How To Find Good Longtail Keywords

In my previous post, I have mentioned the importance of targeting longtail keywords. Longtail keywords research is essential because we don’t want to go into red ocean and competing with other established and well-optimized websites with tons of backlinks. It is difficult to overtake them in search engine rankings and usually this process will take months and years.

There are a couple of ways to come up with your list of good longtail keywords.

Step #1: Choose Your Broad Keyword

In the very first step, you need to decide what is the broad keyword. Normall I start out by just using the obvious phrase that I can think of for my niche and the web page I would like to optimize. For example, if I’m in cat food niche, then my broad keyword will be ‘cat food’.

If you have more than one broad keywords, then you can write them down and go through step 2 to step 4 for each of the broad keyword.

Step #2: Generate Keyword List Using SEO Keyword Research Tool

My approach is start with a broad and generic keyword and then drill it down. The second step is to generate a list of potential keywords using SEO keyword research tool. My favorite tool is Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. It is free and you can use it without any limitation.

This tool is easy to use. Basically, you just need to enter the broad keyword in the tool and click ‘Get keyword ideas’, it will spit out a bunch of related keywords. Usually this tool will return you hundreds of results if your broad keyword is very popular. No worry, I will let you know how to choose the longtail keyword in next step.

Here are some of the related keywords that is suggested by Google keyword tool for my ‘cat food’ keyword.

• cat food
• wellness cat food
• organic cat food
• canned cat food
• best cat food
• cat food diet
• recipes cat food
• prescription cat food
• home made cat food
• tender vittles cat food
• cat food low protein

Step #3: Find Longtail Keywords That Match Your Criteria

This is the core process in finding your longtail keywords. The potential list we are looking for should have high traffic and low competition. Loop through the list suggested by Google in step 2 and eliminate those keywords that have 2 or less words. We only keep those keywords with 3 or more words.

Then we can take a look at the advertiser competition column. Although this column is indicating the competition for pay-per-click advertising, but we can use it as a competition indicator for our keywords. Try to drop those keywords with high advertiser competition and keep those with low competition or average competition.

Next you should look at approximate search volume column in Google keyword tool. Try to find those longtail keywords with at least 500 searchers per month. Of couse you can target those keywords with 100 searchers but you need to target more in order to achieve certain traffic level.

Here is the list we get after the process of step 3.

• cat food diet
• recipes cat food
• home made cat food
• tender vittles cat food
• cat food low protein

Step #4: Research Competitiveness Of Each Longtail Keyword

After you get a longtail keywords list with high traffic, you need to do some competition analysis. Since low competition keywords are easier to get higher ranking in search engines, we are going to eliminate those keywords with high competition in this step.

There are 3 basic elements which you should considered in the competition analysis.

1. Onpage Optimization: Search engines like relevant content. If your competitors do not have relevant content on their web page, then you have a better chance to overtake them. A few onpage optimization factors you need to consider are title tag, header tag, keywword density and etc.
2. Internal Linking: If your competitors are having strong internal linking, for example, millions of internal links, then it will be difficult for you to beat them.
3. Inbound Linking: Inbound links is the key to get page 1 ranking. If your competitors just have a few inbound links or no links, then it will be easier for you to get more backlinks and kill your competitors.

Conclusion

Targeting longtail keywords is very important for new and smaller websites to compete with established and well-optimized websites. I will talk more about how to check the competitiveness of each keyword and whether they are worth your time.

Do you have any other longtail keywords research method? Please share with us below.

Related Posts:

1. SEO Strategy: Targeting Longtail Keywords
2. Will Your Keywords Result In Sales?
3. 2 Simple Ways To Find Great Keywords
4. Killer Keyword Strategy To Find Profitable Market