How to Find Long Tail Keywords Worth Targeting in 5 Easy Steps
Toma 
I wrote a recent article about what the long tail keywords are, their advantages and disadvantages, but now I would like to explain a little bit the process I use to find long tail keywords worth targeting. You’ll develop content that targets main keywords but the base of every website should be an enormous number of long tail keywords.
The Process of Finding Long Tail Keywords
Just like in the case of main keywords, long tail keywords have to offer a decent search volume/month and also be relevant. Once you decided that a main keyword is relevant to your website then almost all the long tail keywords that are derived from it should be relevant to your website.
Before I tell you the process of how to research for long tail keywords, here are the tools I’m using: Google Keyword External Tool (because it has information on any language or country), Google Sktool and two features from Google Search: Wonder Wheel and Related Searches.
And now, here are the 5 steps that I take in order to find long tail keywords:
- I start with Google Keyword External. The first search is just using single words. For example for my market I start with words like: seo, keyword, keywords, content and so on. Is very important to let the tool suggest related terms that people are searching. These terms are really the starting point of my search. The same method can be applied using Google Sktool. I choose one main keyword and then go to step 2.
- I perform a search on Google for that main keyword. The things that I pay attention are the general competition and title competition. These numbers play an important role in deciding if a keyword is worth targeting or not. So write this down: you’ll have to compare it with the data for the long tail keywords.
- I use the Wonder Wheel to see what other keywords people searched after the main keyword. Watch the competition and when you find something under 1 million or maximum 2 million you can go for it. Write it down.
- I also use Related Searches to see what the search engine says that are the related keywords other people searched (these searches are not necessarily performed after searching for your keyword). Again look at the competition and make your own decision: is this keyword relevant and also have a decent competition.
- I return to Google Keyword External Tool with the long tail keywords that I found. Keep in mind that these keywords were definitely searched by someone but this is not enough. So, you’re checking to see if the tool says it has Not Enough Data or shows you a number. Depending on your market you choose to target a long tail keyword or not. Sometimes a search volume of 100/month can be enough, other times you’ll need a few thousands. It’s relative and depends on the overall search volume trends from your market.
What Do You Think Of This?
Let me know if this info was useful to you and if you have questions. Or maybe you could share your experience. Also, please consider subscribing to this blog and receive my articles directly in your e-mail.
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9 Comments to “How to Find Long Tail Keywords Worth Targeting in 5 Easy Steps”
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This is great. Simple and very doable. I wasn’t aware of Sktool or Wonder Wheel. I’m looking forward to using them. Thanks!
Thank you for your comment Debra. I truly appreciate your time for reading and expressing your opinion.
I’m curious. In the first step, you mention that you select one keyword from which to launch the rest of your research. What criteria do you use to select that one keyword? High search/low competition? The most general term? The term that seems to best represent all the potential keywords?
Hi Lauren,
These are usually the words used by the owner of the business to describe his business.
Thank you for your comment!!
Hello! Very good post!
What do you mean by ” I pay attention are the general competition and title competition”
General competition I can understand but what is title competition?
THX
Hi Alex,
What I mean is how many pages target those keywords in their titles. Usually I compare this results with the results from a simple search: just to see if there are differences. Sometimes you can learn a lot about what it takes to rank well for a keyword just by analyzing what pages appear in a general search and not in a title search.
Thank you for your comment!
Thank you very much. As usual you are extremely helpful!
Some other question please:
Can you describe in detail how Wonder Wheel works?
I enter a keyword and I get some keywords related to what I have typed.
– It is any ranking in the way Google displays the result?
– All the related keywords are searched together with main keyword or are searched in the same search session or are searched by the same person? I have seen that some related key words contain the main keyword and others no.
- Why I do not get any result for some keywords?
- More general how it works? How Google it chooses the related keywords. To use the tool I have to understand it fully first.
Thank you very much again for all your grate posts and all your skilled help.
Alex
Hi Alex,
Wonder Wheel shows you keywords searched after the keyword you typed. I find this useful to understand how the majority of people think about a search phrase. Even though the resulted keywords don’t always have decent amount of search volume per month it’s still helpful to find out topics that people are interested in relation with a keyword.
Hope this answer helps.
Thank you for your comment!
Another thing to mention is that once you create content on your web-pages or make new web-pages that are designed to use your long tailed keywords its a good idea to promote those new pages.I have done this with new pages that were optimized. By building links to these pages you will help them to get indexed more quickly and allow them a better chance to rank well in SERPS.