At its international developer conference, Google I/O, in 2014, Google called for “HTTPS everywhere.” The push for a secure web sits at the heart of Google’s philosophy and directly impacts its search algorithm. 

As a search engine optimizer, it’s imperative to understand the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, along with how the protocol underlying both works and how to create your site in line with best HTTPS practices. By doing so, you are set up for the secure transfer of data, fostering user trust, and achieving the highest possible rankings for your site. 

What are HTTP, HTTPS, SLS, TLS and HSTS?

The abbreviations HTTP, HTTPS, SSL, TLS, and HSTS all refer to different aspects of the same technology. Understanding how they function and overlap will ensure that you can use them effectively when optimizing your website. 

Here are brief definitions of each of the terms:

HTTP - HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is an internet communication, or “application layer” protocol that enables the transfer of information between connected devices. In non-tech terms, HTTP is essentially the set of rules that computers on the internet follow to communicate with each other. Whenever you visit a website, your browser retrieves information from a host server using HTTP. There was, however, one significant downside to HTTP. When you use standard HTTP to send information, like bank details or a personal address, to a website, you do so in plain text. As a consequence, anybody that intercepts your connection could access your data. 

HTTPS - HTTPS is an abbreviation for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. It is based on the same underlying technology as HTTP but adds several layers of security that protect information during transit: encryption, data integrity, and authentication. HTTPS represents an important innovation because it acts as a safeguard for internet browsers against data theft. 

SSL and TLS - HTTPS relies on secure socket layers (SSL) certificates to work. In order to establish an HTTPS connection, an SSL certificate must be installed on a website. Transport Layer Security (TLS) is the modern version of SSL, although the two terms are often and incorrectly used interchangeably. TLS is the technology responsible for encrypting information prior to transit.

HSTS - HTTP Strict Transport Security is a protocol that ensures a browser retrieves an HTTPS site, even if the HTTP version is requested. It is supported alongside HTTPS and recommended by Google. 

Is HTTPS a Ranking Factor?

In a word, yes. Google has said explicitly that it takes HTTPS into account when evaluating sites. And there’s extensive documentation covering how to secure websites with HTTPS on Google Search Central. 

In fact, Google actively penalizes websites that don’t use the HTTPS protocol, as part of its broader commitment to a secure web. Importantly this also applies to mixed content. The term “mixed content” refers to secure URLs that include page elements that are delivered through HTTP and, as a result, are unsecure. 

"The future of the web is a secure one, so make sure people in your organization understand HTTPS. It should be on the roadmap." Thao Tran, Global Product Partnerships at Google, speaking at BrightEdge's SHARE16.

What Are the Drawbacks of HTTP?

Let’s take a look at the main drawbacks associated with HTTP. Investor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, outlined several security issues in 1999. 

Here is a brief overview of the main points: 

• Leakage of personal information - HTTP clients can “leak” sensitive information when interacting with other sources.
• Abuse of server log information - Interception of information about browsing activity stored on server logs can be used to identify an individual's online behavior. 
• Unsecure transfer of sensitive information - As a generic protocol, HTTP has no control over data based on its content. 
• Encoding of sensitive information in URLs - Including the source of a link in a request can potentially disclose private information. 
• Privacy issues associated with accept-request headers - The content of accept-request headers can reveal information, particularly related to location, to a server. 
• Attacks based on file and path names - Bad actors can potentially access prohibited areas of a site’s directory by navigating up the directory taxonomy via HTTP requests. 
• DNS spoofing - HTTP client reliance on the Domain Name Service (DNS) makes it possible for bad actors to mis-associate IP addresses and domain names. 
• Authentication credentials and idle web clients - HTTP provides no means of discarding cached authentication details. 
• Proxies and caching - The nature of HTTP proxies lend them to man-in-the-middle or “eavesdropping” attacks. 
• Denial of service attacks on proxies - Denial of service attacks on HTTP proxies have been documented. 

