How to use long tail semantic keyword research in Google
To come up with the best plan to grow your company, a customized, long tail semantic keyword analysis is essential. The keyword research gives you an extensive list of many things. You get keywords related to your product, how often people look for it, the cost and a general oversight of search behavior related to your product. Use the keyword analysis also to find content gaps compared with the competition. The most relevant search terms from the keyword analysis are also used on the website, in meta tags, ad copy, blog and social media posts. The contents of this blog posts are:
- What is the “long tail”?
- What are “semantic” keywords?
- Google Keyword Planner
- Keyword grouper
- Search intent
- Naver Keyword Planner
- Conclusion
What is a keyword or topic cluster? A simple and short explanation is below in this video:
What is the “long tail keyword”?
Back in 2006 Chris Anderson (from Wired magazine) wrote the book “The Long Tail”. A graph summarizing the book is below.
You can also apply the long tail concept, or niche products, to businesses like Amazon. Unlike offline companies, Amazon can carry a huge amount of books that very few people are looking for in its warehouses, making it more profitable than offline bookstores.
What are “semantic” keywords?
The word “semantic” is literally about “meaning in language or logic”. In digital marketing, semantic means “related”. If you want to find related (long tail) keywords for a search term very quickly and easy, just go to Google and type your keyword (example: “drinks”). You will find some related terms at the bottom of the page:
The search volumes and CPCs on the right are from an extension Keywords Everywhere. If you want more long tail keywords, go to Google or Naver.
Google Keyword Planner
1. Sign into your Google Ads account and go to “Tools” and then “Keyword Planner”.
2. Click “Find new keywords”.
3. Type “drinks” and press “Get started”. Now you have a list of 508 related (or semantic) and long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are more than one word keywords, like “hot drink”, “alcoholic drink”, “soft drink” or “energy drink”. A short tail keyword or seed keyword is “drink”.
4. You can change the location and language on the top left. You can also select cities, depending on where your target audience is.
5. Tick the box next to “keyword” until it’s blue and “select all 508”.
6. Now click “download keyword ideas” to get all keywords in a spreadsheet. You can also change the seasonality, for example 1 month, 24 months or all available data.
Above is a screenshot of the 508 keywords in a spreadsheet. We will now categorize the keywords in ad groups or clusters. Organizing keywords in different categories can be quite time consuming.
Keyword grouper
Let’s use a free keyword grouper tool that sorts them automatically and quickly. There are a few available:
Unfortunately, the tools do not work well with languages like Korean.
Here the keywords are grouped in clusters of at least 10 keywords each using marketbold. You can download the keyword groups in a spreadsheet. Below is the list of the 15 clusters with number of keywords in it in parentheses:
- alcohol (10)
- alcoholic drinks (44)
- bar (18)
- beverage (17)
- beverages (30)
- cocktail (23)
- cocktail drinks (20)
- cocktail recipes (28)
- cocktails (12)
- drink (72)
- drink menu (14)
- drink recipes (62)
- drinks (77)
- drinks menu (11)
- mixed drinks (51)
Although there is no magic number, it is probably a good idea to put between 10 and 20 keywords in each ad group. Let’s organize the ad groups that have over 20 keywords in them into smaller clusters. The best way to do this is by trying to figure out the search intent. What is it that the drinker is looking for?
Read more: Keyword Clustering Tools For SEO Free 2021
Search Intent
There are four types of search intent:
- Informational. Example: “how to make beverages”
- Research. Example: “different beverages recipes”
- Purchase. Example: “buy drinks”
- Navigational. Example: brand names like “Honest Tea”, “New Belgium Brewing Company” or “Samuel Adams” or website addresses