What Is A Long-Tail Keyword?

Date First Published: 24th October 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: SEO

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn more about what a long-tail keyword is in this article.

A long-tail keyword is a highly specific phrase of 3+ words that often has a relatively low search frequency and competition level. Using long-tail keywords is helpful when a specific keyword that a business or individual wants to rank for is too competitive since there will definitely be fewer websites ranking for that long-tail keyword, increasing conversion rates. It also helps searchers to find what they are looking for. For example, if someone is looking for a birthday card that is suitable for children and contains a drawing of candles on the front, they could use a long-tail keyword 'birthday cards for children with candles' in order to find results relevant to what they are looking for. Those specific keywords will be much less competitive than just 'birthday cards'.

The term long-tail keyword comes from the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. The longer and more specific the search terms are, the easier it is for a website to rank high for them. Long-tail keywords that are less competitive are often assigned a lower price in SEM campaigns, such as the paid ads on Google search results.

Note:

Long-tail keywords make up most of all Google searches. It is believed that around 70% of searches use long-tail keywords, whilst around 30% use short-tail keywords.

Note:

Long-tail keywords are not keywords that use longer words. They refer to keywords that use highly specific phrases of 3 or more words.

In order for websites to easily show up when entering more specific search queries without too many other competing websites, website owners should consider what makes their content or products unique from other websites. For example, an online business that sells products made out of recyclable material not designed to have a negative impact on the environment could be a unique feature. They could then add that feature to the title and description of the page. Without using long-tail keywords, it would be very difficult for a new website to rank high in the SERP, since it may be competing with some very large business websites that dominate the search results and have gained lots of backlinks over the years. Also, it is important to not use obscure keywords that very few people would choose and ensure that the keywords match the content or product to avoid misleading users.

Long-tail keywords can be found in Google by typing the keyword and noting the suggestions that Google makes when the searcher types. There are also sections within the SERP that can help find long keyword phrases, such as the 'people also ask' box and the 'related searches' where searches related to those keywords will display.

Requirements For Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords must be 3+ words and any commonly used words used to structure sentences properly will not count towards the keyword count as search engines automatically filter these out when retrieving results as part of a search query. These are known as stop words. For example, even though 'what is link building' is four words, it is not considered a long-tail keyword as it has two stop words, which are 'what', and 'is', so the keywords are 'link building'. Because it is only 2 words, it would be a short-tail keyword. 'Free website builders for Windows' is an example of a long-tail keyword as the phrase, excluding the stop word 'for' is 4 words. That keyword is much less competitive than just 'website builder', which is not very specific and will return a ridiculously large amount of results, as shown below. See how much fewer results the search query 'Free website builders for Windows' returns than 'website builder'.

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