You can read more about each of these points (and others not mentioned here) by reading section fifteen of Tim Berners-Lee’s memo. 

What Are the Benefits of HTTPS?

Outside of improving the chances that your site will rank highly in Google search results, HTTPS also provides additional benefits.

HTTPS overcomes the shortcomings described above by leveraging three technologies: 

• Encryption - Data is encrypted during transit so malicious third parties can’t “listen in”
• Data integrity - Data cannot be modified during transit without detection
• Authorization - The server authenticates the user to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks

As soon as you switch your website to HTTPS, your users will automatically enjoy greater protection as a result of these security features. 

How to Switch from HTTP to HTTPS

Fortunately, switching from HTTP to HTTPS isn’t as significant an undertaking as it was a few years ago. In many cases, your web hosting service will organize the transition (if your site isn’t already using HTTPS) and renew your certificates automatically. 

Follow the six steps below to ensure a successful transition to HTTPS: 

1. Purchase an SSL/TLS certificate - An SSL certificate authenticates your website’s identity and allows for the encryption of data before transfer. 
2. Install it on your website - SSL certificates are small data files stored on your website’s server. Before you can create secure, encrypted connections, you will need to install your certificate. 
3. Ensure all internal links use HTTPS - You should ensure all internal website links use HTTPS URLs. Failure to account for remaining HTTP links can cause navigation and SEO problems. 
4. Set up 301 redirects from HTTP to HTTPS - 301 redirects let Google know that you have updated your site and reroute visitors using old URLs to the correct pages. 
5. Implement HTS - HTTP Strict Transport Security is a mechanism that ensures all connections to your site use HTTPS. Once you have installed your SSL certificate, implementing HTS is a straightforward process that involves adding several lines of code to the appropriate site file. 
6. Check indexation - Make sure you don’t have HTTP versions of web pages being crawled and indexed by search engines. To check this, type in “site:http://example.com” into Google search to see if any are still being indexed.

Download the Brightedge HTTP migration checklist to ensure a smooth transition from HTTP to HTTPS. Google Search Central also has extensive documentation about how to avoid common mistakes. 

Conclusion: One Piece in the SEO Puzzle

Search engine optimization can seem like a jigsaw puzzle, with lots of different pieces including technical, on/off page, content and more. Businesses take account of a myriad of ranking factors, testing approaches, leveraging best practices and weave them into an effective SEO strategy. 

HTTPS is one piece of that jigsaw puzzle. Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS is both straightforward and absolutely essential from an SEO perspective. If your site still uses HTTP, now is the time to transition to HTTPS. Once you see the increase in rankings, you’ll only wish you’d done it sooner. 

 

 

 

Fifteen years ago, Lem and I started BrightEdge because we saw a huge gap in digital. Brands were investing to produce and optimize content but had no way to predict what would make that content findable by their customers. I had myself run websites and knew how hard it was to figure this out. 

Lem and I are both engineers and we worked hard to build the DataCube, the first reverse index of the internet. I will never forget how it felt when our first customers shared with us how we had helped them. It was exciting to hear about BrightEdge working as we had designed it – and even more exciting to hear about new use cases that our customers discovered on their own. 

That is because SEO is by its nature holistic. Every element of a page influences how it ranks in search: the title, the content, how fast it loads, everything. Our dream has always been to create that holistic platform that helps marketers win at every aspect of search. And so that early success of DataCube inspired us to build ContentIQ as part of our solution in 2017, allowing for cross-team governance and SEO technical analysis on an enterprise scale. We also created pixel parsing, allowing for a truer vision of top ranking SERPs. And with Autopilot, we created the only machine learning solution that improves search performance. 

Now, we are so excited to announce that we are extending our holistic platform even further by joining forces with Oncrawl. BrightEdge and Oncrawl have combined because holistic SEO is not easy. Getting it right requires high quality enterprise data with multiple technical capabilities. At BrightEdge, we have a comprehensive SEO suite and adding Oncrawl’s advanced technical SEO capabilities through data science will represent the future of enterprise SEO.   

