---
title: "Long-tail keywords"
url: https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/long-tail-keywords
type: Page
---

# Long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords explained: where the term comes from, how much of search they account for, and how to find and target them without cannibalising pages.

SEO glossary

## Long-tail keywords

A long-tail keyword is a specific search query with low individual search volume, such as 'waterproof walking boots for wide feet' rather than 'walking boots'. Each one is searched rarely, but together they make up a large share of all searches, and they usually reveal more clearly what the searcher wants.

## Where does the term come from?

Chris Anderson popularised 'the long tail' in Wired in October 2004, describing how online businesses make money from a huge number of niche products that physical shops can't stock. In search, the head is the small number of high-volume queries and the tail is the far larger number of rare ones.

## How big is the long tail?

Google said in October 2019 that about 15% of the queries it sees each day are ones it has never seen before. Ahrefs reports that keywords with fewer than 10 monthly searches make up almost 93% of its US keyword database.

Long tail describes volume, not length. A one-word query can sit in the tail and a five-word query can be a head term, though most long-tail queries are longer and more specific.

## How to use long-tail keywords

- Answer related long-tail queries within one page on the parent topic rather than writing a page for every variant
- Find real phrasing in Search Console queries, People Also Ask and your own site search
- Look for questions where few strong pages compete
- Avoid separate pages for near-identical variants, which leads to keyword cannibalisation

## Example

A garden centre struggles to rank for 'compost'. Its guide answering 'best compost for raised vegetable beds', 'peat-free compost for blueberries' and similar questions earns steady traffic from dozens of low-volume queries, from searchers who already know what they need.

## Related terms

- [Search intent](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/search-intent)
- [Topical authority](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/topical-authority)
- [Keyword cannibalisation](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/keyword-cannibalisation)
- [People Also Ask (PAA)](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/people-also-ask)
- [Google Search Console (GSC)](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/google-search-console)

## Further reading

- [How to Write Content for SEO That Converts and Ranks](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/how-to-write-content-for-seo-that-converts-and-ranks)
- [A Visibility Playbook for E-commerce](https://marketingsignals.com/playbooks/the-e-commerce-visibility-playbook)

Our [Organic Search](https://marketingsignals.com/service/organic-search) service puts this into practice for brands in the UK and US.

## Sources

- [The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, Wired (October 2004)](https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/)
- [Understanding searches better than ever before, Google (25 October 2019)](https://blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/)
- [Long-tail keywords: what they are and how to get search traffic from them, Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/long-tail-keywords/)

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