Long Tail Pro Review

Long Tail Pro Pricing

  • Monthly plans start at $37/month (Starter) for 800 daily keyword lookups, with the most popular plan $67/month (Pro) for 2500 daily lookups
  • Annual plans also available
  • Free 10-day trial

Table of Contents

Keyword research is the foundation of a solid SEO strategy and an essential step in the masterplan of building a successful website. While you can pay for traffic on advertising platforms such as Google or Facebook (PPC), driving organic traffic from search engines is a much more cost-effective and sustainable approach. By creating valuable content and incorporating relevant keywords in your website's content, you can climb the rankings and consistently send highly-qualified prospects to your site.

However, there's a lot that goes into keyword research—much more than simply looking at the search volume of various keywords. You also need to find seed keywords, assess the competition, and make an educated guess on whether you'll be able to rank well for particular terms.

It can be a time-consuming process to do all of this manually, and even more difficult if you don't know how to analyze the competition correctly. This was one of the biggest challenges I faced when conducting keyword research for clients, and when doing keyword research for my own blog. Initially, I was targeting keywords that were way too competitive, and as a result, my content never got close to the first page.

This is where software like Long Tail Pro can save you hours of research time by enabling you to quickly identify profitable keywords to target.

What is Long Tail Pro?

Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool designed to help website owners find low-competition keywords to support their SEO strategy. It was developed in 2011 by Spencer Haws, an authority on internet marketing, after he became frustrated with the copious amount of tools needed and the time it took to find keywords that would be easy to rank for.

Using Long Tail Pro, you can enter seed keywords (up to five at once) and get back hundreds of different suggestions and keyword variations. The software also allows you to analyze a list of keywords manually (if you have done prior research), and even assess your competitors' domains to uncover new keywords in your niche.

Long Tail Pro collates data from Google Adwords and Majestic to provide useful metrics such as search volume, advertiser bid, rank value, and one of my favorites—keyword competitiveness score (KC). The KC score, represented as a single number from 1 to 100, is a proprietary algorithm from Long Tail Pro that analyzes how difficult it would be to rank for a particular keyword on the first page of Google. I found the KC score particularly useful in the beginning, as it was a super quick and easy way to find low competition keywords without feeling overwhelmed.

As I gained more experience, I began clicking into individual keywords to conduct an in-depth competitive analysis on the top sites that appear in Google. For example, Long Tail Pro will show you the Trust Flow, Citation Flow, External Backlinks, Site Age, and other information about your competition, which I found to be effective in helping me create a strategy to compete with other sites that ranked highly.

Why Focus on Long Tail Keywords?

The term "long tail keywords" refers to keywords comprising more than three words. Long tail keywords typically have far less competition than generic keywords that contain just one or two words. Targeting long tail keywords not only allows you to rank higher in the search results (since they're less competitive), but also target an audience that is more relevant to the topic you are covering.

For example, let's say you run an ecommerce store selling candles. If you try to target a generic term like "candles", you will notice that while it has a huge search volume, it also has a substantial amount of competition. It would be incredibly difficult to rank on the first page without an extremely strong site authority and solid ranking strategy. However, by adding a few more words to this keyword (such as "soy candles with wooden wicks"), you are honing in on a smaller segment of the market, which potentially has less competition.

How to Conduct Keyword Research in Long Tail Pro

As a cloud-based product, Long Tail Pro has a quick and painless setup process. Once you've signed up, you can access the full suite including keyword research, rank tracker, backlink analysis, and SERP analysis. Below I'll go through how to get started with keyword research using Long Tail Pro.

Add a Project and Domain

If you're researching keywords on a regular basis, you will need to make sure you stay organized. Long Tail Pro allows you to set up different projects to store keywords and easily switch between each when needed. This is particularly useful if you have several websites that you're trying to optimize.

Once you've added a project, I suggest you add your website URL to get more accurate recommendations based on your domain strength. This will also allow you to see important information about your website such as the trust flow, citation flow, quantity of backlinks, and the number of referring domains. Be aware that each project can only be associated with one domain.

Long Tail Pro Review Creating Project

Analyze Keywords

Long Tail Pro provides a few different ways to pull and analyze keywords. You can enter seed keywords to generate related suggestions (only 5 seed keywords at once), find seed keywords from your competitors domain, or input a list of keywords obtained from another source (up to 200 allowed).

Long Tail Pro Review Analyzing Keywords

Review and Filter Results

Once you have the results, you can quickly see which keywords you might be able to rank for using the Average KC metric. I'll go into more detail on this below, but the KC score provides a reliable indicator for keywords that your website can potentially rank for. Anything under 30 is considered low-competition.

You can also set up advanced filters to target specific metrics such as KC, particular words, search volume, and more. You only need to set up your filters once, as they can be saved and applied across multiple projects.

Long Tail Pro Review Keyword Research Filters

Competitor Analysis

While the KC score is a reliable indicator of how easy a certain keyword is to rank for, sometimes you may want to view more information to get a better idea of your competition. You can do this by clicking on individual keywords and analyzing the organic search results. Some metrics you should focus on are:

  • Trust Flow: measures the quality of links that point to a URL
  • Citation Flow: assess the influence of a URL based on the number of sites linking to it
  • External Backlinks: number of external links pointing to the page
  • Site Age: how old the site is
  • Page KC: Long Tail Pro formula to assess how competitive particular page is

All of these metrics are taken into consideration by LTP when evaluating the overall KC score for a keyword. As you can see in the screenshot below, the keyword "Long Tail Pro Review" has an overall KC score of 27, which means it has low competition and you can potentially rank for this term with a little bit of work.