Oncrawl pioneered big data infrastructure in crawl technology as well as semantic analysis of SEO data, allowing for much more control and visibility. Oncrawl has rapidly become a must-have for advanced SEOs and has won numerous awards.  Oncrawl leadership shares our dream of holistic SEO and has built a following of SEO ambassadors in the industry.   

Through technical innovation, Oncrawl is positioning itself to be the driving force behind making data science core to SEO programs. With this new combination, BrightEdge and Oncrawl now provide customers with the most flexibility in SEO deployments. For SEO, some scenarios require technical crawlers to be integrated into a broader platform for things like site governance and ongoing SEO hygiene. Other scenarios demand highly customized crawls and data modeling to pinpoint what optimizations need to occur. Accommodating both is complicated for enterprise organizations, especially if they need to leverage multiple toolsets to address all these use cases. 

We are truly excited - I have never encountered a team with a vision like this. Oncrawl is as committed as we are to building AI and machine learning that helps marketers. Together we bring you the most comprehensive SEO and data platform.  

Thank you and looking forward to the next fifteen! 
Jim

February 2022 marks the start of Google using Page Experience as a ranking factor for desktop search. The search company says the desktop rollout will be complete by the end of March. Page Experience has been used as a ranking factor for mobile searches since August 2021. 

Page Experience is essentially Google’s way of rewarding or penalizing websites based on a page’s user experience. If a page loads too slowly, shifts once loaded or inhibits users from accessing the page’s content with intrusive ads, for example – even if the content is relevant – Google effectively sees this as diminishing the value of the content.  It is in keeping with a long-standing focus on returning the best result after understanding the intent of a given search. 

At the heart of Page Experience are (mostly) objective measures of technical performance for a given page, starting with what Google calls Core Web Vitals. For desktop Page Experience, the five elements of performance are as follows:  

1) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): A measure of the time it takes for a page’s main content to load. Google recommends a target of 2.5 seconds or less for LCP. (Core Web Vital 1 of 3) 

2) Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Refers to the stability of the content once it’s loaded. If content shifts up or down while a user is viewing it, Google deems this a negative experience. Google recommends a CLS of less than .1, which sites can measure using BrightEdge or Google’s Page Experience Report. (Core Web Vital 2 of 3) 

3) First Input Delay (FID): The time between when the first web page objects load (a button, image, scroll bar) and when the page becomes interactive. If page content takes too long to be interactive, Google views this as a poor user experience. Google recommends an FID of less than 100 milliseconds. (Core Web Vital 3 of 3)  

4) Proper use of HTTPS security protocols: Pages not served over hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS), represent greater risk to the user and, accordingly, a poor user experience that negatively impacts the page’s search ranking. Learn more about HTTPS.   

5) The absence of intrusive interstitials: Intrusive interstitials are pop-ups and overlays that interfere with the content on the page and are a Page Experience no-no.  

Per Google, the elements and their thresholds are the same as those used for mobile Page Experience (minus mobile-friendliness, which only applies to mobile search rankings.) Brands that have already optimized for mobile Page Experience, in other words, are ahead of the game, but should still measure desktop Page Experience and address any desktop-specific issues. Google has added dedicated desktop performance reporting in its Search Console to help highlight any disparities in Page Experience-related performance for mobile and desktop users of their sites. 

For websites that have not yet been optimized for Page Experience, here are some additional resources to help site operators understand the new ranking factor and make the necessary improvements: 

• Core Web Vitals: Preparing for the Page Experience Update 
• Core Web Vitals Webinar Q & A 
• Understanding Page Experience in Google Search Results 

Measuring and Managing Page Experience with BrightEdge Instant 

BrightEdge Instant provides analysis and dashboards for users to evaluate, prepare and implement changes to improve Page Experience on both desktop and mobile. Ongoing reporting within the tool makes it easy to see and communicate the impact of website changes. 

