Long-tail Keyword Research For High Ranking in Google

Long-tail keyword research is crucial for any SEO(Search Engine Optimization) strategy an organization adopts. If you do not target the right keywords, you may lose traffic to your competitors.  This article will discover how long-tail keywords could boost your search engine traffic, thereby ranking you among the top 10 results on the first page of

Long-tail keyword research is crucial for any SEO(Search Engine Optimization) strategy an organization adopts. If you do not target the right keywords, you may lose traffic to your competitors. 

This article will discover how long-tail keywords could boost your search engine traffic, thereby ranking you among the top 10 results on the first page of Google. It will also uncover some of the conventional tools and techniques that you can use to gather long-tail keywords and their drawbacks. 

Then as a remedy, how proxies could help. Before that, let’s explore what the long tail keywords are.

What is a long-tail keyword?

As its name implies, long-tail keywords are extended phrases or keywords that the visitors are likely to type on search engines when they’re close to purchasing. Let’s demonstrate this with an example.

Assume that you typed “proxies” in the Google search bar. It’s a broad area that might result in a multitude of search results, including ones you don’t need.

In contrast, if you type “Best proxies for browsing the web anonymously,” then you’ll realize that they would generate more specific concrete results. This is an example of a long-tail keyword with variations in keywords.

Also, the monthly search volume of long-tail keywords is drastically low compared to broader general terms, alias short or “head” keywords.

Long-tail keyword concerning search demand curve

Now, if you plot a graph demonstrating all the search queries that people have searched over a month, it would look similar to this:

So as can you see from the below diagram, there are three types of keywords with respect to the search volume:

1. “Head”- At the head of the cat, keywords are more general terms like “proxies” for instance. The number of keywords is lower, whereas they have a higher search volume above one million.
2. In the chunky middle, the user searches include less generalized terms with more keywords than the head keywords. Still, the search volume is pretty high but lower than the head keywords.
3. Tail: Keywords become large with more specific terms at the cat’s tail. However, there is a considerable drop in the search volume.

So, in short, and sweet, that is how the long-tail keywords got their name.

Why are long-tail keywords great for SEO

1. Higher Conversion Rate:
   Long-tail keywords may not generate immense traffic to your website. However, they have a greater probability of converting than the “head” keywords. This is because if your users are after a more specific keyword phrase, they are aware of what to purchase.
   
   As a result, they are more likely to purchase your product or a service that you offer. So the long-tail keywords will have more conversions.

2. Easier to rank:
   The above graph tells us it is easier to rank for long-tail keywords than short or head keywords with general terms. Since the internet is so diverse and vast, it would be easier to find potential customers specific to your niche. However, it would help to discover these long-tail keywords based on what a potential customer would search in Google.  

3. Assists you in personalizing your content:
   Usually, a long-tail keyphrase contains a minimum of four or even more words with descriptive text. Therefore these texts can include words about gender, nationality, geographic location, or demographic information. So you have a great chance of using different content categories that support products or services your organization offers.

Thus this strategy will allow you to personalize the content on your blogs, for instance.

What are the Prominent tools out there for keyword analysis?

By now, I hope we have convinced you enough on why you should invest in using long-tail keywords? Now it boils down to the question of where to find them.

Well, firstly, we”ll focus on some of the convenient methods out there. These approaches are advantageous for individuals on a limited budget.

1. Refer People Also Ask(PAA) section

PAA section also plays a crucial role in finding the long-tail keywords you require. When you type your search query, and the results emerge, you need to keep an eye on the “People Also Ask” box. Then when you expand on the boxes, you’ll see the answer to the question, and in addition, you will be able to discover answers to further questions.

2. Use Google autocomplete

You may already have experience with Google autocomplete. When you type a key phrase in the Google search bar, it comes with suggestions for your keyword. This is an effective way of searching for long-tail keywords as suggestions directly emerge from Google.  

You can attempt it by yourself by typing your keyphrase in the search bar, for example, “Holiday Retreats.” Then Google would come up with suggestions, as shown below in the diagram.

3. Refer to related searches at the bottom of the page

You’ll find “related searches” if you scroll to the bottom of the page for a specific search query. These related searches can help you learn more about long-tail keywords in your niche by giving you a better insight into what other people in your field are looking for.

For example, if you type “Holiday bungalows in Spain,” you will get long-tail keywords such as “Holiday villas in Spain by the beach” in the related search.

4. Use public forums relevant to the niche

So far, each of the examples discussed above is related to Google. If you’re still not satisfied with what Google provided, you can hunt for long-tail keywords in forums such as Quora, Reddit, and others relevant to your niche. A prominent way to start your search in these forums would be to type: “keyword” + “forum”, “keyword” + “broad” or “keyword” + “discussions”.

