Long tail keywords are the holy grail if you are starting a new website with a limited budget. I know I seem to be repeating myself a lot about this but I can’t underestimate how important these are if you are having trouble ranking for regular keywords.

Popular keywords have lots and lots of traffic but they are also highly competitive. If everybody follows the best practice to be #1 on Google, they can’t all have the top spot. If multiple large websites are fighting for the number one position in the search results for a very popular search term, you will need to invest a lot of time and money to ever compete with them.

Rather than try to take on a battle you can not win, you need to take on a smaller battle, one if which you can win. Once you have won the number one spot for multiple long tail keywords, you will find you are in a much better position to take on the competition for the original keyword you wanted to target.

How to Identify a Long Tail Keyword

Long tail keywords do not always have to be long. Much like “keywords” do not always have to be single words. Long tail keywords can often be quite short. The key part of identifying these keywords is down to the search volume and competitiveness. Searches with a low amount of monthly searches tend to get ignored by the larger websites in your niche. With the big websites out of the picture, they are usually easier to rank for.

How to Find Long Tail Keywords

Finding long tail keywords is generally the same as finding keywords in general. Using a keyword research tool and following the tactics outlined in the main guide for finding keywords for your website, you should have no trouble finding long tail keywords.