Long Tail Keywords are the corner stone of your online business.
Sounds similar?
Over 70% searches that are made comprise of long tail keywords.
Another cliché, Boom!
I know you are tired of hearing that… But no matter how hard you try to deny it, it’s the truth.
But wait!
Here is the problem:
Your favorite experts don’t provide you proven blueprint to work with?
In other words, you have no clue on how to choose & rank your long tail keywords?
You may have heard many experts screaming loud and clear about the hidden value of so called “Long Tail SEO.”
I know you have.
Heck! Just recently I saw another post popping out that said sprinkle few long tail keywords and LSI keywords in your post. And let G do its work on the basis of semantic algo.
I’m not saying you can rank for long tail keywords by pouring down few of them in your post. But the problem is it will only work, if you are a highly valued authority site. Or your post gets a rocket booster where every word in the post looks like they can score.
But that sounds too sweet to be true isn’t it?
So what can you do?
Simple: You pick out the long tail keywords you believe you can rank for, and build a post around it.
For example: If you are writing something about short stories, make it super specific. So if you found a keyword that says funny short stories. Your specific keyword should fall under this line:
You get this now?
So this is the reason why I have created this Mr. Miyagi guide for you.
Okay! I know what you are thinking now.
Long tail keywords & Mr. Miyagi, right?
You may be thinking what the heck is Mr. Miyagi doing in a SEO post?
… Because I have literally had enough with these Ninja words coming from everywhere.
Then, why Miyagi?
…Because Miyagi is the go-to-man when you need to hone your inner kung-fu skills.
And if you need to craft your inner marketing zombie, this Miyagi guide will teach you how.
Volume 1.0 – Understanding the Concept of Long Tail Keywords
So how would you define long tail keywords? From the name itself, you might have taken the guess. It would be something long & specific, right?
Basically, you define long tail keywords as those three & four words unique searches that are specific to meet the user’s content consumption need.
Before we dive into the sea, let’s see the hierarchy of keyword:
It basically is divided into 3 parts.
Head Term (Ex: keyword)
Middle Chunk (Ex: keyword research)
Long Tail (Best Keyword Courses of 2016)
Now when you branch down the keywords, you will understand the science behind every keyword search. All of those keywords fall under the user specific intent i.e. what’s the mindset of the person behind it?
So you can simply categorize them into two:
Long Tail with Commercial Intent (Ex: keyword research courses)
Long Tail with Informational Intent (Ex: how to do keyword research)
Understanding the intent behind long tail keyword is also important to sustain your online business.
Let me break it down into examples:
If the sole purpose your website is on selling product you may want to target like – keyword research courses.
…But, if you are more into earning traffic you may want to target informational keywords like – how to do keyword research.
And that’s how you set your PPC and organic search campaign.
Volume 1.2 – Why target long tail keywords to generate organic traffic?
One simple answer – because it’s less competition and free traffic. What do you want more than that?
If you have just started blogging, don’t try to fit in the jungle where you get can lost easily.
Don’t forget one thing: There are big whales out there who want to crumble and eat you up… So if you need to survive you don’t want to fall into their backyard.
… And to make things worse, there are tons of sites published every day to add on to your list of competitors. Only in 2013, Daily Mail revealed that in 60 seconds 571 new websites are created.
See the image below and tell me what you see:
It’s a game of dart. No I don’t know how to play it.
The one who don’t know anything about it, come behind me…
… And who are pro make a new line please.
So here is the question for you as a beginner:
You see the small button in the dart, right in the middle. That’s the inner bulls eye. If you are asked to hit the bulls eye, what’s your chances. May be 1 out 100?
… but what if you are asked to hit anywhere in those outer rings? You would probably score 9 out of 10.
Now that’s your long tail keywords.
And that’s the reason why we choose long tail keywords.
Now there is one dilemma: How to rank number #1.
The answer depends on the methodology behind your keyword findings. So let’s dive into it.
Volume 1.3 – The Integration Dilemma
This is one of the confusing factors that bug many site owners out there. Should they be targeting a specific long tail keyword for a blog post? Or should they sprinkle few long tail ones in the major targeted keyword?
For example: Are you going to cover a single blog post about how to rank for a long tail keyword, or are you going to say write about just long tail keywords and sprinkle few long tails?
My reaction to all who go all jacked up for head terms – Are you freaking Justin Beiber?
How can you suppose to rank for head terms when it’s fucking crowded by super horse powers?
Here is the thing you have to remember – To dethrone the king; you need to at least have few forces running with you.
And the forces I’m talking about mean building trust foundation in Google’s eye.
How do you build trust foundation?
