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Neil Patel

How to Generate 20,000 Monthly Visitors Through Long-Tail Search

Neil Patel

Do you want more search visitors?

Search engines aren’t the only source of targeted visitors, but effectively targeting long-tail keywords in your content can greatly increase your monthly search visitors.

I’ve generated 173,336 qualified visitors from long-tail keyword phrases in the past year – a 91% increase.

Your long-tail keywords may not rank in Google’s top 10 results and it’s true that 60% of all organic clicks go to the top 3 search results, but that still leaves 40% up for grabs.

Working with your team, you can easily capture those extra clicks by employing long-tail keywords.

If you consistently publish in-depth content around long-tail keywords, you’ll see an increase in search traffic, attract paying customers and grow your brand.

Now that you know the potential impact of long-tail key phrases on your site growth, let’s dive in and learn how to sustain that organic traffic.

In this article, we’ll cover these four topics:

1. How to research long-tail keywords

Many people think that keyword research is no longer important. But, that’s not true; keyword tools are essential. In fact, research – particularly of long-tail keywords – can help you craft the kind of content that engages and inspires readers.

One of the questions I get asked weekly is: “How long should a long-tail keyword be?” And, my answer has always been “four keywords or more.” The longer the keyword, the easier it is for you to rank well for that keyword.

Here are some examples of good long-tail keywords in the fitness niche:

To research your own long-tail keywords, follow these simple steps:

Step #1: Start with seed keywords. Let’s assume that you want to target the keyword “copywriting.” To find long-tail variations on that seed keyword, go to the Google Ads Keyword Planner and type in copywriting. Then, scroll down and click “Get ideas.”

Step #2: Click on the keywords tab to show all of the keywords related to copywriting.

Step #3: Look for the most relevant in-demand keywords. Make sure that the keyword you selected is relevant, because you’ll be expanding on it for longer variations.

Step #4: Copy one of the keywords highlighted in red above and plug it into the search box for long-tail variations.

Understand long-tail keyword intent: The intent behind any particular keyword is much more important than the keyword itself. According to Tom Fanelli, “when you think about intent, good keywords will follow.” Your content will improve as a result.

Long-tail keywords that address the need of the searcher or solve a definite problem will most likely rank well on Google, compared to similar head keywords.

When you use a keyword strategy, don’t be perturbed by Google’s algorithm changes. Focus on what really matters and you can be confident in the decisions you make.

Customers who type descriptive key phrases (long-tail) are generally more qualified than those who type head keywords or short tail phrases. As a result, the conversion rates are higher for long-tail keywords, as compared to head keywords.

But, most customers aren’t ready to buy yet. Some prefer to browse, while others want to learn about the product before placing their order. What buying cycle does your keyword fall into?

If consumers haven’t made up their mind to purchase, they’ll probably search for “informational keywords.”

Examples:

However, when searchers are ready to buy, they use keywords displaying commercial intent.

Examples:

Commercial keywords usually contain certain prefixes (words that appear before) or suffixes (words that appear after), which modify or qualify the long tail keywords. Small business owners would do well to learn the buy words. Here are some of the popular ones:

You’ll usually find both informational and commercial intent keywords in your research. With consistency, you can improve your search ranking by targeting the keywords with useful and detailed content. Here’s an example:

2. Long-tail Keywords Case Studies

So many bloggers and website owners are now taking full advantage of long-tail key phrases as their foremost keyword tool, because these search terms are low hanging fruit – easier to reach and pick. Long-tail SEO is all about filling a void, answering a question and helping search users save time.

Case study: Marcus Sheridan, founder of River Pools and Spas, wrote an in-depth blog post targeting the keyword “problems with fiberglass pools.”

Even though he’s not ranking #1 for the head keyword (fiberglass pools), this single web page ranks #1 in Google for the long-tail keyword.

Some of the in-depth articles that I wrote in the last few months rank highly in Google results. For example, I targeted a long-tail search term (how to write email subject lines) earlier this year. Check out my current search ranking position. While it’s only at the top of page two, it’ll continue to climb thanks to the selection of the right keywords.

