You may be familiar with the term “keyword” as it relates to search engines. But have you heard of “Long Tail Keywords.”
In reality, it's not a short one or two word phrase that most of us type in to Google. But, rather, it's a longer phrase… like “best rated hotel in Las Vegas” or “coupon for Ben & Jerry's.”
These longer phrases are pure gold when it comes to creating content for natural, organic searches online. And there are millions of these phrases that are just sitting out there with no competition – just waiting to be found.
With all of that said, of course, it's probably important to note that you're not creating content for the search engine… but, rather, for real people. So… forget SEO! In other words, don’t think about the ‘optimal length', don't think about ‘keyword density' – just think about writing for the user and writing in a way that feels natural and creates the best reading experience.
But do think about the phrases that people would naturally type when they are looking for your service or product.
But think about how you want to position your business in the marketplace as well. For instance, people may type in “cheapest day spa in Oakland.” Is that you? Or are you more interested in showing up when they type “most luxurious days spa in Oakland?”
Thinking up great Long Tail Keywords can be a fun process. But it's also worth investing some time in knowing what phrases people are actually searching for… and how much advertisers are paying for those phrases.
You can often cobble together some of that data using Google's Keyword Planner. But the information provided only goes so far. And it's geared toward helping advertisers identify what terms to bid on… not what terms to rank for as a blogger or content marketer – so the results may not be exactly what you are after.
Fortunately, with so much of this keyword data available from Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube and others, there are plenty of third party tools to help you identify winning phrases. I've used Market Samurai, KeywordTool.io, and others to help me along the way. But my favorite, and most comprehensive, tool is called Long Tail Pro.
See how it works in this video:
I hope that video gave you some great ideas about the kinds of Long Tail Keywords might be appropriate for your business. And if you could use a little help, check out Long Tail Pro to see if it might be a good solution for your needs.