When few small bricks (long tail keywords) ranks on the big G, it starts to lay down a layer of trust foundation on your site.
This is when your site has a great chance of beating some head terms with really great content.
Until then, start focusing on long tail keywords…
Volume 1.4 – How to find long tail keywords effectively: Mind Reading Technique
Here comes another cliché: When you set yourself to write a post, an effective keyword research defines your success.
If you can dig down gold from underground, consider yourself winning half the battle.
But before jumping straight to the battleground, every warrior needs a sword practice.
So here is the deal:
I want you to think yourself as a magician
No! No! No!
I’m not asking you to wear some stupid hat and wave your hands just to pretend that you can control what someone is thinking.
I’m asking you to simply mold your mindset as a magician.
Confusing?
Okay! So think about a birthday. What is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Gifts? I thought so. It’s obvious, right?
People always relate birthday with gifts.
So this is how you can mold your mind set or perception in accordance with your user intent.
Let’s say I’m in SEO niche, what if a person completely new to SEO comes to Google.
So what can he type in the search box.
It can be anything like ranking, earning money etc.
…Because that’s how a noob would relate to the SEO stuff.
So you have to be able to predict the obvious.
And changing the mind set is the unique weapon that will let you stand out.
Volume 1.5 – Tools to identify long tail keywords like a BOSS
Now this is where things get a little interesting.
I’ll hook you up with tens of tools.
But you need to know one thing – The power of a tool lies on the beholder.
In the previous point I told you to set yourself as a “mind reader.”
Why?
…Because you need to know how to pull the trigger of the tools you are going to use.
And this will set you apart from your competitors.
So let’s get going.
SEMrush
SEMrush is no stranger to internet marketers.
Here are two things you can do with SEMrush to find desired long tail keywords
Plug in your own domain
Or use your competitors site
What this tool does is it simply pulls out the keyword data it believes has got most number of organic traffic. So if you use your domain, it will literally hook you up with keywords that has already been used in your site…
But it also pulls out some really good keywords which you can see in the image below:
You can rinse and repeat the same process. Just change the competitors section till you get a big list of keywords.
Dominate Auto Suggest with Keyword Tool Dominator
I think many people would agree with me on this. Google Auto Suggest is one of the dominant sources for identifying unique long tails.
…And Keyword Tool Dominator is a tool that takes this handy little feature of auto suggest & converts it into a whole new dimension.
I’ll explain to you how it works:
Similar to Google Auto Suggest, you start with typing your keyword on the search box.
Then it will fetch the big G for all related auto suggested keywords. And render to you with a big list on the basis of rank. Rank is a built-in feature of this tool to categorize the popularity of any keyword. 1 being the most searched keyword and 10 being the least.
See the list of keywords that you feel would be useful for your campaign. You can also de-select the keywords that you don’t want to leverage on your page.
Now hit the little green button that says – Add selected to your keyword list.
Your list will be in added to the other half of the box like this:
Download the selected keywords. Sort the keywords by smallest to largest. (How: Add a filter by selecting filter from data tab in csv)
You will bump with loads of LSI & secondary keywords that you can also integrate on your blog post.
Wait a minute, there is more to come
If you are working with a PPC campaign, click through amazon keyword tool. And repeat the same process.
Pro Tip: If you this tool to extract more awesome keywords for you, type a little astrick key(*) at the end of your keyword. And you would be surprised with the amount of list you get.
Keyword Revealer
This is another handy little keyword research tool that I use frequently when I’m on a niche that I have no idea of.. I mean seriously, this tool has a wonderful feature called Brainstorming keywords that I use every time.
But that’s not the ship we are sailing.
It has another feature names as keyword tool that can hook you up with tons of new keyword ideas as well as long tail keywords.
Just insert your main keyword and see how it works.
For this post, I shooted carpet cleaning keyword.
… And this is the list that it has generated for me.
If you not sure that the keywords you are targeting has high competition or low. You can tap into tiny keyword competition button in the right hand site of listed keywords.
Amazing, right? Thought so.
Some extra tools that you can also have in your armory are:
Google Auto suggest
Google Related Searches
Long Tail Pro
Volume 2.0 – How to create compelling content for SEO
Yes! Yes! I have heard many times that your focus should always be users. Well, that is true. But you can’t take away the fact that whatever you do, your ultimate goal is to satisfy users with a mindset of ranking high on search engines.
Every or most marketers will always have Google and other search engines in their marketing plans when they are promoting any product or services.
And the best weapon they choose is producing great content or taking content marketing route.
So how do you produce compelling content for long tail seo?
