In 2004 Chris Anderson, when he was still director of Wired Usa, used the term long tail for the first time to explain a business model that preferred to focus on the sale of unique items in small quantities instead of the sale of popular items in large quantities.
Simply put: Anderson’s theory bet on the sale of niche products instead of mass consumption! About Search Engine Optimization we can say that in this case niche and mass are our keywords!
But what does the long tail theory translate into in SEO ?
Instead of optimizing for search engines using a few keywords with large search volumes but very competitive, engine positioning tactics to increase the visibility of a website focus on the use of more descriptive keywords ( long tail keywords therefore built with more terms) that generate less traffic but are competitive precisely because of their particularity.
In technical terms: a long tail keyword is a keyword made up of many terms in sequence (4-5 words) and is the information contained in the <title> tag of the web page’s html code.
A practical example
Let’s say a user has decided to look for a jacket, there are two cases
User A: Google the simple and only word “jacket”, a term so generic that it will produce an infinite series of results. It is a user who has no interest in that moment in finding something that he will then go to buy. He used a broad keyword (a generic word).
User B: type a phrase like “double Benin Phone Number List breasted tweed jacket” into Google , a phrase that demonstrates a specific intent, he used a “long tail keyword” (specific words).
By using more and more long tail keywords in the content of the pages, SEO tactics will be able to bring more users to your site compared to other sites that will only produce generic traffic in search engines.
How to identify the right long tail keywords and their effectiveness
Starting point, identify the broader topic of the activity or service on which the SEO strategy will be based . By entering the topic in the Google search DD Leads bar, all the related searches will come out at the bottom of the Serp , a very large pool of information for identifying the most effective long tail keywords.
Seo specialists use the Google Search Console as a fundamental tool, to evaluate the queries (questions) that lead to the site we are dealing with, discovering very specific topics that broaden the field of action to optimize the site and therefore develop traffic.