Longtailo answers

Every answer below is aimed at a question people measurably search for, is written from named sources, and links to the page that handles the job itself. None of them is a landing page in disguise.

These guides are written for the person who decides which search queries their own pages will target. Each one takes a single piece of that job: how to tell whether a query is winnable, which queries belong on one page rather than five, what the numbers beside a keyword actually mean, and how to keep a record of where your pages sit so you can tell whether the work changed anything. None of them can look a keyword up for you: this site holds no keyword database and no ranking data, and says so wherever that matters.

• How to track mobile rankings, and why tracking mobile rankings separately from desktop is the only way the number means anything

  Why a mobile position is a different number from a desktop one, where to take the reading, and how to keep it so next month compares.

• Daily rank tracker or weekly: when daily rank tracking earns the extra checks, and when it just records noise

  When checking every day tells you something a weekly check would not, and the cases where daily rank tracking mostly records noise.

• What a keyword position tracker has to record, and how website keyword ranking becomes something you can actually read

  The four fields that make a position reading useful later, and why most keyword position records answer nothing three months on.

• Competitor SEO tracking without a data subscription: reading serp competitors ranking above you, and what serp competitor ranking actually tells you

  How to watch the two or three sites that actually take your queries, what to record, and what competitor tracking cannot tell you.

• Keywords tools, sorted by what they do: an seo keywords tool that holds data, keyword tools for seo that do arithmetic, and which you need

  The three kinds of keyword tool, what each is genuinely for, and which of them you can replace with data you already have.

• What to look for in a keyword research tool for seo, and the four questions that decide which one is worth paying for

  The questions that actually separate keyword research tools, and the ones that look important in a demo but are not.

• The best keyword research tools for a small site, ranked by what they cost you to start and what they actually answer

  Three keyword research tools worth starting with, why each is on the list, and what each one will not tell you.

• What an enterprise rank tracker actually buys, how enterprise rank tracking differs from the small-team kind, and when rank tracking enterprise scale is the real requirement

  The four things that make rank tracking an enterprise purchase, and how to tell whether you have any of them.

• Organic keywords, what are organic keywords in practice, how to find my website keywords and read your top organic keywords

  What organic keywords are, how to see the ones your own site already has, and what to do with the list once you can see it.

• How to tell which relevant keywords belong on a page, and where secondary keywords stop helping and start splitting it

  A test for whether a keyword belongs on a page at all, and how many secondary keywords one page can carry before it stops answering any of them.

• Keyword statistics without the false precision: search volume, difficulty and cost per click, and what msv seo actually measures

  What each number beside a keyword is measuring, how much precision it deserves, and which of them should decide anything.

• How to find top keywords worth writing for, and why the best keywords for seo are rarely the ones at the top of a volume-sorted list

  A repeatable way to build a shortlist of queries worth writing for, starting from sources you already have.

• What a rank tracker agency side has to do that a single-site tracker does not, and what it costs you to get wrong

  The three requirements that separate agency rank tracking from single-site tracking, and the reporting trap in the middle of them.

• What a seed keyword is, how to choose seeds that produce a usable list, and the seeds that quietly waste a research session

  How to pick the handful of starting terms that decide what your whole keyword list will contain.

• How to do seo benchmarking that survives contact with reality, and what seo benchmarking tools can and cannot baseline for you

  What to record before you start work so that you can prove later whether anything changed, and what a benchmark cannot control for.

• How to find niche keywords worth working, what a niche finder can and cannot tell you, and doing niche research honestly

  How to tell a narrow corner you can win from a small one nobody wants, and what niche research can honestly establish.

• How to group keywords so each page answers one want, and how to tell when a group is really two pages

  A method for turning a flat keyword list into a page plan, and the test that says when a group has to split.

• What a long tail keywords generator gives you, why a long tailed keywords generator alone is not a plan, and what an seo long tail keyword really is

  How to expand a seed into long-tail candidates, and the cut that has to happen before any of them becomes a page.

• How to find low competition keywords with high traffic, how to find high volume low competition keywords, and why most high volume low competition keywords are neither

  A workable method for finding queries with traffic and weak incumbents, and the three traps in the ones that look too good.

• Where low hanging keywords actually are, how low hanging fruit keywords differ from new research, and why seo low hanging fruit and low hanging fruit seo both start on the site you already have

  The four kinds of easy win that already exist on a site you have, and why it is mostly improvement rather than new pages.

• How geographical keywords change what a page has to be, and when a place word means a different page rather than a different sentence

  What adding a place to a query changes about the results, and how many location pages are actually worth making.

• How far a free keywords search gets you, what a free seo keyword analysis tool free of charge actually gives, and where a free keyword seo tool stops

  What the free sources genuinely provide, what they do not, and how to get a usable shortlist without paying anything.

• How rank checkers work, why two rank checkers disagree, and what to do with the number when they do

  Why two rank checkers give different answers for the same query, and which reading to trust for which purpose.

• What are lsi keywords, what the lsi keywords meaning actually is, and what to do instead of hunting for them

  Where the term LSI keywords came from, why it does not describe how search engines work, and the useful idea underneath it.

• Do your own seo: how to do your own search engine optimization, can you do seo yourself, and an seo do it yourself guide for people who would rather learn how to do seo yourself than hire

  What a person doing their own SEO should actually spend time on, in order, and the parts that are safe to ignore at the start.

• What do it yourself seo software has to cover, and the three tools most small sites actually need before buying a fourth

  The functions a person doing their own SEO needs software for, and which of them are already free.

• How to run a keyword difficulty check that means something, and how to recognise highly competitive keywords before you spend a week on them

  How to judge whether you can rank for a query, using the results themselves rather than a vendor's difficulty score.

• How to choose keywords for blog posts so each one has a job, and when a post should not have a keyword at all

  How to pick the query a blog post targets, and how to tell when a post is better off without one.

• How to build a buyer intent keywords list from your own band, and the modifiers that mark somebody close to a decision

  How to tell a query from somebody about to buy from one from somebody reading, and what to do with each.