A simple guide to keywords and long tail keywords
Do you ever feel like it’s a foreign language? When people talk about keywords, SEO and keyword planners, do you feel like you should know but don’t want to ask?
Worried that it’s so complicated that you’ll never get it?
Or feeling like it’s going to be a minefield that you’d just rather not get into?
Don’t worry, keep reading because if you use plain language to explain it, without all the jargon, it’s actually pretty simple.
Keywords and long tail keywords are what we want to find when we’re considering how to make our website more SEO friendly.
What are keywords?
Keywords are the broad topic or market that your business is in and what you want people to find your website for.
For example:
- glulam beams
- dog massage
- salsa dancing
- digital marketing
- business coach
- driving school
What are long tail keywords?
Longtail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that someone might type into Google to find your product or service.
For example:
Anyone with a physical location may want to put that location at the end of the main keywords so they can target people in a specific area.
(I come from Suffolk so apologies but think about your own location and whether people are looking for your product or service locally)
- Glulam beams could be Glulam Beams in Suffolk
- Dog massage in Bury St Edmunds
- Salsa classes in East Anglia
Or you could target a specific type of customer or problem
- Salsa dancing could also be Salsa dancing for beginners or salsa dancing for adults.
- Dog massage could be dog massage for arthritis, dog massage for luxating patella.
Long tail keywords are your keywords with more specific detail.
How to do keyword research
Keyword research is basically looking for the topics that people search for online the most and that, ideally, don’t have so many other competitors using them that you’re going to get lost in the crowd.
Think about how you, when and why you search for something online, that’s how your customers will be searching too!
The research part is simply finding out what are the most popular words and phrases that are used and whether lots of other websites are using them.
1. Start with the main topics.
What market is your business in? What are you selling?
Think about the main areas that you want potential customers to find you for. What words or phrases would they type into Google to find what your type of business?
For example:
- glulam beams
- dog massage
- salsa dancing
- digital marketing
- social media marketing
- driving school
Make a list of the words and phrases that make sense for your market.
Think about the main thing you want people to find you for when they’re looking on Google.
2. Find some alternative keywords
Sometimes our customers may look for other, related topics when searching for our products or services. These may be less popular than the main words, but they may also be easier to use because not as many of your competitors are using them.
For example:
- People who want glulam beams may also search for laminated beams or engineered timber.
- People looking for dog massage may search for help with their dogs arthritis or canine massage therapy.
- People searching for salsa classes may also search for latin dance classes or salsa lessons.
- People looking for a gift for a dog lover may also want personalized gifts for a dog.
Make a list of any alternative words that you think your customers would use to search for your type of business.
3. Find some long tail keywords
This is where the keyword tools come in very handy! If you start searching using the main keywords, these tools are going to show you other, related searches.
- Salsa dancing near me
- Massage for arthritic dog
- Glulam Beams for massive structures
- Salsa for beginners
- Salsa for seniors
- Engineered timber Suffolk
Longtail keywords are your keywords but with more specific detail.
Add any long tail keywords you may come up with to the list.
Free tools to find keywords and long-tail keywords
Once you’ve got a few ideas down in a list, something to start with, you can use some of the free tools available to see whether they’re popular terms that people search for and whether lots of other websites are also using them.
Use the tools to get your list down to 3-5 keywords and long tail keywords that you can then use on your website – remember, they need to be relevant to what you’re selling.
1. Google Free Keyword Planner
This is probably the most well known of the free tools out there. You will need to set up a Google Ads account but you don’t need to actually run any ads, just look for the info that you need and then move on!
It looks complicated but all we really want to know is if lots of people are searching and is there a lot of competition i.e. lots of other websites using the same keywords.
Average monthly searches tells you if there are lots of them.
Competition will tell you whether it’s high, low or medium.
2. Ubersuggest Free Keyword Tool
Ubersuggest Free Keyword Planner
Ubersuggest is one of my favourite tools because it’s always visible when I’m searching for something in google.
It’s a Chrome extension, so you will need to be using Chrome but when you download it, every time you search for something on Google, it’s going to tell you how many searches happen every month.
3. Keywords Everywhere
This is another Chrome extension and it doesn’t give you the volume for free but you can very easily click into each of the search results and find more long tail keywords as you refine the search.
Don’t overthink or complicate this.
Make a list of 3-5 keywords that you feel are most relevant to your business and start using these to improve your websites SEO.
What do you do with keywords and longtail keywords?
Once you’ve got your list of keywords and phrases, they need to be used on your website.
The key to using these though, is to make it natural. Don’t just find a load of words and try stuffing them all over the place!
That’s called keyword stuffing and google is clever enough to see through it.
And more importantly, it’s not going to be useful to your prospective customer!
Remember, remember, always think about the customer that visits your website first.
Make it clear, jargon free and easy to understand.
Where to put your keywords?
- The URL of your pages
- The Alt Text to your images
- The H1 header text in your pages (only have 1 main header per page!)
- The title of your page
- The snippet that shows on Google
That’s pretty much it for the simple keyword how to, let me know if this has helped and if you want to know more!
Cheers
Karrie xx
