In this case actually, 348 keywords to be exact. I’ll show you how to do it and it’s so easy that you’ll feel like it’s cheating.

Stop me if you've heard this before:

• You've exhausted the standard list of keywords

• Competitors seem to have covered all the topics

• Executives want more content, more traffic, more leads

• You've got permission to hire more writers and expand production, but you're not sure what to have them write about

• You've done a little keyword research but you're not sure which terms to prioritize or if they're even the right ones

• You want to better understand the real questions and concerns of your audience but you don’t want to conduct expensive research or hire an agency to facilitate workshops or develop personas

If this sounds familiar (and I’m sure it does), you may have good reason to put a little work into long-tail keyword research.

You’ve got two choices - keep reading, and I’ll show you how to use a tool called Answer the Public and how powerful it can be. Or two, hire me to do this work for you.

First, what are the benefits of long-tail research?

There are over 3.5 billion Google searches conducted every day. Think about the way you use Google and the types of searches you perform. They are personalized, often local, usually asked in the form of a question or on very, very specific topics.

Consider this list of searches my wife and I performed when we first started raising chickens:

• How long can farm-fresh eggs sit on the counter before they go bad?

• How many roosters are required in a flock of hens?

• What are the different types of chicken breeds and their egg production?

• What is the difference between scratch and peck, pellets, crumble chicken food?

Too often though, when we’re creating content our topics never venture into such specific depths, instead, it stays in this realm:

• The ultimate guide to raising chickens for the first time

• 10 tips for choosing the right chicken breed

• Food safety guide, everything you need to know about spoilage

• The best chicken feed options, organic and non-organic

There are two problems with this approach:

1. These are the same topics everyone else will be focusing on for their content

2. and, while it may answer my specific question, it isn’t immediately targeted to my niche search

Look, it’s hard to think like real people when we’re making content.

And unfortunately, most competitor research will only lead you towards standard topics and many keyword tools rely on Google’s keyword planner data, which will aggregate search data for longer-tail searches, and underrepresent some of these extremely valuable terms. (remember, their tool is designed primarily to help you find high-demand advertising keywords)

So, what is another option? The better way?

Enter - Answer the Public

It’s a nifty little tool that offers a powerful free option along with the option for a Pro subscription starting at $99/mo if paid monthly. I’m sure there are other tools out there, and you can definitely source this data manually, but this is the best I’ve found.

What does it do?

• Imagine going to Google and beginning to type into the search box. Search suggestions come up. These suggestions are driven by actual past user searches.

• ATP prompts the search bar using your term and captures those suggestions automatically for you

• You’ll get a list of long-tail phrases that are based on real search data and are sorted for you in terms of popularity

It will require some sorting, refining, experimentation, but all of the data you need is there for the taking.

Let’s walk through a sample search using the term ‘medical billing’

If you’re a medical billing company, what terms do you think people are searching for? Perhaps you’ve even made content around things like:

• Best medical billing software

• How to save money with medical billing software (or outsourcing your billing)

• 10 places you’re leaving money on the table with your medical billing

Again, these are fine, but highly-sales focused and pretty generic.

Instead, we’ll plug medical billing into ATP and hit search. Here’s what we get:

Medical Billing Questions (Where, who, will, which, what, when, why, are, how)

Medical Billing Prepositions (Without, With, To, Near, For, Can, Is)

Medical Billing Comparisons (Versus, And, or, vs, like)

And here is just one quick search we’ve generated 148 long-tail phrases that actual people have searched on Google.

Continuing down the ATP page you’ll get an A-Z list of 200 more suggestions.

348 suggestions, all based on real user search data, and sorted based on popularity. From here, a trained eye and a bit of refinement can begin to narrow down the list and potentially find some groupings.

And even if you never write a piece of content on any of these suggestions, you will have learned some significant things about your audience. There are real people insights here, ready to be analyzed.

Ready to get started? Head over to Answer the Public and try out your own search.

Prefer to outsource the work, send me an email: derek@plain.run