BrightEdge Instant Use Case: Website Performance Analysis 

Key Takeaways 

We will keep an eye on the impact of Page Experience on desktop search results. As a potential point of comparison, early indications from the rollout in mobile search suggest a comparatively high prioritization of Page Experience as a ranking factor.  

If you have waited to evaluate and improve your site for Page Experience -- perhaps the majority of your traffic comes from desktop, for example – we’d strongly recommend prioritizing it in 2022. 

 

 

Digital media continues to create global interconnections, and in response many brands want to expand beyond their borders and engage with new prospective customers in foreign countries. We put together this list of international SEO best practices to equip you with what you need to know about driving qualified, high-intent global traffic to your organization.

Know the search engines used in your target countries

Google is the largest search engine globally, with a market share of nearly 90%. In many countries optimizing for Google alone will allow you to reach your prospective clients. Bing is the second largest search engine worldwide, with a small but consistent presence across the world. That said, there are several large countries that rely mostly on local search engines. 

Here are some examples of international search engines:

• China - Baidu
• Russia - Yandex
• South Korea - Naver

Look at the search statistics for the areas you want to target and figure out which search engines are most popular there. Although some of the basics for optimization will remain consistent across search engines, like a focus on quality content and user experience, other factors will differ. 

For example, sites wanting to have visibility in Baidu should ideally be created with a Chinese domain and hosted on a Chinese server. If you want to learn more, we’ve written an in-depth post about the various major international search engines. We’ve also published a comprehensive overview of Baidu.

Work with native speakers for keyword research

When it comes to expanding internationally into non-English speaking markets, foreign-language content will form the basis of your search marketing strategy. 

As always, when undertaking search engine optimization, consider user experience. No one likes to read content generated by an automated translator. Many ideas are easily lost in translation, being clunky at best, or misleading and incorrect at worst, opening up a whole new world of unpleasant liabilities. 

Working with a native speaker allows you to capitalize on local colloquialisms, culture, and other aspects of semantics that might not be readily obvious to someone who speaks a language fluently but doesn’t live there. 

Don't just rely on translating your existing content. You should also create content that is tailored to address issues the local audience cares about.

Certain keywords will carry high volumes irrespective of international boundaries, and a significant portion of your content will be suitable for direct translation, but your keyword research processes should also account for country-specific queries, both general and long-tail. 

It’s similarly important to pay attention to small details like currencies, time zones, addresses, payment options, and so on. All of these factors will contribute to making visitors feel at home on your site. 

Site structure for international visitors

Setting up your website for international visitors will be one of the most important steps you take in international SEO best practices. And there are few ways to do it.

Some brands, such as Amazon, create unique top-level domains (TLDs) for each country, such as Amazon.com in the United States and Amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom. Generally, this method works best when you have a very large business with offers and services that differ from country to country.

Success with this type of setup also requires brands to carry a considerable amount of recognition because of the lack of integration between the domains. When you create a new domain for a new country, you more or less have to start from zero from an SEO perspective. This new domain is new, has little to no reputation, no backlinks, and so on. 

Unless your brand is recognizable enough to overcome this challenge, like Amazon, separate domains will likely not be the way to go.

For most moderately sized companies, creating sub-directories or sub-folders branched from a primary TLD tends to work best. This allows you to channel all the power of the domain. It also becomes simple to add an additional country later if you choose to expand again. 

Here are your two main options when it comes to picking a URL structure:

• Sub-domain:  Host foreign language content on your current domain but create a separate site (e.g. ca.clothingretailer.com or de.clothingretailer.com)
• Sub-directory: Create a sub-directory on your domain which will act as a separate area of your website dedicated to foreign language pages (e.g. clothingretailer.com/canada/ or clothingretailer.com/deutschland/)

It’s also possible to amend a URL with parameters of the form site.com?loc=. This is not recommended, however, by Google. 

