SEO basics

In the not so distant past, long tail keywords were hailed as a very effective way to increase search traffic. But of course, there was not as much competition back then and it was quite a bit easier to optimize pages in order to use the long tail keywords. Even though many still consider this to be part of ancient history and treat it as the forgotten treasure, they have been making a resurgence in value. Using long tail keywords can offer a powerful tool through which to leverage search traffic, especially when there is a lot of competition surrounding some of the “core” keywords in a niche or industry. Once it becomes clear how to use long tail keywords as part of an SEO strategy, they can actually work for us even better than they did in the past.

What is a long tail keyword?

A long tail keyword is a more of a keyword phrase which usually contains at least 3 words; but it can contain as many as 5 words. These are very useful when a website needs to refine some of the search terms; but is also effective when a user is searching for something more specific. A long tail keyword is similar to normal keywords in that they are useful for defining the page contents, what the publisher wants to be found through searches and what is displayed on SERPs. The key difference is that they are much more specific in nature and do not draw as much traffic to the site. However, the traffic that they do draw is generally higher quality, or more relevant which can lead to many more conversions than what normal keywords typically produce.