Some of the benefits of targeting visitors using a long tail search are:

1). Boost your search rankings: Spend your time crafting the best content possible for your target audience, then promote it to the right people. You can even repurpose your content, so that people will continue to benefit from it. This is a good small business time management strategy since the content already exists and search engines give it positive results.

If you’re struggling to achieve good rankings in search results, there could be any one of many reasons why that’s happening. One of the most common reasons is duplicate content on your site. To resolve that problem, either remove the duplicate content or make it unique.

Once that has been done, focus on your audience. Write content that solves their problems and optimize it properly for search. Instead of focusing on long-tail key phrases just for the fun of it, focus on user intent.

On-page keyword usage is still one of the major ranking factors for content and it can’t be ignored in today’s SEO.

That’s where easy rankings lie. It doesn’t matter how competitive a long-tail keyword is; if users are happy after reading your content, watching your video or listening to your podcast, they’ll be happy to share it.

Since user intent is more important than the keyword itself, Google will reward you with more search volume, as long as your content is helpful. For example, let’s say the long-tail keyword you’re targeting is:

weight loss guides for beginners

As you write and publish detailed long-form articles, you’ll gradually start showing up in Google for related long-tail search terms, such as:

And so on…

So, to reiterate: when you start ranking for several related long-tail key terms, your search traffic will increase.

Ogio Bags gets lots of organic search volume from more than 50 search queries. But, the author (a friend of mine) targets less than ten long-tail keywords.

Some of the long-tail keywords that are performing well for him are:

3).   Improved conversion rate: SEO and CRO play well together. When you target that low-hanging fruit, your conversion rate will definitely improve.

Everything has to work together. That includes your content, site load time, call-to-action etc. Everything is important, because on-site conversion begins from site design.

 

Take Me Fishing focused on content optimization, which increased their traffic by almost 1,000%. The site began ranking #1 in Google for a profitable and in-demand keyword, “best fishing spots.” They also reduced the site’s bounce rate and enjoyed an increase of 946% in organic traffic, year over year.

I’ve shared several success stories from individuals and corporate sites that increased their search rankings and traffic, simply by focusing on long-tail key phrases.

However, there are still some SEO myths that you should ignore:

Myth 1: Target long-tail keywords only. A typical keyword that your target audience is searching for usually comes in two variations: short tail and long  tail keywords.

If you over-optimize for either of these keywords, you risk getting penalized by Google. Next thing you know, your traffic starts to trend downward.

Another problem is the excessive use of either type of keyword as anchor text. Focusing on just the longer keyword variations in your content is an SEO myth.

Of course, if you include content built on long-tail keywords, based on user intent and designed to help your reader instead of on manipulating your rankings, you won’t have to worry about Google Panda or Penguin updates.

The major reason why you should target short-tail keywords, in addition to long-tail key phrases, is because the longer the keywords, the lower the search volume. Especially for a small business, search volume is branding and good content will bring those visitors back when they are ready with a long tail search phrase.

This also means that it’s going to take a lot of time before you see significant results in both traffic and rankings.

iMyth 2: Always use the exact long-tail keywords in your headline – This advice may seem harmless, but it’s not the best approach. Sure, there are several benefits to targeting this type of key term, but there are also drawbacks.

Be exceedingly mindful of what you add to your headlines. They’re the first thing that users see and they’re what motivate or discourage clicks.

The rule of thumb is this: If you research and discover a keyword that flows smoothly and naturally when you read it, then feel free to use it in your headline. Otherwise, it can result in keyword stuffing and a low-quality content penalty.

For example, these keywords flow smoothly:

You can use these keywords in your headlines. For instance:

In contrast, the keywords below look spammy and should not be used in your headlines:

The above keywords have commercial intent, but they don’t look or sound natural at all. If you add them exactly as they appear in your headline, you’ll confuse users and chase them away. You could even get a Google penalty.

Myth 3: Long-tail key phrases are less expensive. Most PPC advertisers think this is true, but it’s not necessarily so. Dig deeper and you might find some expensive long-tail phrases.

