Hierarchy of Search Intent: Should I Create A Post For Every Long Tail Keyword

Hey everyone, Adam here. Older brother at SEO Brothers. In Today’s video we’re going to cover the topic of long-tail keywords. Specifically we’re going to understand what they are and how to use them in your content strategy.

If you’ve ever explored keyword research and content marketing you’ve likely heard of the terms head keyword and long-tail keyword.

To start, let’s quickly slap a definition on long-tail and head keywords. A head keyword is a keyword that has a large search volume and surrounding a particular topic and can often be mixed in searcher intent.

A long-tail keyword has much lower search volume, but is much more focused on searcher intent.

While the length of the search phrases themselves don’t account for their definition, yes long-tail keywords are usually longer than the head keyword, but that doesn’t mean a head keyword has to be short.

Now, we all understand that in 2019 we aren’t creating separate pieces of content for every single keyword variation. We’re better than that now.

That said, there is still a valid question here, and it’s one question we get asked quite often is “should I create a new piece of content for every long-tail keyword” or should I mention multiple long-tail keywords within one larger piece of content.

So basically, should I create a larger themed cornerstone piece of content that covers multiple sub-topics and searcher intents OR should I create a specific high-quality piece of content for each separate searcher intent and sub-topic.

My answer is usually, do both.

I use a couple criteria in combination in order to determine if a long-tail keyword should be a separate blog post.

The first criteria I look at is the hierarchy of searcher intent. This might get a little nerdy but bear with me.

Lets give an example. Assume I run a series of rec centers across any give state or province. As part of this business, I run sports leagues of multiple sports.

Assume I want to use content marketing to drive potential customers for our sporting leagues. At first glance, I might consider creating a piece of content around the best sporting leagues to particular in within my state.

While I’m doing my keyword research I identify all kinds of keywords. Best sport leagues in my state, etc. but then I notice a longer-tail version of these keywords based on the type of sport. I see best soccer leagues in my state, So I think okay. Maybe I’ll create a piece of content for each sport. This makes a little more sense to help conversions of each piece of content.

I dive deeper into the keyword research and identify there are multiple searcher intents within the sport. I see people looking for men’s leagues and women’s leagues in particular, I see people searching for competitive vs non-competitive or recreational leagues, and I see people search by age – looking for leagues for men or women over 30, over 40, or youth and teens.

All of these searcher intent groups form what I like to call the searcher intent hierarchy of a topic.

The second criteria is volume in number of keywords and monthly searches. So when you do your keyword research, are you finding multiple long-tail keywords that share a very similar intent. And also, is their combined search enough to warrant the investment of time to create the content.

So to recap, I like to create a post for a long-tail keyword, if the searcher intent has enough volume to support the investment and there is enough substance or additional intent or sub-topics that I can create a long-form high quality piece of content.

In the process of doing this, you’re going to create high quality themed content for your website that performs very well for search engines.