3 Tips Every Newbie Blogger Should Know to Improve SEO with Long Tail Keywords

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If you have been searching for tips, hints and techniques to drive a ton of traffic to your website, the chances are that you have come across the term – SEO. SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing which involves a process of improving the visibility and prominence of your website in search engines, such as, Google, Bing and Yahoo.

The process of search results starts from a keyword you type in search engines. The more optimized your content is to that particular keyword, the probability of getting ranked on Google’s first page is magnified. Generally, keywords with one or two words are extremely hard to rank due to high competition. Established websites have been targeting these keywords a long time ago, hampering new websites to get high ranks. Therefore, the use of long tail keywords should be a viable alternative to get your website easily seen in search engines’ top pages. Ultimately, drive traffic to your website since they are likely to be less competitive.

Long Tail Keywords are generally key phrases with more than two words within a phrase, more specific and targeted to a refined audience. Unlike generic keywords, long tail keywords are less competitive and draw less traffic. However, the bottom line is, long tail keywords can bring your website with high quality traffic which leads to more conversions because when a reader searches for a specific term it gives the result of the exact thing he/she is looking for.

Behind all these, Google, the most popular search engine, released Panda Update and Google Penguin algorithm aiming to downrank websites using black hat SEO techniques, for instance, keyword stuffing, creating duplicate content and participating on peculiar link building strategies.

See also: 5 Quick SEO Tips (hints) From Google Webmaster Central

Getting high ranks on Google has never been as hard as it is today, that’s the reason why you should implement the right techniques that can turn this task into a simplistic mechanism by using long tail keywords to rank in search engine’s first pages where a massive amount of traffic resides.

1.    Choose the Right Long Tail Keywords

Before you jump into crafting your masterpiece content, one step you should consider is the choice of the right keyword phrase. This process is very crucial and determines the visibility of your website in search engines. You should go for less competitive keywords but still with a considerable amount of global searches per month. The best tool I recommend you to use, which is free, is Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool.

For example, the keyword ‘smartphone’ has over 5,000,000 global monthly searches, high competition displaying 415,000,000 results on Google. On the other hand, the keyword ‘top ten smartphones’ shows 33,100 global monthly searches, low competition with 3,600,000 results. Taking a deep analysis on these two keywords, the long tail keyword tends to be much easier to rank than the generic key phrase, which means, it would take you decades to be ranked in Google’s first page if you opted targeting the keyword ‘smartphone’.

Overall, the less competitive a keyword is, the more are the chances of easily getting seen on first pages. Obviously, a long tail keyword does not mean it has to be very big. In any event, Rand explains in this video just how long of a tail you should be optimizing for.

See also: Internet Marketers Top SEO, Keyword and Social Media Tools

2.    Set the Right Keyword Placement

The way you place your long tail keywords within your website plays an integral role on determining the prominence of your website in search engines. If your keywords placement is flabbily structured, your website will end up being rejected and lead your Internet business into a remarkable flop. The right keyword placement involves placing your long tail keywords in title tags, description tags, sub-heading tags, page addresses, link and anchor texts, 404 pages as well as the content of the page you are targeting for a specific keyword.

3.    Build Quality Relevant Backlinks

One of the most effective ways that search engines have been using to index your page in their top ten results of particular keywords is the amount of pages that links to your content. And, that means that readers trust you and find your content valuable, informative and worth linking to it. In elections, the amount of votes a politician gets, determines how people trust him and that leads to a win. The same concept is also applied by search engines.

First, you have to write valuable content, be interesting, convince readers and lastly acquire backlinks from several quality sources, including posting on other blogs of your niche.

See also: How To Evaluate Link Quality, Opportunities, and more

For instance, I intend to get high ranks of the keyword ‘top ten smartphones’. What I do next is prepare a pitch and write on a blog about smartphones. And, within the content or else on the byline, I place my long tail keyword to link the content to my very own website. Besides getting good ranks, what I get from this strategy is high targeted traffic, visibility and exposure on another audience.