Even SEO experts know that most keywords and search phrase that fall into this category are expensive and take time to improve your organic rankings.

In the same way, the suggested bid on most long-tail search queries is very high, because of the perceived value, demand and intent behind the search.

Bottom line: SEO is a long-term practice for small business. Don’t expect sudden overnight increases in rankings and organic traffic. However, it’s possible to achieve tremendous search results in a matter of weeks.

Myth 4: You should aim to be on the first page of Google results.  Even though SEOs, bloggers, website owners and content marketers want that #1 Google ranking for their most profitable keywords, that’s just not a good goal to adopt.

In fact, in today’s SEO, it’s possible to grab that #1 position and still not generate enough clicks, leads, and sales.

There is really just one reason why most headlines aren’t clicked: the headline doesn’t inspire searchers to click.

Headlines not clickable: Getting users to click your link on those result pages is crucial. If your headline doesn’t inspire search users to click it and visit your site, you’re doomed.

When your headlines don’t inspire, people won’t click. Or, sometimes they might decide to click, but quickly click the back button, in order to check out the catchy headline that’s attracting them.

When that happens, your rankings will gradually drop, because Google will conclude that users aren’t satisfied with your content.

Note: A great headline catches people’s attention, but it can also motivate you to write in-depth content. It can even give you ideas for subtitles, bullet points and calls-to-action that are great for any long tail search.

Finally, write your headlines in sentence case. Don’t capitalize every word and don’t write in lower case. Research shows that 64% of search users will respond to relevant headlines that are written in sentence case.

Sentence case doesn’t look like this:

It looks like this:

3. Long-tail Ranking Elements

In this section, we’ll discuss the important elements that will give your long-tail keywords a boost in the search engines.

When users type a particular keyword or search phrase into the box, Google uses up to 200 factors to determine how relevant, useful and authoritative your content page is for the given term, before ranking it.

According to Inforza, “93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.” This means that even before your users get fully involved with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, they’ll use a search engine first.

Let’s review some of the core elements that will get you top rankings when you target long-tail keywords:

Keyword-rich headlines: Front-load your headline with relevant keywords. Most people scan the first two words of your headline to determine whether or not it’s relevant to what they’re looking for.

For example, the most shared content relating to the keyword “monetize a blog,” had the keyword or a variation of it before any other significant word.

I write keyword-rich headlines and this has contributed to hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to all of my blogs. I also grew the KISSmetrics blog from 0 to 350,000 blog readers per month with this strategy.

Let’s write some clickable and keyword-rich headlines, using some of the long-tail key phrases below:

The search terms are:

Making money from home

Stay at home jobs

How to make extra money

a).   Headlines for making money from home:

Making Money From Home: 5 Steps You Should Take

How Making Money From Home Is Possible in 3 Steps

7 Tips For Making Money From Home That Work

b).  Headlines for stay at home jobs:

The Top 5 Stay at Home Jobs That Pay

Stay at Home Jobs: How to Get Started in 15 Minutes

10 Stay at Home Jobs That Pay Every Week

c).  Headlines for how to make extra money:

How to Make Extra Money With Affiliate Marketing

How to Make Extra Money to Pay Your Monthly Bills

Another approach is to find a very popular article with thousands of social shares and improve it by making it your own.

 

Step #1: Go to Buzzsumo. Type in the keyword (e.g., social media strategies) that you want to use for your headline. Then click “Go.”

Step #2: Analyze your results and pick headlines that you can improve.

From the main keyword (social media strategies), you can tell that neither headline above is really targeting it.

More so, the user intent isn’t accounted for. People who are searching for the given keyword are probably looking for ways to promote their online business through social media marketing. They don’t want to audit their site or discover social media mistakes.

So, let’s make the headlines keyword-rich, relevant, clickable and sharable. Remember our target keyword is: social media strategies.

Original headline: The Top 15 Social Media Marketing Strategy Mistakes to Avoid

Fresh headlines:

Original headline: How to Build a Content Strategy Using a Social Media Audit

Just-created headlines:

Caution: Avoid keyword stuffing. How? When you use a keyword in your headline, make sure that you limit its usage in the body. Your keyword density should be less than 1%. Focus on helping people, not manipulating search rankings.