Then once you enter a forum or a board, make sure to check the titles and phrases the key phrases that people have used in discussions.

5. Paid keyword research tools

There are heaps of paid keyword research tools such as ahrefs, Google keyword planner, Moz Keyword tool, Keyword tool, and others. Some of these tools are pretty costly.

It is certainly beyond the scope of this article to discuss the pros and cons of these tools. However, we will dive briefly into whether it’s worth depending on them in the next section.

Drawbacks of extracting long-tail keywords freely

A significant concern with the first four methods mentioned above is that Google will display the search results with respect to your geographical location. It obtains this information through your IP address.

So interestingly, for the same keyword, Google would show two unique results for two distinct locations. As a result, your business may lose conversions from different parts of the globe.

Just imagine the outcome when you have long-tail keywords emerging from different locations to your website. It would help if you had proxies to reap the rewards for your business.

However, before diving into the proxies, you might as well like to consider paid keyword tools. These tools can be handy to uncover long-tail keywords from multiple locations.

But are they accurate? Let’s find out next.

Problems associated with keyword tools

The significant drawback of all the keyword research tools is that the search volume that they indicate is not always accurate. First, the numbers vary if you compare the search volume for a particular keyword in different tools.

Therefore you can not rely on the search volume indicator to harvest long-tail keywords for your blog articles or other essential content on your website.

Secondly, since Google dominates the search engine market by handling a whopping 90% of search queries, it is the only company with datasets concerning search volume.

However, Google does not release these data sets. Therefore, the search volumes that keyword tools provide are based on guesses rather than exact figures.

The positive aspect of keyword research tools is that you could use them only as a guide. But what other methods are there? We shall explore next.

Web Scraping and proxies for long-tail keyword research

Since you can not trust the accuracy of search volume for keywords with keyword research tools, you may attempt to search for long-tail keywords manually. But, as mentioned previously, the search results are minimal due to the location restrictions.

So you would need to use proxies to mask your IP address. However, using proxies alone would not do the trick, as it would take superhuman effort to extract various long-tail keywords from Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

So you would require web scraping software working alongside proxies for optimum results.

The following section will dive into how proxies benefit the long-tail keyword scraping process.

You may refer to this article for How to scrape Google search result pages (SERPs).

How can proxies help you to improve your keyword research?

Avoid IP bans and bypass Captchas

For keyword research, you need to scrape competitor websites. Then the websites don’t like others scraping them, and they may block your IP address. Also, certain websites impose timeouts when you exceed the time limit that you have accessed the website.

In such scenarios, you would have to use rotating residential proxies with different IP addresses so that they would appear to the target website as different requests are being sent from multiple devices. You could also avoid captchas when using rotating proxies.

Interesting read: How to Bypass CAPTCHAs When Web Scraping

Helps to overcome geo-restricted content

Google and other search engines depend on locations to generate results for keywords. With private residential proxies, you can choose a location from any part of the world to appear as if you’re scraping keywords from that particular location.

Also, on the other hand, certain websites limit access from certain countries. Once again, proxies are the answer, as you would be able to connect to a proxy server in the banned location and access those websites to scrape keywords.

Ability to perform competitor analysis with ease

In order to locate niche-relevant keywords, you would need to dig deeper into what long-tail keywords your competitors are ranking for. However, as mentioned previously, the target websites have anti-scraping mechanisms in place, including the need to pass the captcha test.

However, you can send heaps of requests using rotating residential proxies and bypass captcha tests with ease when you use proxies.

Improves network speed

Keyword research needs a fast and stable internet connection, and you may occasionally encounter a sluggish network, which might impact your productivity. Keep in mind that keywords and the parameters that search engines examine when ranking web pages constantly change. As a result, today’s essential keywords may become obsolete tomorrow.

An SEO proxy allows you to cache pages that your users view regularly, and it then shows them without needing to make any server queries. As a result, your websites will load faster and provide more information to your visitors. Websites that load rapidly are also ranked better in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Reverse engineer poorly designed websites

When you search for a term, you may encounter a poorly designed website in the results. You will raise your visibility and revenue if you can discover a strategy to replace such websites on the top pages. The websites you want to outrank, on the other hand, want to establish defense by stopping you from reaching them.

Despite their bad overall performance, you won’t know what keywords they’re utilizing to rank high. However, if you invest in a good proxy, you may do it almost simply. While browsing such websites, it would make you invisible. You’ll be able to quickly collect as many keywords as possible and utilize them to your advantage.

Conclusion

After reading this article, you may have encountered how essential the proxies are for your long-tail keyword research. As you have discovered in this article, there can be several ways to harvest long-tail keywords.

However, web scraping and proxies should drive you effective results. This is because manually scraping for search results may seem unrealistic, and also, the indicators used in keyword tools may not be accurate.