Using long tail keywords is a very prospective option that you can opt for if you want to get high quality traffic and rank well on search engines which possess over 85% overall traffic in the internet. Generic keywords are very competitive; experts have already been applying sure-fire techniques to rank for those keywords. Therefore, you should consider long tail keywords not only because are they likely to be less competitive, but also because the traffic your website gets is destined from a refined and more targeted audience.

Kelvon Yeezy

Kelvon Roy is an SEO consultant who specializes in website rankings, traffic generation and online conversions. You can follow his latest posts on Spicy Value

33 thoughts on “3 Tips Every Newbie Blogger Should Know to Improve SEO with Long Tail Keywords”

  • Very useful tips. I personally know many people who miserably failed because they chose too competitive and too short keywords. However, if we choose a few less competitive keywords (long-tail keywords), we can achieve great success, which can ultimately lead to the improvement in our rankings for short-tail keywords.

    • Hi Dave,

      Long tail keywords is a nice alternative to go for. Choosing generic phrases with less than 3 words is a challenge. However, it might take years to see your pages ranking high.

      Cheers

      • I have seen that the mixing of long tail keywords and short keywords is a good thing in my blog. It’s like I am writing without even knowing that Google exists.

        I am saying this bcz- whenever you will target the keywords long tail or short – you are casting your focus away from the content. The recent updates of Google is showing us that we should consider more for the readers than just for the keywords. i always try to input key words this way:- How I am gonna search on Google for the same thing. So, when I am adding some keywords I think like a reader of my own articles. And it works.

        • HI. That’s exactly how writing for your readers should be done Rony. Focus on them and once you are done with your writing, then you can edit for a little optimization. It pays off..

  • from now, it for sure that the long tail keyword will be one of the main factor to be ranked at google search engine, less competitor mean highest change being seen by visitor

  • Hey Kelvon,

    Nice points, It’s really essential to choose the right long tail keyword so that you can see maximum results. Sometimes it’s not easy to choose right keywords, it requires proper research and users tendency to search for specific service/product.

    • Hi Aasma
      Just to add up. It’s essential and gets you high targeted traffic.

      Thanks

  • Long tail keywords help in attracting maximum traffic. This subject is always in news because bloggers are in a race to learn it correctly. If newbie bloggers use long tail keywords as their new SEO marketing strategy, they can easily generate traffic for their blogs.

  • Hi Kelvon
    Truly said, this is the best technique for the beginners and during targeting the long tail keywords you must keep short keyword in your record and optimize your main keyword with it. I mean use these short keyword as anchor text, tags etc. Once you get authority of your website you can skip to one or two words keyword. Thanks

  • Very well written post, Kelvin.

    Some keywords are very difficult to rank for, and you often find a group of well known sites in that niche(topic area) all over the first pages(sometimes from 1-5) for that keyword search term…..

    Often we may be ranking for a number of long tail keyword terms, and we may not even realize it…..which can be picked up in Google Webmaster tools-Google Analytics or whichever programs we may use to monitor our ranking data…..

    My advice would be to still target some big Keywords(quality-competitive–or large search volume) and to also include a healthy number of Long Tail Keywords to target, as a backup and foundation…

    Again, very nicely written post.

    • Hi Danny,

      Your strategy seems to be interesting.

      Hope to seeing some good results,

      Cheers

  • Hi Kelvon,

    Great post! Can you recommend any other free keyword tools other than google for long-tail keywords. I sometimes come up short of ideas using the adwords tool and am looking at other options. Thanks again!

    • Hey Gabriel;

      For free keyword search tools you can try Market Samurai. However, it’s trial and cost-effective. Try it and share with us the results.

      marketsamurai.com (no aff. link)

      Thanks

  • long detailing kind of key words are really the best cases to be noted when blogging. that is one good point man. along with it i thing the quality of the blog, pictures, navigation are also to be watched better, when trying to get maximum attraction. using SEO is one good word for new comers.

