Finding Long Tail Keywords In Customers Feedback: A Key Guide

1. Search volume

The search volume of a keyword tells you how many people search for the phrase each month. It’s shown in most long-tail keyword research tools (including KWFinder.)

The tricky part?
A “good” search volume depends on the industry you’re in. (For example 3,900 people search for “b2b marketing strategies” versus 450k for “how to lose weight”.)
Generally, for keywords with a search volume of…

• <50: Avoid or group together (unless you’re trying the Keyword Golden Ratio technique)
• 50-250: Group similar terms together
• 250+: Use as a standalone focus keyword

Let’s put that into practice and say you’ve got these keywords with search volumes:

• “Blogging tips for beginners” (10): Merge with similar phrases like “how to start a blog” and “blogging advice”.
• “Grow your email list” (180): Merge with similar phrases like “email list builder” or “ways to grow your email list”.
• “How to start a blog” (116,000): Create a standalone guide to target this long-tail keyword

2. Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty is an SEO metric that describes how hard it will be to rank for a specific keyword.

Each phrase has a score out of 100, with the low end indicating it’s easy to rank for it. Keywords on the higher end of the scale indicate you’ll need to put more effort into SEO optimization to rank on page one for.

So, what keyword difficulty score should you aim for?
Just like any SEO answer, the truth is: It depends.
Your approach to this depends on the size and authority of your website.

Smaller sites without much authority should start small with low keyword difficulty. It’s low-hanging fruit – there aren’t many other websites trying to rank for the term, so it should be relatively easy.

Large sites with SEO weight can start tackling the phrases with a medium/high difficulty score. They’ve already built some trust with Google, and they’re able to outrank some of the competition, so it’s more likely they’ll rank well for the term.

3. Relevance

If you don’t offer a product/service that someone searching a long-tail keyword would be interested in, don’t pick it.
Sounds obvious, right? But it can be harder than it sounds.

For example: If you’re a car mechanic, “why isn’t my AC working” is a more relevant long-tail keyword than “how to become a car mechanic” – even though the latter is an exact match term.

The first is something a potential customer would search for. The latter is likely being searched by a student who doesn’t need the service the mechanic offers, so it doesn’t make sense to target it on your website.

You’re able to find this by taking a look at what Google already thinks a keyword means, and the companies behind each spot.
Search your long-tail keyword and analyze the top results for it.

Let’s look at that using the “why isn’t my AC working” long-tail keyword example:

The three organic results are from home service companies that offer this as a service.

Plus, we can see that two of the high-ranking results are question-based; the other is a listicle. Consider following the same format with content. (Those formats are ranking well for a reason.)

Now, let’s take a look at how to work with the search intent.

How to use your long-tail keywords

You’ve whittled down your list of long-tail keywords, and are confident that your ideal visitors are searching for them.

The next step is to use them on your website. This tells Google that you’re talking about something related to that long-tail keyword, increasing your chances of ranking well for it.

Think about search intent

The biggest mistake when you’re targeting long-tail keywords is to assume a blog post is the answer. All you need to do is pick your term, write a 1,000-word post and publish it to your blog, right?
Not necessarily.

The absolute first step in targeting your long-tail keywords is to decide on the type of content you’ll use, based on the intent behind the phrase.

Search intent describes the motivation of the person searching for the term. It can tell you how to package your content, and is usually broken into four categories – know, go, do, and buy – as explained by Google:

Here are some long-tail keyword examples alongside the search intent, and the content you might create for each:

1. I want to buy

Example: “men’s black vans sneakers discount”
Long-tail keywords that are specific to a product or service, like the example above, show a searcher’s intention to buy.
They usually consist of a (PRODUCT/SERVICE) +

• buy
• price
• discount
• sale

They’re probably not looking for a blog post that collates the best shows, so in this case, it’d be best to target the phrase on your product page. This is where you want people searching this term to end up, and likely the best way to give them what they’re looking for.

2. I want to go

Example: “best Chinese food in LA”
Location-based long-tail keywords show an intention to go somewhere. Again, the ideal place for these keywords might not always be a blog post.
For example: If you think you offer the best Chinese food in LA, add this to your homepage or title tag.

But what if you’re a food blogger without a physical restaurant in LA for people to visit? In this case, you could create a round-up of best restaurants to rank for that term.

The searcher wants to go somewhere; they’re looking for information that gets them there. Tie this in with the product or service you offer.

3. I want to know

Example: “what’s the best CRM for small businesses”
The person searching for this keyword wants to find the best solution for there problem. They want to compare different CRM software, so a comparison guide is likely to help them get what they need to know.

Put together a comparison post that compares your CRM to other popular options. What features do you have that they don’t? How does your pricing compare? How many team members are allowed an account?

These are all questions the searcher would likely be interested in when searching for “what’s the best CRM for small businesses.” If you can answer all of them in one comprehensive guide, there’s no reason why you couldn’t impress Google and potential customers.

4. I want to do

Example: “how to train for a hike”
This person – or anyone searching for “how to…” – wants advice on doing something.

They’re high on the sales funnel and don’t necessarily have an intention to purchase a product even if you’re recommending one in the content.
So, you could package your advice in an easy-to-digest piece of content, such as a:

• detailed step-by-step guide
• video tutorial

Group similar long-tail terms keywords

What happens if you’ve got a list of long-tail keywords that all have the same intent, similar search volumes, and ask the same question?

Creating a single post for each long-tail keyword wouldn’t make any sense.
Let’s put that into practice. The long-tail keywords “how to set up a blog”, “how do I start my own blog” and “how to create a free blog” all have a similar intent.

If you were to target them with three separate blog posts, you’d likely use all three terms in each piece. Because you’ve got three pages essentially discussing the same topic, Google wouldn’t know which to rank highly – so all three are pushed down.

However, if all three terms were bundled together in a single blog post, Google knows exactly what they should rank you for.

There LSI algorithm works by finding relevant terms to the page’s main keyword. If they can find multiple related long-tail keywords in a single post, it increases the chances of ranking for more long-tail phrases.

Improve keyword rankings on already-published pages

Remember how earlier, we mentioned you don’t need to start from scratch when doing keyword research? You can dig through your Google Search Console data to see what you’re already ranking on page two (and beyond) for.

A similar concept applies to content creation; you don’t need to create a brand new blog post for each long-tail keyword you’ve already got on your list… Especially if you’re already ranking for it.
Here’s what that looks like for Mangools’ SEO guide. It covers the basic terms like “what is SEO”  but has a separate section targeting the long-tail keyword “how can I learn SEO”:

And here’s the SERP for that keyword:

So, instead of creating a brand new blog post, edit the page’s content to reference the new long-tail term. This can be as simple as adding a short section answering the question.

But because Google knows you’re answering that on a page about a relevant topic, there’s a high chance they’ll bump up your rankings for that phrase.

Conclusion

There are hundreds of long-tail keywords your audience is searching for.

Follow the steps we’ve shared in this guide to find them, then start targeting them on your website to tell Google (and your customers) that your information is valuable to anyone searching for them.

You’ll soon start to see steady growth in organic traffic.