Apply these 3 magical but simple tips and start rocking with long tails
Write for Users and Optimise for Google
Primarily, your content should be highly focused on delivering value to your users. You can’t expect users to get bamboozle with a content that even a kid bats an eye on. Write content that has power to speak in itself. Don’t be a ctrl C + ctrl V guy. Be real, be original.
Similarly, get your basic on page right. Yes Google is smart but it’s your job as a writer or SEO to make things easy for the big G.
Keep your meta tags straight to the point. Don’t shuffle around too much. If your content is about Long tail seo, put it in titles, description as well as urls. Do your homework and let Google help you out.
Avoid Keyword stuffing and sprinkle LSI keywords
With initiation of Google RankBrain, G’s algo has become more sophisticated than ever. They are doing their best to match user intent on searches. So gone are the days where you could rank by stuffing your keywords. Instead you can place few LSI keywords that helps Google understand more about your post.
Solve the problem
I have always believe in the fact that the post that solves problems works best. Why? Because that’s what your users are looking for.
For example:If someone is having a problem with their website speed. My question would be how can I help a user increase website speed. So I will build a post around that.
The best part of building content around long tail keywords is that even a short specific content ranks well.
There has been a buzz around SEO world after Brian’s skyscrapers technique. And I absolutely love brian’s version of content.
However, with long tail keywords, you can take two route –
Either build in-depth content
Problem solving short content optimised more for knowledge graph
If you are still confused on writing blog post, get started here:
Resources for crafting a beautiful blog post
Elements of crafting an awesome blog post
Learn how a perfect blog is manufactured
How to write content that Google and People loves
Volume 3.0: Pump your post with Backlinks.
Guest Posting
A couple of years back, guest posting was declared dead.
But trust me it’s not.
The amount of value you get on a guest post link thoroughly depends on your approach.
If you want to make your link a powerful one, focus on contextual link.
Whenever I do a guest post, i try to replicate a process that makes it easier for me to cite a link to my previous post.
For example: If I had to get a contextual link to this post, i would have written a guest post on keyword research. And pass the link back to my post.
Here is a screenshot of my previous guest post where I was able to land a high quality contextual link.
How do you find guest post opportunities??
It’s really simple.
Most of the blog owners who offer guest post has a definite footprint that makes us easy to find them.
Just go to Google and search something like this:
Your keyword + write for us
Your keyword + Guest post guidelines
Your keyword + contribute to our site
Well, you can make things much easier by using this handy little tool – drop my link.
Make an account there and start scraping guest post sites.
So these are sites that offer guest post opportunities.
Copy all of them and paste it to an excel sheet using a tool like Link clump.
Here is how you can copy paste links from SERPs from linkclump.
Go to Google chrome>settings>extensions.
Search for Link Clump and download it.
After you download it, go to option menu of link clump.
Find a section called Action. Click the edit button and change it to clip to clipboard button.
Now start clipping and paste it to an excel sheet.
Check and sort every domain with Trust flow and Domain Authority. Focus more on the sites that has high metrics.
Now what left is crafting a short and concise email requesting a guest post opportunity. Convince them and grab your link.
If you don’t want to go through leg work of finding, scraping and outreaching, you can buy few guest post links on Fiverr. There are people who have good metrics and are willing to sell guest post links on their blog for $5 or $10.
You can also buy guest post links on facebook groups. Don’t forget to check their domain before buying from them
Get listed on round ups and resource pages
Round-up and resource pages both used to be a great deal during pre-panda era. Getting a link in resource page or a weekly round up was easy and carried value.
Although, I still believe this has lot of potential and helps in keeping your link profile clean.
But, it has gradually lost its power may be because it’s been decayed and used to death by SEOs.
I have always believed that as the number of outbound links flows from a post, the power of an individual links decreases a bit.
For example: If 20 out bound links are there in a post, one link can carry upto 5% of power weight.
I am really not good at math, but I guess you get my point.
But, there isn’t denying that these links are pumper links that add more value to our link profile.
So how do you find them?
Simple:
Use drop my link and follow the same process i mentioned above.
If you are a newbie, these two resources will help you immensely
Guide to landing Link round ups – Breaking down the principle and approach of landing links from round ups the right way
Resource page link building: Definitive guide – Learn the processing behind landing effective resource pages.
Play link relay with your top performing pages
If your site is a new born baby, and you haven’t even planted a seed of blog, this may not work for you.
However, if your site is a little old, and has a page or two with decent authority, you can play link relay with them.
This is one of the most fascinating catch about long tail keywords, you can even rank your site without having much inbound links.
You can simply interlink your most authoritative post with this new one. This can really help your site get a quick boost.
Don’t know which post carries more gold?