  • Great tips. I would like to add one more reason why you need to target long tail keywords. Domain aging is one of the most important requirement of Google to rank you well on competitive search terms. If you just get your domain name, and targeting very competitive search term, than it will be VERY hard to rank on top 10. For instance I target a search term and analyze the top10 ranking sites, the youngest website is 2004. It will be really hard to get ranking with a fresh or a few years old website. That is another reason you may start to focus on phrases consist of 3+ words.

  • Really appreciable, I would love to implement these suggestions. Though i had a bit knowledge of these terms but still I was ignorant of the importance and potential of these points.

  • Hi Kelvon,

    You are so right about the long tail keywords, my blog is fairly new and it ranks poorly for the main 3 word key phrase but if I search a long tail keyword I see my posts in the upper pages of the serps.

    I always use the Google keyword tool when I want to write a new post on my blog and it helps very much, also Google trends is a very useful reference to see which are the popular searches.

    Thanks for posting this, have a great day.

    ~Philip

  • Nicely done article! Thanks for pointing out clearly. In fact, long tail keywords promising a very targeted visitors to website.

  • I strongly agree that long-tail keywords should be used to hit highly targeted traffic. It also helps a website rank faster than general or widely used keywords. When it comes to quality backlinks, if you have good or quality content and you market your content correctly, then quality backlinks will come in easier than you think. One good reason apart from having good content is that you get high trust rating from your audiences. High trust ranking means you have legit website and content are made for people, not for robots or spiders. You got great post for newbie bloggers here on how to SEO their blog site. This will help them get noticed in the the blogosphere.

  • Great tips. But aside from Google’s tool, do you have other recommendations when looking for long tail keywords?

  • You may try Market Samurai. It’s good for finding long tail keywords

  • Hi Kelvon
    Excellent Article thanks for sharing this. We got quite a number of requests to help small businesses with their SEO activities – and things have been even increasing after the recent Google updates. So now more than ever it will be important to look into SEO and everything there is to it.

  • Hey inersting article, Keywords are very important, we have to be very careful while choosing it. Sometimes it’s not easy to choose right keywords, it requires proper research to get the best result. Thanks a lot for sharing this blog.

  • I started using the long tail keyword method on a new authority site of mine and the traffic is much improved over my prior sites. I am targeting literally all long tail keywords that have below 1000 monthly searches, and they tend to have less competition. I rank better and over time it brings a lot of traffic in.

  • Hmm.. Thanks Kelvon Yeezy for sharing your knowledge on long tail keywords, including me many of bloggers haven’t paying attention on this because this work need some extra time. But now I will do.

  • Yes, long tail keywords is a great way to get more visibility for new blogger and they will find that all the tips works. I always suggest long tail keywords for my member, thanks for sharing bro.

  • Truly wonderful tips Kelvon …

    Long tails are a great way to get targeted traffic but without the proper placement, it is quite hard to dominate the SE’s ..

    Very Well said and I like the video by Rand !!

  • Very good article, a time consuming concept that indeed is a complete bore. However it has to be done and I seriously need to get some link building done on my website.

  • Keyword rich content (to an extent) and backlinks. Whatever twist Google decides to put in their algorithm, you can never go wrong with these two tactics. Nice post Kelvon. Long tailed keywords can make your life that much easier.

  • Great tips, thanks very much. Choosing the keywords is the fun part for me and doing all the keyword research. I’ve had some good successes with really playing around with my keyword research.

  • Well long tail keyword have less competition so its easy to bring or high light them but if we use best techniques like you have mentioned in your blog right placement and the choosing the right words. I must say you have great knowladge which you are sharing with us.

  • Sound advice, thank you a lot. Choosing the keywords and phrases is the entertaining element personally as well as performing each of the market and keyword research. I’ve experienced some good successes along with genuinely experimenting together with my market and keyword research.

  • I’ve always felt that website copy should always be the best of both worlds – both entertaining and engaging copy AND optimized for SEO – thank you for the update!

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