Many companies hire someone to do their seo and don't understand when it doesn't seem to be working. A key indicator may be that the seo company didn't use long-tail keywords. Long tail keywords are gaining more widespread adoption in the digital marketing arena and with good cause. These represent the biggest opportunity for small and mid-size businesses when employing online marketing.
Online marketing, or digital marketing, should not be about driving traffic to your website but about driving the right traffic to your entire internet presence. This is often called Inbound Marketing.
What's so appealing about long-tail keywords as part of your marketing strategy is that it offers such valuable insights into your business, your customers, your competitors, and the market in general. We'll discuss the tools later in this post.
What are long tail keywords?
If you’ve ever talked about SEO definition, or worked with someone on search engine optimization, or looked at small seo tools you’ll notice the conversation around keywords and ranking. If they are good, they’ll point you in the direction of long-tail keywords and gaining rank for specific and relevant searches. But there’s more to it than that.
Have you ever received an email like this?
Businesses get bombarded with emails like this with the promises of the #1 Page Rank and optimizing your website for better results. Please ignore these emails and setup a smart filter to trash immediately, they are garbage. These companies promise results that they cannot deliver nor do they focus on the hard work of actually bringing you clients.
Related: Send better emails to your customers
So what are long tail keywords?
Let's break down long tail keywords definition and the purpose of keywords:
- Long Tail on it's own is defined in retail and marketing as the large number of products that sell in small quantities, as contrasted with the small number of best-selling products. This is where niche markets and opportunities come into play. Companies satisfied with their specific customer base to sell to, rather than compete with the giants. Ever wonder why Wal-Mart offers 15 kinds of soap? or 30 kinds of macaroni?
- Keywords are words or concepts of great significance. These are informative words to indicate what is included in content. They are ‘keys’ to what lies ahead.
- Keywords plus Google’s Hummingbird equals Latent Semantic Indexing (what is latent semantic indexing). This goes a step further to help identify the context behind the content. Keywords help Google identify what the content is about, LSI (latent semantic indexing) helps Google differentiate the content and add relevance. For example, write an article about cars and how is Google able to know you mean the automobile versus the Disney movie? Thru LSI, Google can identify the context and present your content to relevant searches. That’s context, and that’s why LSI is also important.
So, LTK's are the search terms with 2 or more words that are specific to a service or product with relatively low search volume. These keywords make up more than 75% of all internet searches online. That’s 9 billion of the 12 billion searches on Google every month! This is the opportunity for businesses today. The shift moves us away from searching for ‘shoes’ and instead to search for ‘blue running shoes in bloomington, mn’. See the difference?
Take a look at the following chart to understand the true potential.

Head keywords on the contrast are the popular terms that are searched for on the internet. These are the ‘best selling’ commodities in regards to online marketing. To that truth, these are highly competitive searches and have a premium cost, just like that of best-selling products in a store. The best-selling or top searches are typically gobbled up by industry leaders and long-standing businesses that spend money to keep their market share.
Keyword Resources- Staying in front of the search demand curve
Google Adwords Keyword Planner
- It not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume, but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms.
Google Trends
- Presents trending stories and content with analytics to help you capitalize on swings in the marketplace.
Keyword Tool
- Free version of Keyword Tool generates up to 750+ long-tail keyword suggestions for every search term
WordStream Free Keyword Tool
- Get suggestions on keywords and volume. Upgrade to get Google frequency and competition rates.
The Ulitmate Resource: HubSpot Marketing Software
- Search for keywords
- Identify where your company ranks
- Identify where your competitors rank
- Identify the opportunities for content and search
- Shows average cost per click for Google Ad campaigns
- Shows dificulty in ranking for search terms
Other Resources
Moz Beginner's Guide to Keyword Research
Should You Change Your SEO Strategy Because of Google Hummingbird?
Related Kpahi Articles
Marketing Stats: The Break Even Point
3 Rules for Understanding Branch Logic
CONCLUSION:
The modern digital marketing toolkit now includes long tail keywords. These plus LSI are part of a solid SEO strategy and inbound marketing strategy. The new strategy is to be niche and specific. More specific keywords help buyers find exactly what they are looking for and hopefully that is your business!
Who We Are
Kpahi, pronounced Kay-pah-hee, is a full service marketing agency, providing digital marketing solutions to small, medium, and large businesses. We provide our clients unbelievable growth, through the utilization of disruptive technologies, brand strategy, actual SEO process, branch logic, and implementation of latent semantic indexing. Our web services provide our clients with consistent revenue growth through automated marketing.
Who We Aren't
We aren't an SEO company, website redesign company or a link building services company, as all of these are mere tactics or tools to provide an end result. We do provide these tactics and small seo tools for our clients through services, however our services encompass much more than simple digital marketing tactics and online marketing strategy.
What Does Kpahi Mean?
Kpahi is Lakota Indian, meaning to make a choice or to choose one's own. We aren't of indian descent, however we chose a word that would generate conversation and confusion at first glance because it is disruptive.


