Long-Tail Keywords and SEO

Let’s clear up the mystery about long-tail keyword phrases

We all know that good SEO is key for getting traffic to our work. If you want to get more traffic to your articles, long tail keywords may be a tool you are underusing.

As a trained SEO professional, I have recently posted several articles on how to improve the SEO of your work. While reading about SEO may not be your cup of tea today — if you are a freelancer, or dream about becoming a freelance writer and working from home, you need to take the time for it. I did, and learning about SEO has changed my life for the better.

Here are links to other SEO articles that may be of help to you:

• Make that Metadata Work for You
• Improve SEO in Your Articles: Stop Words
• SEO Tricks You Need to Make More Money With Your Writing
• An Easy SEO Guide for Poets

Today, we’ll discuss the mystery of long-tail keywords and how that affects the searchability of your articles.

Today’s Takeaways

• What are long tail keywords or long tail focus keywords?
• How can you find profitable long tail keywords?
• What are some tricks for working long tail keywords into your writing?

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

Long tail keywords can be a bit of a mystery for the freelance writer. There’s not really a giant list where you can go and get them, digital services that offer these lists can be costly, and worse — what is searchably popular is ever changing. But what does it mean to have long tail keywords in your work? Let’s take a look at this first.

And no, I am not going to make this so technical that your eyes glaze over. Who cares how it works, really — you need to know the parts that matter most to your writing…so you can be more profitable in what you do.

First, you know about keywords, and that these keywords, placed strategically throughout your work will make your written pieces place better on SERPs (SERP stands for “search engine results page.”), making your work more viewable and searchable for would-be readers, potential subscribers and purchasers of whatever it is that you are selling.

But long tail keywords? What’s that?

Simply put, long tail keywords are phrases, often put together when a person wants to search for information, partially predictable by the way our minds work when we go looking for digital information.

Let’s say we are writing about baby coats. We have a company that sells baby coats and we are responsible for writing an informational blog about choosing the safest baby coats, what types of materials are best, and what you might want to choose based on the age of your baby. First, think of this consumer and ask yourself a few questions:

• What questions might they have about baby coats?
• What is the pain point you’ll need to address?
• What might they type into the search box?

Now, they may simply go to Google and type in “baby coats.” This is a keyword. A very, VERY broad keyword. Think of how many bloggers, companies, news articles, sales sites etc might use the phrase “baby coats” in their digital material on any given day. You’re looking at writing something to compete for rankings for a keyword that has potentially millions of competitors. If you want to be seen online — you are going to have to hustle your tail off to promote such an article, or find a more targeted keyword phrase to rank for on the SERPs and to hone in on the exact type of consumer you are looking for.

So, here comes long tail keywords, which are longer phrases, sometimes really awkward to use in sentences, but which reflect the consumer’s searching habits and may result in a much smaller “audience.” This means you could rank much higher with a long tail keyword focus phrase that attracts a more targeted audience. This makes sense, right? You want to attract a buyer who is far more likely to want what you have, correct?

The SEO trick here is to use that larger keyword, “baby coats,” but also have 1–2 long tail keywords to optimize your work to — so you can try and get top ranking, or at least first page on the SERP.

These are all samples of what a consumer might type in | long tail keywords:

• Where can I buy a baby coat?
• Who sells baby coats?
• safe baby coats
• fancy baby coats
• winter baby coats
• eco-friendly baby wear
• baby coats for Alaska
• baby coats infant

Some of these, as I said before, are rather awkward. That last one “baby coats infant,” for example. Think of the train of thoughts here: a consumer is searching and they may go through something like this:

1. baby coats (way too many results and covering everything in the world)
2. baby coats near me (shopping places and stores nearby, but they really need a coat for an infant and not a toddler. After an hour and a half of searching shopping sites, they are frustrated at none of the coats running small enough)
3. baby coats infant (this is what they type trying to narrow that baby coats search down to what they need)

And now, you need to work “baby coats infant” into multiple sentences throughout your piece, the title, and a few headings. This is complex writing that requires a certain level of creative and knowledgeable skill. You learn to work a few keywords together, regular short broad phrases with longer ones that target your audience.

And this, my friend, is one reason freelance SEO writers are making bank. It’s not easy.

Here’s an example using stop words and punctuation to get that keyword into a paragraph:

Are you getting tired of searching for baby coats? Infant sizes are hard to find, but we have them!

or

New store opens in Rock Hill with baby coats, infant wear, and a variety of educational baby and toddler learning toys and materials. Come by this weekend for our store opening celebration with games and prizes for your little ones!

Finding Profitable Long Tail Keywords

But how do you find these keywords? You can either work your mind through the shopping and search bar habits of your targeted consumer, kind of like what we did above with the ‘baby coats’ example, or you can use keyword research tools to help you do this work. Some of these tools are expensive — and this is because they have advanced metrics in their software to analyze the current search trends and other factors that make for a profitable longtail keyword phrase.

Semrush is one of the most popular.

One of my favorites to use is Surfer SEO, which several of my clients provide for me to use.

Oftentimes, I have to use some creative google search bar games of my own to find them. If you begin typing into the Google search bar, you’ll see prompted responses show up below the search bar — these are keyword predictor tools and you can use those as long tail keywords.

My advice to you is while you work on a topic that you’ll work with again later — make a Google Sheets or an Excel sheet with a long tail keywords list to go back to and use. Otherwise, get yourself a professional research tool for finding long tail keywords. You can use some free ones if you are just doing an article or two on a topic, and these are usually quite limited on what information they provide. You can also ask a client if they have a research keyword tool and ask them to provide a list for you to use.

But note this— many clients will expect you to provide the keywords— after all, this is what they are paying you for! SEO work and writing stellar content to drive their bottom lines and increase their ROI. The more competitive, well-prepared, and valuable you are as a freelancer, the more you can charge.

Working Long Tail Keywords into Your Work

A few tricks can help your piece to rank better and help you get those long tail key words wriggled in in all the right places:

• Your piece will rank better if you have the overall keyword AND the long tail keyword for which you want to rank all optimized.

Example: This contains the shorter, broad phrase, plus the keyword phrase, both EARLY in the title, which is super important.

Baby Coats: Infant Coats You’ll Love for Your Baby!

• Place your long tail keyword in several of your headings: preferrably a mixture of H2 and H3 headings.
• Find at least one place to bold or italicize your long tail keyword. This is called decorating a keyword.
• Use your long tail keyword in the first 100 words of your article.
• Use your long tail keyword in the last 100 words of your article.
• Use the long tail keyword in the metadescription for your article.
• Use a sementic density of approximately 2–2.5 % or less for each keyword. This means for a 1K article you’ll need each phrase to be in there 20 times or less — sprinkled throughout so the phrasing of your article does not feel forced or saturated with keywords.

Long tail keywords are simply one more tool you can use to get more traffic to your articles. Stay tuned to the work of professional freelancer Christina M. Ward for more great resources on how you can make more money with your work, creative ways you can promote your writing, and how to increase your productivity as a working freelance writer. Thanks for reading.

Christina M. Ward is a freelance blogger and the Queen of her own lair right here.