Inform Google of Foreign Language Versions of Pages With “hreflang” Tags

Whatever URL structure you decide to use, you will need to use hreflang tags to provide Google with the strongest signal for language and country. Although Google can generally detect language pretty reliably, many languages are spoken in more than one country and you may want to tailor content towards people in that country. 

Hreflang tags also make it crystal clear to Google how the pages are related and when they should be presented. 

There are three main options for setting up hreflang tags:

• Add them to the HTML for your site.
• Include them in your Sitemap.xml file.
• Add them to your HTTP header. 

Regardless of which one you choose, make sure that all of the pages point to each other. For example, the US English version of a page - hreflang=en-us - should provide access to the UK version - hreflang=en-uk - for UK users and the UK should point back to the US for US visitors. If you fail to connect the pages from both sides, you may find yourself running into errors in Google Search Console. 

Look for international competitors and strategies on local markets

As you move into new markets, you'll need to identify your local competitors. Just because you compete with other international brands in the United States does not mean that those companies will also be your primary competitors overseas. 

You also have to consider local companies. Examine the SERPs related to your industry and see what kind of content local search engines are rewarding for your most valuable keyword groups. 

As you begin to identify your top competitors, you also want to look at their digital strategy. Research into the local search engines can provide helpful information about what the SERPs generally value, but for any search engine, that can vary by industry. Looking at the content strategies employed by others in your sector can help you improve your ability to compete.

Adjust content and products to account for changes in local opinions

For many businesses, their product offerings will remain largely consistent across different countries. 

This makes it tempting to simply translate the product names and pages to the new language, but doing so will overlook potential areas of optimization. Taking the time to tailor content and product lines to local sensibilities will make it easier to gain footing within the region’s market and begin to secure more leads and customers. 

Work with native speakers to create product names, pages, and content that fits the needs and interests of local audiences. Consider what's most important to them and how your product can fill local needs as you progress. 

Marketing in general is about personalization and speaking to the needs of specific personas. Customers in your new country want to feel as though you are just as committed to serving them as you are to your native audience which can also help bounce rate. You can demonstrate this by producing content tailored to their needs.

Other Considerations

Expanding overseas can present you with incredible opportunities to grow your business. Taking the international SEO best practices into account can help you see success. 

In addition to the tips outlined above, here are a few more things to keep in mind:

• Don’t assume that all visitors will want to browse in the language of their location. Provide the option to change language and location on all pages. If a visitor in Japan, for example, arrives at your site via an English-language search result, it doesn’t mean that they want to be forwarded to your Japanese-language site automatically. Ask them!
• Be conscious of culture when it comes to design, layout, color choice and so forth. This can be particularly relevant for conversions and, with Google’s growing emphasis on page experience, for search rankings. 
• Recognize the difference between multilingual and multi-regional sites, which require slightly different approaches. A multilingual site offers content in multiple languages. A multi-regional site targets users in different countries. Your site may be either of these or both. 
• Remember to build links and other forms of off-site authority in the country which you are targeting. Rankings in one national Google domain don’t necessarily precipitate rankings in another. 
• If you are duplicating or using very similar content on one top-level domain aimed at a specific audience , use canonical tags to tell Google which is the primary page. This will be served in search results. This is important if you have multiple versions of a page and the only difference is the language, so you can default one of them to show in search.

 

 

 

Updated: February 2022

Long-tail keywords account for over 90% of search queries. 

Accessing that traffic pool can be incredibly profitable. The good news is that identifying, targeting and ranking for long-tail keywords is a straightforward and cost-effective process. 

In this post, we’ll clear up some common misconceptions about long-tail keywords, cover the benefits of having a dedicated long-tail strategy, and describe how to conduct thorough, extensive keyword research. 

Where Does the Idea of the “Long Tail” Come From?

The concept of the “long tail” has been instrumental in shaping how organizations understand markets. Chris Anderson popularized the concept  in his 2004 book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More but statisticians have been studying it in various forms since at least the 1950s. 