Internal linking: The second element that will help you succeed at long-tail keyword targeting is internal linking. Internal links are usually hyperlinks that point to web pages on the same domain.

Pay attention to what’s happening within your site, because that’s something that you can completely control. That’s also why Google looks seriously at the links pointing to your internal and archive pages.

What makes Wikipedia the #1 content site in the world? It’s diligent about linking to internal pages, no matter what the subject.

The above article on Wikipedia links to over 50 other pages. Linking to important pages on the same domain heats up the page and passes more juice or value to it.

When you consistently link to internal pages in your content, Google will assume that you care about user experience. That’s important because there is virtually no single piece of content that will address every question your user is asking related to one initial search phrase.

By linking to your already-published articles, you’re meeting your user’s expectations and engaging them. And, the more links they click, the more time they’ll spend on your site – thus increasing the authority of your site.

In summary, here’s how to do internal linking:

Suggestions for anchor text for links to your web page on “starting a blog” are:

Further study:

Trusted links: Links are still the currency of the web. Of course, it’s possible to increase your search traffic and rankings without building links, but you have to be patient and your content has to be high quality, trending and helpful.

In today’s SEO, there are two factors that you should look out for when building links: Domain Authority and Page Authority.

Social engagement: More than ever before, social signals are important SEO factors. Your target audience usually spends more time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest than they do on other sites. So, you have to involve them in your content to increase search volume.

Social signals don’t improve your search rankings directly, but they do lead to engagement which helps your rankings. They also reduce bounce rate, send quality links back to your internal web pages and pass link juice to your pages.

Since your headline usually appears above-the-fold, remember to use long-tail keywords in your headline. Also, use strong call-to-action instructions below-the-fold, because that’s where 65.7% of engagement happens.

Further study:

4. Long-tail Keyword Research Tools

Manual SEO is a waste of time. You don’t have to build links with fancy tools, but you can research keywords and track ranking positions with helpful SEO tools.

There are 4 important metrics that you should track with SEO software tools:

Since our goal is to generate more monthly search visitors through long-tail traffic, we need tools that will make the work easier.

Some of the tools that you can use to research long-tail keywords very quickly are:

Keywordtool.io: You can get up to 750 long-tail variations of your keywords for free with this SEO tool. Just visit the homepage, input your primary keyword (e.g., car spray paint) and click the orange search button.

Here are the results that you’ll get:

Google Ads Keyword Planner: Google’s own tool is reliable and holds a large portion of market share. This means that more searches are conducted on their search engine and stored in a secure database. It’s hard to argue against the master’s keyword tool; they have the search data.

I recently discovered a simple way to use Google’s keyword planner to generate longer keyword variations. The trick is to type in a question-based keyword.

For example, if you want to rank your web pages for profitable keywords related to marketing automation, type “what is the best marketing automation software” in Google’s keyword planner.

Here are the long-tail keywords that you can target in your content:

Google related & auto-suggest: I’ve used auto-suggest as a rudimentary keyword tool to find keywords that helped me gain 200,000 monthly visitors. As simple as it is, it works effectively.

Another option, besides the above tools, is to use regular Google search as a keyword tool. Just type in your keyword and you’ll get relevant and less competitive long-tail keywords:

Also, scroll down the search results page to find any related search phrase at the bottom.

Conclusion

Some SEOs claim that there are under-the-radar secrets for improving your search rankings and traffic.

But, I’ve been targeting long-tail keywords in my blog posts, video courses, and advanced guides. This search phrase strategy works.

Always remember that the main reason to conduct keyword research isn’t to manipulate search engines into ranking your web page. Instead, you want to understand what your target audience is looking for, what questions keep them up at night and what they’re thinking when they use Google search.

It all boils down to creating useful content for your users so that they’ll be satisfied and share it with others. That’s how SEO and social shares work together to increase your sales through long-tail traffic.

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