Follow these simple steps:
Go to your Google Analytics account
Find the behavior section and click site content
You will find list of post URLs that is generating traffic
Start link relay
Another way to find your best performing page is using third party tools and analysing from their metrics.
I will be using moz for this post.
Paste your url in Open Site Explorer of Moz
Now click the top pages tab, and these are your top performing pages.
Happy linking day
Web 2.0 and Parasite Pages
For the experienced guys, web 2.0’s and parasite pages shouldn’t be a new thing.
But for the one who don’t have any idea of what they are.
I’ll spill out few beans for you
So web 2.o are simply a self hosted platform that we don’t own, but that allow us to create a blog or website of our choice.
Example: wordpress.com and blogger.com
Parasite pages are somehow similar to web 2.0’s. The only difference is that it carries more authority and dominance than few other web 2.0
Example: rebelmouse, youtube.com
If you are like me, you may be thinking, why the heck should they give a different jargon when they both perform the same way.
That’s the first thing that come to my mind. But that’s internet marketing bro! And you need to keep up with the jargons.
So how do you build links with these platforms??
Simple
Approach it the same way you approach your money site.
It’s your property, so treat it like one.
Just like you build your own site, create everything for it.
Build about us, contact, privacy policy pages, use proper theme/layout. Fill every thing properly.
Write at least 3 articles with one article targeted to your money site. Other article can be on any topic until it revolves around niche relevancy.
Every article should have images, videos and out bound link to authority pages.
Don’t link to your targeted post until they are indexed
After few days, check your web 2.0 or parasite pages.
Use this search query – site:domain.com/yoursitename
Also, don’t forget to check the pages that it has index.
Sometimes, Google index only domain and few pages.
If it hasn’t index your web pages, it’s time to build few links to it.
Pour down few blog comments to it, bookmarking, sharing in G+ too helps a lot.
These are your tier 1 links so don’t go for spammy links from GSA or ultimate demon.
If you don’t want to build links or waste time, you can use indexation tools to get your links indexed.
But indexation tools are really expensive, so what you can do is get someone in Fiverr to do the job for you.
If you don’t want to take the hassle of creating 3-4 posts, you can scrape for expired web 2.o.
And start posting straight away without having to wait.
Promote Your Content to the Right Consumers
Right consumers are the one who has interest in your type of content. They love to consume content related to your niche.
Don’t start promoting in a bizarre fashion. I have seen people throw non-relevant content on Facebook groups and G+ communities that even don’t make sense.
There is literally no value of publishing your post to a platform that doesn’t appeal to your choice of audience.
You will not get any eyeball. And you will definitely not get any favour from the Daddy G.
So how do you promote your new content and rank your long tail keywords like a boss
You have to go by two routes:
Promote on your own networks
Promote on the networks owned by other parties
Promoting your content on your own networks like social media owned by you is a simple task.
IF you have a large number of followers in social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google plus, before entering in the IM jungle, this can be your blessing in disguise.
You simply need to schedule your post according to your user most engagement time.
To get most out of your post, you can follow this post – http://coschedule.com/blog/social-media-engagement-tactics/
So, this is the portion for people who have a ton of followers.
But it can have zero effect on your content, if you have no audience to follow your post.
I’m assuming that you are new to internet marketing with no followers at all, so you should take the route 2.
Here is one simple method to promote your new blog post and get immediate attraction:
Enroll into social media groups
Here is what you need to do:
Find groups and communities related to your niche, and join them.
Few of the most engaging groups are:
Facebook groups, Google+ communities, and linkedin groups.
You can easily find them by searching through their search interface.
Or, you can use these search operator:
site:https://plus.google.com/communities/ + “keyword”
site:https://www.facebook.com/groups/ + “keyword”
site:https://www.linkedin.com/groups/ + “keyword”
These operators will easily hook you up with a good list of groups that you can join.
Now, before posting link to your post, you need to closely look at the value of content that is been provided.
If it’s anywhere spammy, just leave a link and move forward.
But if the group is of pure value, spend 2-5 days by adding value to the group.
Ask questions and also give solution to the problems.
After a week, drop link to your content along with few great resources that is related with your post.
This way you have better chance of not getting kicked out of the group.
Pro Tip: If you are in G+ communities, you can follow one easy rule to get your post stick in the wall. First, start commenting, re-sharing, and doing +1’s in existing posts. Then, post your link. And again repeat the same process of re-sharing and commenting.
Wrapping up:
Just follow these steps, and you will easily rank for any Long tail keyword in the universe. Heck! you will end up cranking head terms too with this formula
The post Long Tail SEO: Mr. Miyagi way of Ranking Long Tail Keywords appeared first on SEO Nerdy.