Have you set your blogging goal to have 100 plus posts or already reached it? Without doubt, it is important to have a schedule of posting articles on your blog regularly. But what if only a few keywords are ranked on the first search pages and your hard work does not have desired results. The reason may be the fact that you focus on short or mid-sized keywords. One of the solutions is to learn how to use long-tail keywords to maximize your SEO efforts.

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What Are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords are phrases from several words, more than three, with low search volume, but more clicks.

The term comes from a long-tail effect. It is demonstrated by a curve reflecting search volume and the resulting clicks or conversion.

The key reason why long-tail keywords are effective is personalization, targeting specific needs of users. The more specific the keyword, the greater the conversion rate.

How to Use Long-Tail Keywords to Maximize SEO

To select the most appropriate keywords, use the Keyword Magic Tool by Semrush.

It is the most effective tool for bloggers and online buinesses that will help you research and find long-tail keywords for your specific niche. It is easy-to-use with a huge volume of keywords, exceeding several billions. Filter results by the number of words in a keyphrase and get them categorized into topics. The number of results varies, starting with 10 in a free version and thousands in paid plans.

The curve above illustrates ‘a long tail‘ created by Best Managed WordPress Hosting (a long-tail keyword). It has 380 users searching for it monthly and 270 clicking. As a result, search volume and clicks approach each other closely, pointing to a high conversion rate.

Managed WordPress Hosting is a mid-sized keyword, with the search volume being 1,100 and 900 clicks, while WordPress Hosting is a short keyword with the largest numbers, but lower conversion. Out of 12,600 people searching for this phrase 9,600 click.

Taking into account the keyword difficulty level, a long-tail keyword is easier to rank for than the mid-sized and short keywords.

Therefore, to use long-tail keywords, choose those that can balance lower difficulty and higher monthly search volume and clicks and target specific users’ needs and niche.

Long-Tail Niche Keywords, Value, and Personalization

Niche keywords can be defined as those in which a specific group of users is interested. Therefore, when choosing long-tail keywords make them highly personalized to deliver value to some pecific group.

You can deliver value through offering solutions to some specific issues that a group of people faces and is searching for.

For example, How to Install WordPress has 3,600 people searching for related information and 2,900 clicks per month. It targets a blogging niche and a specific category of users who want to know how to install and use WordPress to create a blog. Therefore, this long-tail keyword is aimed to meet their needs and solve a problem of being unaware of how to create a WordPress blog. As a result, searching for this specific keyword, users are more likely to click to solve the issue they have.

In contrast, WordPress Blog has a high search rate with 9,600 users and 7,400 clicks and a very high difficulty level. It means that your blog is likely to never get ranked using this short keyphrase. It is not personalized to deliver specific value or solve a problem because it is just a broad topic.

The research by Donnelly et al. (2021) show that personalization increases conversion by 30%, which means that focuing on personalized keywords with a long tail effect is more effective than just targeting short keywords relating to broad topics with very low probability to rank for. Such general phrases do not deliver some specific value to a narrow group. As a result, it compromises user experience.

Affiliate Marketing and the Long-Tail Effect

If you prefer affiliate marketing as a site monetization method, the long-tail effect is the most important for your marketing strategy. It is created by specific niche items that you may aim to promote. For example, instead of targeting the general category of make-up products, choose a long-tail keyword imparting the message of solving an issue of a specific group of buyers.

For example, there is a greater conversion rate for atopic skin creams than for creams. Besides, as it has been mentioned earlier, it is easier to get ranked using the first than the second. After choosing the most specific long-tail keywords, create content that will be highly informative and valuable, helping readers find the most effective creams for their atopic skin, ingredients, side effects, etc., to make their buying choice and decision.

For affiliate marketing of atopic skin creams, create product lists with reviews, product round-ups, or a review of a specific product, narrowing down the target reader group to people searching for a particular product.

Track Long-Tail Keyword Performance

After creating posts with long-tail keywords, track your search engine rankings using MonsterInsights, a WordPress plugin for analytics. Check user egagement, time spent reading the post, and conversion percentage.

It will allow you planning further marketing campaigns based on the results you have achieved so far.

Plan SEO Strategies Based on Long-Tail Keywords

After conducting keyword research, create a list, on which you will further plan SEO. Title it with a particular niche. Then, enumerate all niche items, related long-term keywords, SEO headings, meta descriptions, and a planned publication date.

Overall, take into account the following steps that will help you use long-tail keywords to maximize your SEO:

• choose a niche,
• determine niche items or topics,
• do keyword research using Keyword Magic Tool by Semrush.,
• identify value to deliver with blog post content,
• eveluate keyword difficulty (competition), search volume, and overall clicks,
• personalize your blog article,
• track results,
• develop further marketing strategies.

Reference

Donnelly, R., Kanodia, K., & Morozov, I. (2021). The long tail effect of personalized rankings. SSRN. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3649342