What Are Long Tail Keywords and Why Should You Use Them?

Getting a page ranked on page one of Google is usually easier said than done. It’s especially difficult if you use shorter keywords. You have a better chance (in most cases) of ranking for what’s called “long-tail” keywords.

Long Tail Keywords?is a?keyword phrase?(or search term) that has at least three or more?words in the phrase.

The longer (and more specific) search terms are, the easier it will be to rank on that term. Keywords that are more specific (and often longer) are usually referred to as long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are more specific and less common.

When doing keyword research, more often than not, people look at words that have the most searches, but they don’t look at the competition of those keywords.

More often than not, the shorter keywords have a higher search volume, but they have really high competition as well.

Long-tail keywords have less search volume, but their competition is usually much lower.

Here’s an Example:

If you’re looking for cheap WordPress hosting, you likely won’t just search for the term “WordPress Hosting”. It’s more likely that you’ll search for long-tail keyword “Cheap WordPress Hosting”.

Lets take a look at the KWFinder?to see how they show the overall keyword difficulty for each term.

Term: WordPress Hosting

They show “wordpress hosting” with almost 33,000 monthly searchers, and gave it a keyword difficulty score of 52.


kwfinder screenshot

Term: Cheap?Wordpress Hosting

On the flip side, they show?”cheap wordpress hosting” with approximately 1,500 monthly searchers, and gave it a SEO competition score of 28.


kwfinder screenshot

Yes, it’s true that “wordpress hosting” has a lot more monthly searches than “cheap wordpress hosting”, but when you look at the top 10 search results for each term (which is what KWFinder does to calculate its “Overall Keyword Difficulty” score), you’ll see that you have a much better chance of ranking higher with the long tail version of the keyword.

So, when you’re trying to figure out what keyword is best to rank for, don’t just use Google Keyword Planner and see what has the highest number of searches. You need to use tools like KWFinder to find long tail keywords and see which is easiest to rank for.

Stay tuned for more on this subject!

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Stephen O'Neal

My name is Stephen O?Neal (Steveo). I've been doing Digital Marketing for over a decade. I have a degree in Interactive Media, have worked at several different marketing agencies, and have been running my own businesses for over 10 years. I'm a WordPress, SEO, and Google Ads expert. I know what needs to be done to get results.