What are Keywords? Research Guide long tail keywords vs Short tail keywords

What are Keywords?

keywords also know as Search keywords or SEO keywords. Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they're the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called "search queries." If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords.

As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results.

Why are keywords important?
Keywords are important because they are the linchpin between what people are searching for and the content you are providing to fill that need. Your goal in ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your site from the search engine result pages (SERPs), and the keywords you choose to target (meaning, among other things, the ones you choose to include in your content) will determine what kind of traffic you get. If you own a golf shop, for example, you might want to rank for "new clubs" — but if you're not careful, you might end up attracting traffic that's interested in finding a new place to dance after dark.

Keywords are as much about your audience as they are about your content because you might describe what you offer in a slightly different way than some people ask for it. To create content that ranks well organically and drives visitors to your site, you need to understand the needs of those visitors — the language they use and the type of content they seek. You can do this by talking to your customers, frequenting forums and community groups, and doing your own keyword research with a tool like Keyword Explorer.

Types of Keywords

there are two types of search keywods ( search keywords or SEO keywords )

Short Tail keywords
Long Tail keyword

What are Short Tail Keywords?

Short Tail Keywords are broad phrases people use when searching in search engines that only have one or two words.

Short tail keywords are search phrases with only one or words. Their length makes them less specific than searches with more words.

“Egg” (1 word) is an example of a short tail keyword, whereas “Make scrambled eggs fluffy” (4 words) is a long tail keyword.

What are Long Tail keywords?

n this long tail keyword research guide, you’ll find out everything about the tools that you need for long tail research to finding highly profitable long tail keywords. So are you ready to find them out?

Let’s get started with the most important question.

Did you know that 70% of search traffic comes from long tail keywords?

So if you’re someone who’s looking to get more search traffic by using long tail keywords, this tutorial is a treat for you.

Long tail keywords are highly relevant and low competitive keywords and each long tail keyword usually contains 4+ words.

For ex: “long tail keyword research” is a 4 word long tail keyword.

The major difference between long tail keywords and short tail keywords is that long tail keywords are easier to rank for (even if you’re running a new site without having a ton of links).

For that same reason, getting #1 results for a long tail keyword like “best cars under 10,000 dollars in Atlanta” is easier than “best luxury cars”.

If you’re not focusing on long tail keyword research, you’re doing a BIG mistake. The #1 blunder mistake most people make while doing keyword research is, they focus on broad terms instead of long tail keywords.

If you’re still wondering about why you need to start using long tail keywords, I’ve few strong reasons to tell you.

3 important reasons to target long tail keywords.

Competition: You don’t want to compete with big brands like Amazon, Apple etc when you’re aiming to get 1st page results on Google. That’s why you need to find low competition keywords and long tail keywords are best when it comes to low competition. They are more specific and less people search for them giving you the chance to get better search rankings on Google really quickly.
Relevancy: The focus on keyword SEO is dying (almost died!) regularly. Google is focusing more on giving rewards to relevant keyword phrases that keyword stuffed pages. That’s why focusing on long tail keywords can give you more relevancy as they usually contain 4 or more words. Even better, you can use relevant LSI keywords to start ranking higher on Google.
Search volume: Search volume plays a crucial role while doing keyword research. Luckily for most of the long tail keywords, the search volume will be really less. Just make sure to pick those long tail keywords with search volume around 1000 to 1500 monthly searches to get higher rankings quickly on Google.

The above 3 factors are really the key to long tail keyword research. If you ignore those factors, you will have tough time in finding good long tail keywords that boost your search traffic and sales.

So there you go! That’s the importance of targeting long tail keywords to boost your rankings, traffic and overall website sales.

Now comes the most interesting question: how do you come up with profitable long tail keywords. Let’s dive into the details to find more about them.

How to find long tail keywords to boost your search traffic?

Finding long tail keywords is NOT easy especially if you don’t know how to do keyword research.

Most people make the mistake of finding 2 or 3 word keywords (such as best cars in 2017) instead of aiming for really specific long tail keywords. So don’t make that mistake while doing long tail keyword research. Yes, you might find it intimidating at first to get more long tail keyword ideas for your sites but it will be fun when you start getting results.

So let me simplify the whole process for finding long tail keywords in 3 easy steps.

Let’s get started.

First step: Come up with keyword ideas

The first step for finding great long tail keywords is to brainstorm various keywords.

Make a list of all the potential keywords that you want to rank for. So how do you build a list of such keywords?

You can use these simple tips.

Analyze your competitors: By using tools like SEMrush, you can easily come up with a list of keyword ideas that are sending the most traffic to your competitors. This is one of the widely used ways to come up with high traffic generating keywords almost every single time.
Use Buzzsumo: So why use a influencer outreach tool like Buzzsumo? Not only it’s helpful for reaching out to the experts in your niche but it also helpful for finding great topic ideas so you can pick the best keywords from them. It also has a free version which is enough for most beginners to build a set of seed keywords that are relevant to their niche.

So why do you want to build an initial set of keywords list?
That’s a great question. The reason is, once you have a list of keyword ideas, finding long tail keywords becomes easy.

Not only that, by building an initial keyword list, you can easily eliminate all the bad or irrelevant keyword ideas so you can save more time while creating content in the future to attract more traffic and links.

Once you’re done with the first step, you can move on to the next step where the actual long tail keyword research starts.

Second step: Estimate their volume and relevancy

This is the most important step where you eliminate majority of the keywords from your initial set of keyword ideas.

So how you can eliminate the bad keyword ideas from the list that you build in the step 1?

It’s simple. Find out their estimated monthly search volume.

If any keyword that has more than 2000 monthly searches, simply ignore it (you can target them later when you attract more traffic).

Aim to pick those keywords with a monthly search volume between 300 to 1500. That way you can easily get top rankings for those keywords without having to build too many links.

And make sure to target those keywords that have at least 4 to 5 words in them (these are known as long tail keywords).

Once you are done with the initial elimination of high volume keywords, it’s time to start finding relevant keywords so you can serve your target audience even better.

If you’re finding it hard to estimate the search volume of any given keyword, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner.

Although it doesn’t give you accurate results but it’s really helpful for finding the search volume of any keyword. Just enter your list of keywords on Keyword Planner and it will give you the monthly search volume for each of those keywords. That way you can eliminate all the keywords with high search volume.

Final step: Build a list of highly specific long tail keywords

Now in the 3rd and final step, you need to pick only those long tail keywords which are highly specific to your target audience and easier to rank for.

What are Keywords? Research Guide long tail keywords vs Short tail keywords