In his now-famous article on Wired and his subsequent book, Chris Anderson argued that there is more profit to be made by selling lots of different products, each with low demand and few competitors, than by attempting to create one big hit that relies on leveraging unified demand in a crowded space. The advent of democratized marketplaces with low barriers to entry - just like the good ol’ internet - has made this approach possible.

Applied to search engine optimization, the idea is simple: target lots of low-volume, low-competition keywords instead of wastefully expending resources on highly competitive, high-volume counterparts. 

Now, while that strategy looks uncomplicated on paper, it’s a little more multifaceted in practice. So let’s dig into the specifics. 

What Are Long-Tail Keywords? 

There is no shortage of definitions of the term “long-tail keyword” on the web. But despite its importance and uniqueness, search engine experts still get things wrong when describing the concept. 

Long-tail keywords are search queries that have relatively low search volumes compared to high-volume “head keywords.” You can understand this idea in terms of specific, thematically related groups of keywords, say around the topic of “home improvement,” or as applied to the totality of Google search queries over a given time (or any other search engine).

Low-volume queries sit on the “tail” of a curve of a graph that maps search volumes on the y-axis against keywords on the x-axis. If you could see the whole graph, the long-tail would stretch for miles. 

High-volume keywords comprise what is called the “head.” Middle-volume keywords are sometimes said to constitute the “thorax” or “chunky middle.” 

Misconceptions About Long-Tail Keywords

To say that long-tail keywords are phrases of multiple words with search volumes of ten or less isn’t entirely accurate, although this is often the case. There are many single-word long-tail keywords. What’s more, the term “low” has to be understood relatively for the concept of the long tail to make sense.

Another common mistake people make is to define long-tail keywords as always being highly specific. While this is usually true, there are exceptions. For example, the low-volume keyword “bog snorkeling” (yep, it’s a recognized sport) is just as semantically general as “golf.”

The key takeaway here is that long-tail keywords should be understood primarily in terms of volume (or number of monthly search volume). Applying other attributes just serves to needlessly muddy the waters and is usually unhelpful from a marketing perspective. 

Why Are Long-Tail Keywords Important?

Long-tail keywords are important because they are effective at driving traffic. A well-executed long-tail keyword strategy can result in significant amounts of new visitors and high value leads.

Here’s a quick rundown of the main reasons that long-tail keywords are worth your attention: 

1. Long-Tail Keywords Have Low Competition

Long-tail keywords tend to be less competitive from a search perspective than high-volume keywords. As such, they are easier to rank for. 

This is due to a mix of reasons. First, many companies focus exclusively on high-volume terms, leaving long-tail keywords wide open. Moreover, the sheer number of long-tail keywords means that competitor activity is more widely distributed. 

2. Long-Tail Keywords Are Easy to Target From a Practical Perspective

Creating content for long-tail keywords is a relatively straightforward process. Specific terms typically only require short and precise explanations. For example, a query like “radiators” easily lends itself to an article of thousands of words of content, with numerous sub-sections. A term like “where to buy cheap radiators in Honolulu,” on the other hand, can be targeted with a comparatively brief piece of text. 

It’s also possible to target numerous long-tail keywords within a single webpage or piece of content. Using long-tail keywords to structure content will enable your website to rank for terms that might otherwise have been missed. Additionally, there is little cost required to  optimize longer-form content for long-tail traffic. 

3. Long-Tail Keywords Have High Conversion Rates

Consider the difference between the keywords “water bottle” and “two-liter blue water bottle with a folding cap.” The second one carries a highly specific intent. As a result, the searcher responsible for tabbing it into Google is more likely to follow up by purchasing a product related to the keyword.

Because long-tail keywords are usually very precise, companies can tailor highly-targeted offers and opt-in incentives to capture site visitors. 

4. The Pool of Long-Tail Keywords Is Large

There are billions of long-tail keywords. You can’t see it on a typical graph because it has to be truncated for practical reasons, but the long tail goes on for miles. If you’re in a well-known industry, it will be practically impossible to run ou

t of keywords. And even niche organizations will have their work cut out for them in attempting to capture even a portion of all available long-tail traffic. 

