
So let's analyze their top pages, and set a checklist to identify the most obvious long
tail topic opportunities.
First, the page must rank in the top 5 for their top keyword.
Next, they should rank for lots of keywords and get a good amount of search traffic.
So far so good.
The final point is that the page should get significantly more traffic than you'd expect
based on their ranking position compared to the search volume of their top keyword.
And in Healthline's case, that only excludes a couple of these pages.
So now we have a ton of long tail topics that we could create for our own website if we
were in the health niche.
And I actually have to point out this one with the top keyword bumps on skin that has
a search volume of 8,400, but the page gets over one hundred thousands search visitors
each month.
That's bananas!
Now, it's important to note that you should also look at the number of referring domains
that the page has.
And this should be a good indication of how many links you'll need in order to get similar
rankings and be competitive in search.
Now, why should you care as an SEO?
Because by picking topics with more long tail keywords, you'll generate a lot more organic
traffic than the search volume of just the "main keyword" since you'll be ranking for
so many other long-tail variations.
These long tail topics are ideal for established websites that can or have a history of ranking
for head terms.
And by ranking for your head term, there's an element of predictability to know that
your pages will rank for tons of other long tail variations with relative ease.
Alright, so we've covered the long tail of broad topics, but there's a completely different
type of long-tail keyword, which has its own bucket.
And that's topical long tail keywords.
These keywords represent individual topics of their own rather than being part of a bigger
topic.
So for example, if we look up "keyword cannibalization" in Keywords Explorer, you'll see that this
query has a monthly search volume of 150 in the United States.
Scrolling down to the top 10 SERP, you'll see that the top ranking pages get significantly
less traffic than the suggested search volume and none of the pages rank for a particularly
large number of keywords.
The topic of keyword cannibalization doesn't fit into a larger topic.
It's a topic in itself and the long tail keywords within it happen to be much smaller than broader
topics like "weight loss."
So why should you care about these long tail keywords?
The obvious answer is that since search volumes are much lower than the "fat head" keywords,
the competition is usually going to be much weaker.
So you'll have a better chance at ranking for them and you'll likely see results much faster
than going after competitive terms like, "how to lose weight."
The not-so-obvious reason is that you can still generate tons of perfectly relevant
traffic if you rank for 20 to 50 long tail topics.
For example, if you look at the SERP overview for the keyword, "how to help my husband lose
weight," which is a good example of our so-called "topical long tail keyword," you'll see that
the top keyword has a search volume of 60, and the page gets 76 search visitors per month.
And to put the cherry on the top, the top ranking page has 0 referring domains pointing
at it, so it's likely a low competition keyword.
Now if you were to create 20 pages around different long-tail topics that individually
generate 70 search visitors per month, then you're looking at 1,400 monthly search visitors.
That my friend is cumulative value.
So how can you find a whole bunch of these topics with ease?
I have three super simple strategies for you.
The first one is to look for modifier keywords within a larger topic.
So if we look at the phrase match report for the keyword, "black shoes," then you can use
the "include" feature and type in a modifier keyword like, "with."
And you can see right away that there are almost 2,800 awesome keywords and by looking
at the keyword difficulty scores, they all seem like pretty easy topics to rank for.
If we look at the SERP overview for the keyword, "black shoes with navy suit," which has 600
searches per month, you'll see that all of the ranking pages get a decent amount of traffic,
and almost all of the pages have little to no backlinks.
Clicking through to this page, you'll see that the content is rather thin with a few
images so you won't need to worry about creating monstrous guides to outrank them.
You can then click on the number of keywords, and investigate further for long tail variations
and subtopics within the Organic Keywords Report.
These would be much easier to rank for than a fat head term like "shoes."
The next strategy is to append locations to your product or service keywords.
For example, if we look at the phrase match report for "rent a truck in", you'll see hundreds
of results that are all very low competition.
Now, this might seem underwhelming since the search volume is really low, but take roughly 300
keywords multiplied by 10, and you have 3,000 searches per month now.
In this example, I would guess they hold commercial value too.
Keep in mind, that even though Ahrefs' keyword database is absolutely monstrous, it
doesn't contain all possible search queries that people might search for.
So there's a lot of low hanging traffic here up for grabs.
The third strategy is to look at questions on a topic.
And the best part about this is that you can actually do it in very competitive niches.
So let's type in "weight loss" in Keywords Explorer.
Next, go to the questions report.
Since it's a very competitive niche as you can see from the keyword difficulty score,
let's set the max KD to something low like 5.
And I bet you would have never thought about targeting these long tail keyword topics on
your own.
With these questions, you can create your own FAQ section on your website and start
getting a ton of long tail traffic from these phrases.
These so-called 'topical long tail keywords,' are great for new websites or those that haven't
quite built an authoritative backlink profile yet.
You should be able to get traction quicker than targeting the long tail of broad topics
since you'll essentially be going for low-competition keywords.
And as your site builds a solid backlink profile, you can start branching off to the broader
topics.
So I want you to take this key point away from this tutorial.
96.54% of all search queries in the US have less than 50 searches per month.
So by neglecting these long tail keyword phrases, you're missing out on the majority of searches
that happen every day.
But now you have a perfect understanding of the two types of long tail keywords, those
that belong to a broader topic and those that form a topic of their own.
So keep grinding away, use these tactics and strategies to get ahead of other SEOs, and
I'll see you in the next tutorial.