$800 A Day Using LongTailPro [Keyword Research]

In this post I'm going to review the 3 different ways I've profitably used the LongTailPro keyword research tool.

1. I've used it to locate long-tail content ideas for my money sites (Affiliate Content) and generate about $800/day passively.
2. I've used it as a freelance digital marketing consultant to provide keyword research and content generation services to a health and wellness company (Content Consulting).
3. I've also used it as an AdWords consultant for a large media-measurement company in NYC to organize their paid search campaigns. (Paid Search Consulting).

What Is LongTailPro?

It's an ultra-functional keyword research tool that lets you input "seed" keywords and then spits out a near comprehensive list of long-tail, related keywords.

It will additionally provide you their Average Keyword Competitiveness scores (KC), search volumes, advertiser competition, suggested bid and even average number of Amazon reviews.

I really only use it for the keywords, volume, and KC scores, however.

When you buy it, you'll get access to their desktop tool (which is what I use) and online access to their cloud keyword tool, which includes keyword rank tracking.

The addition of rank tracking is important because often times that's a separate service you have to pay for. LTP has bundled the two together- so that's good extra value.

What You Get

There are 3 different pricing plans. I'm currently on the Annual Starter Plan, at $37 a month. The more expensive plans entitle you to greater number of keyword searches a month.

But, for me, I don't conduct anywhere near the limit of 10,000 keyword searches a month. They also offer a free 7-day trial. I'd recommend trailing the software to see what you think- there's no risk.

Let's dive in...

I'll then download the terms it produces into a spreadsheet and then send it along to my writers who can reference the list as they write and thematically incorporate the different terms into their content.

As I've touched on in other posts, these keywords are like traffic pathways. The search engines are trying to serve the most relevant content, so if someone is searching for a "discount patio rug", and my keyword research prompted me to include that content in my "Outdoor Rug" write-up, my site will have the opportunity to rank well and get traffic for that term.

Example #1

Recently I decided to do a long image-list post for "outdoor rugs". Here's what the process looked like and how I used LTP.

1. I used the LinkClump Chrome extension​ to scrape product URLs from an eCommerce store I'm an affiliate for and compiled them into a spreadsheet.
2. I then hand rewrote their product titles using LTP to source keywords that I then included like "plastic", "large", "patio carpet", "discount", "bamboo", etc.
3. I then sent these URLs, with their rewritten titles over to my writers with the LTP "Outdoor Rug" keyword spreadsheet and they provided 100 word keyword-optimized blurbs for each rug. 

As you can see, LTP provides granular keyword research data. This information gets incorporated into your content to help you attract long-tail, buyer-motivated searches. That's how you use it to make money online. 

2. Using LongTailPro As A Digital Marketing Consultant

One of my favorite uses of LongTailPro is to discover topically relevant, long-tail keywords, and then calculate their Keyword Competitiveness scores. The way it works, LongTailPro will intake 'seed' keywords and output a focused list of related long-tail keywords. You can then gather the KC scores- this will help you discover low-competition keywords you can create content around.

Content Consulting Example #2

The process was finding low-competition keywords and then managing a team of UpWork writers who would produce the content the blog would publish.

Since they published a lot of healthy eating content, one content strategy I used was compiling a list of fruits and vegetables, importing them using Find Keywords > Add My Own Keywords, and then calculating the Avgerage Keyword Competitiveness.

Once I had this list, I played around with the filters, setting the max Average Keyword Competitiveness to 35 and picking off some of the larger volume keywords like Sassafrass and Corn Salad (49,500 and 22,200/monthly searches) as potential content ideas for the writers.

Even further, I would run that individual keyword through LongTailPro again. So, LongTailPro would produce even more keywords for the seed keyword "Sassafrass".

This list of keywords would serve as a content resource for the writers who were instructed to sprinkle in all of the different variations into their writing.

Organizing The Keyword Content

Below is an excerpt from the spreadsheet I used to track the keywords, their volume, the KC, and the status of publication (green meant it was published).

Now, they might never achieve great rankings, though many of them did, and LongTailPro also provides keyword rank tracking, but I could also defend my work by deferring to the KC metrics.

In addition, you can begin correlating your ranking with the KC metric- so if you see that you get to the first page of Google for KC scores in the range of 20-30, but not for KC scores in the range of 30+, then you know which KC scores to target going forward. 

Content Consulting Example #3

Besides fruits and vegetables, they also did a lot of content around "detoxing". As an aside, think about the sort of content your website produces, or if you're a consultant, think about the primary content themes.

If your goal is to get organic traffic by playing in the 'long tail', LongTailPro is the best tool I've used to discover 3 word phrases that get at least 4 figure monthly search volume. As well, you'll always attract hundreds of ancillary search traffic visitors because keyword research is 'holistic'. You aren't just getting traffic for some one that types in "detox diet". You're getting traffic to the post when someone searches for "detox diet for vegetarians", for example.

I always recommend going another level deep- so once you have a list of keywords for "Detoxification", it might make sense to run a keyword you turn up like "Natural Cleanse" through LongTailPro again, like I did for "Sassafrass" in the prior example.

As you can see in the table below, there are a TON of ideas and topics here. There are things I've never heard of like "Lemon Detox". While the KC is 45, don't let that dissuade you. Run it through LTP again and you'll find a bunch of different Lemon-Detox-related keywords you can include in your content to get passive, organic traffic.

3. Paid Search Consulting

LongTailPro was also a useful tool when I was an AdWords consultant at large media-measurement company based in NYC.

Paid Search Example #4

This meant that someone searching for a particular company product was sent to the correct landing page rather than just being pushed to the company's Home Page, as they had been in their old setup.

For example, before I applied my changes, anyone who searched for the company name was served the same ad and sent to the homepage. After I did my magic in LongTailPro, we were serving highly targeted Google search ads to people and sending them to the right product page.

I preferred using LongTailPro to AdWord's own Keyword Planner because I found the interface more intuitive and the keyword lists much more comprehensive. Plus, LongTailPro makes the keyword results filterable/searchable.

This was really helpful for AdWords because it allowed me to exactly segregate different searches into different Ad Groups without overlap between them. This made my work very comprehensive and thorough. I was confident that I was covering all my bases, especially when it came to branded search terms.

And I had LongTailPro's keyword outputs saved as spreadsheets for the company's higher ups to review.

Final Thoughts

LongTailPro was one of the first internet-marketing products that I ever bought and I've been a customer for several years now. ​In my experience, the keyword lists it produces are the most relevant and focused.

While I love Ahrefs, I find that their keyword tool produces a lot of extraneous results- random, unrelated keywords, and oftentimes duplicate results. Ahrefs is heading for a major overhaul as of this writing, so this might be addressed in the future. 

I know that I can rely on LTP to easily output the majority of the related keywords​, easily export it to a CSV file in a single click, so that my writers and WordPress admins can create content that gets free, organic traffic.