How to Find and Use Long Tail Keywords: A 5-Step Guide 

Here are five general steps that can help form the basis of your long-tail keyword strategy: 

1. Create Buyer Personas and Identify Broad Keyword Topics

Before you dig deeper and pinpoint specific terms, you need to identify the broad topics you will be researching. This definition will normally be in terms of generic keywords. Having clearly-defined parameters will enable you to stay on track during the later stages of this process. 

In particular, you should ask two questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What topics are they interested in?

Keep in mind that your answers will likely be different depending on which part of the customer journey you’re considering. Profiles for first-time searchers will be different to those of returning visitors, and your long-tail keyword targeting should account for this. 

2. Use a Keyword Research Tool Like Data Cube

Once you’ve identified “tier one” terms, enter them into a research solution like BrightEdge’s Data Cube. Data Cube has dedicated functionality for discovering long-tail keywords. You can use it to sort potential target queries by volume, competition, potential value, and more. 

While it’s not unusual for SEOs to use ancillary tools and apps, particularly those that specialize in semantic keyword and long-tail query generation, it is good practice to leverage one high-quality solution as the basis for finding and organizing long-tail keywords. In this way, your workflow will have a central, easily accessible hub. 

3. Evaluate Competitors

Competitor tracking is another effective way of identifying profitable long-tail keywords. The Share of Voice functionality within the BrightEdge platform allows you to uncover long-tail terms for which other sites are ranking.

Many of your competitors’ search results will not be the outcome of actively targeting a particular long-tail keyword. Often, existing content will be ranking “accidentally.” This presents you with an opportunity to create content of a greater quality and achieve better results.  

4. Collect Questions From Community Spaces

Analyzing user-generated content on sites like Reddit, Quora, Facebook, Amazon and topical forums can give you a range of insights into the ways potential customers are talking about their interests and problems. 

Trawling through forums and discussion boards is a time-consuming process, and you will still need to run gathered terms through your software. That said, you can find lots of hidden gems this way and, depending on their value to your company, it may be worthwhile as a long-term approach. 

5. Organize and Rank Long-Tail Keywords

Once you’ve collected a set of “raw” keywords that show promise, you should organize them into a coherent structure that can act as a guide for creating content. Metrics to consider when undertaking this process include value, relevancy, competition and, of course, volume. 

You should also account for the following semantic distinctions:

• Synonyms - The terms “how to get over the January blues,” “feeling down in January,” and “tips for beating January blues” are synonymous. They all mean the same thing. Google is smart enough to recognize this. Rather than creating individual pages for each one, you should target synonyms in the same piece of content. 
• Primary terms - These terms will act as the main subjects of individual pieces of content. Some primary terms, like “how to dye curly hair naturally” or “how to revive a dying spider plant,” will be obvious in the sense that they cover quite a lot of ground. Others may look like secondary terms but actually warrant their own page. “How to dye curly hair naturally for women” could be added as a subtopic to an article about dying hair, for example, but will probably be targeted more effectively individually. 
• Secondary terms - Secondary terms should constitute part of a larger piece of content. One of the best ways to decide whether or not to designate a term as a primary or secondary keyword is by checking existing results and seeing whether Google is ranking dedicated pages or ones covering a broader topic. 

Organizing keywords semantically and topically isn’t an exact science. The decision of whether to create a new piece of content or update an existing one will often come down to personal judgment. 

Conclusion: What’s Next?

So you’ve done your research and built a jam-packed list of long-tail keywords. What’s next? 

Well, it’s time to start creating content. A long-tail strategy is an invaluable business asset. But it’s nothing without a well-developed content plan. 

SEOs that can target high-value, low-competition keywords can guarantee a steady stream of website visitors and leads. Dedicating time and resources to ongoing research will pay dividends well into the future.