Long Tail Pro Review Keyword Competitiveness Example

What I like About Long Tail Pro

Long Tail Pro helps website owners simplify keyword research. The software has some features that make it a standout among competitors.

Keyword Competitiveness Score (KC)

If there is one reason to purchase Long Tail Pro, it's for the KC (keyword competitiveness) score. The KC score is represented as a single number between 1 and 100, and tells you how difficult it would be to rank organically for a given keyword. The lower the KC, the easier it is to rank. For example, a KC under 30 means that the keyword is not competitive, whereas anything over 40 is much more competitive.

I've saved a lot of time using the KC Score to find keywords to target. I can quickly filter out results that have a high KC and focus my efforts on reviewing keywords that I actually stand a chance at ranking for. Without finding these words, even the most perfect piece of prose would struggle to rank, leading to disappointing results, and ultimately disappointed clients.

The team at Long Tail Pro is also constantly improving the algorithm to keep up with the ever-changing Google ranking factors and provide a more accurate indicator.

Rank Tracker

There are no guarantees when it comes to SEO, so you need to continuously monitor your keywords to determine how they are performing in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

One feature I like to use to keep track of my keywords is the Rank Tracker. All you need to do is enter your domain/URL and target keywords. Long Tail Pro will then provide a historical ranking of data to show where your keywords are currently sitting, and show you if the rank has been improving or declining over time. You can also select different countries, which will allow you to make more informed decisions about your strategy. While the Rank Tracker allows you to add an unlimited number of domains, there are restrictions on the number of keywords you can track for each plan (e.g. Starter Plan only comes with 30 tracked keywords).

Excellent Training Videos

Conducting effective keyword research and building a strong SEO strategy can come with a bit of a learning curve. There's a ton of information on the internet, but it's hard to know where to start and who to trust.

Long Tail Pro offers a free SEO video course for beginners that covers everything from finding seed keywords and analyzing the competition, to more advanced site structure and outreach strategies. If you're just getting started, there's a wealth of resources here to kickstart your learning. The company has also created Long Tail University, which provides more detail on keyword selection, content strategy and on-page SEO.

Long Tail Pro Review Training Videos

Ease of Use

I love the simplicity of Long Tail Pro. As a cloud-based software system, it's fast, and the uncluttered interface means that you can navigate your way around the system easily. Long Tail Pro also doesn't try to do everything. The software was built to help you find keyword ideas, assess the volume and competition, and ultimately save you time—which is exactly what it does. While there are secondary features included such as Rank Tracker, Backlink Analysis, and SERP analysis, the core offering is extremely valuable and intuitive.

What Can be Improved About Long Tail Pro?

As with any software, there is always going to be some improvements that can be made. Below are some key considerations that you might want to evaluate before purchasing.

Daily Keyword Lookup Limit

One of the most frustrating aspects of using Long Tail Pro is the keyword restriction placed after the company migrated to Majestic (from Moz). While I understand that it costs a lot to pull data from external services, the current daily limit (per 24 hours) is quite low and can really stagger your research. Long Tail Pro advertises that you can get up to 400 results from a single seed keyword, but it could only take you 2 searches to reach your daily quota if you're not careful.

I'd love to see the software go back to a monthly limit, which they offered for a brief time. If you're only doing keyword research in small batches, you might not be bothered by the current restrictions. However, if you're like me and want to get all your keyword research done in one sitting, be prepared to burn through your searches like wildfire and wait a painful 24 hours for your limit to reset.

No Search Volume Trends

While not a dealbreaker, it would be useful if Long Tail Pro were able to display keyword trends, much like KWFinder does. This would then allow you to identify any seasonal keywords that may not be profitable throughout the year or enable you to capitalize on upcoming peaks. For example, a keyword like "air conditioning" may receive the majority of its traffic in the summer months. Additionally, you may see increased volume for a keyword like "headphones" around Black Friday. This information is useful to know and can help build a solid SEO plan. Granted, you can use Google Trends to gauge interest, but this defeats the purpose of keeping everything in one system. Which leads onto my next point.

Google Trends Keyword Trend Example

It's Only a Keyword Research Tool

Long Tail Pro is primarily a long tail keyword research tool. While it does offer some nice secondary features, it's not really suitable for analyzing backlinks in-depth or finding competitor keywords in the same capacity as a full-fledged SEO system such as Ahrefs.

If you're only conducting keyword research, Long Tail Pro is an excellent tool. But, if you're going to be spending money on additional SEO software each month anyway, it may be worth looking into alternatives that provide keyword research and a broader range of SEO features.

Is Long Tail Pro Right for You?

Long Tail Pro is one of the best tools for freelancers, bloggers, and small business owners looking to invest in content marketing. The software allows you to quickly discover new keyword opportunities and easily assess the competition using the KC score, saving you hours of tedious research time.

I really like the interface and found the software incredibly easy to use. The training videos provided an excellent insight into how to conduct effective keyword research and would be extremely beneficial for a beginner.

However, I kept running into issues with the daily lookup limit. It was frustrating to wait 24 hours to start my research again. You also need to consider that Long Tail Pro is only a keyword research tool, and not an all-in-one SEO tool, so you may need to pay for additional software depending on your needs. Starting at $37/month, Long Tail Pro isn't a minor investment. But it is a big step in the right direction for those who want to increase organic traffic and build a targeted online audience.

To learn more about Long Tail Pro, you can visit their website here.

Bruce Hogan

Bruce Hogan is Co-founder & CEO of SoftwarePundit. He leads the team's research and publishes content about software products and trends. Bruce has experience investing at multi-billion dollar private equity firms, leading teams at venture-backed technology companies, and launching new businesses. You can connect with Bruce on LinkedIn.

Bruce is an expert in several software categories including:

  • Dental software
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