I can see competitors ranking for certain long-tail keywords but cannot find them on web pages. What am I missing?

[BruceBarbour]

Hi there. I'm pretty new to SEO and I've been doing a fair bit of training but there is one aspect I have yet to grasp. When I carry out keyword research, I get all these results and I understand the metrics. What I'm not getting is, when a competitor is ranking highly for say "where can I buy fresh turkeys", I assume that that phrase must appear somewhere on the page, but it doesn't. I realise I'm just not thinking about this in the right way. Can anyone offer clarification, please?

Kind regards,

Bruce

[Chris.Menke]

Bruce,

No, the phrase does not have to appear on the page and lots of factors determine how a page might rank for the phrase without it being on the page, even things like location of searcher and time of year may influence which site ranks for such long tail terms.

A page might say "I buy fresh turkeys where my grandmother lives" and because of other factors on the domain, it might rank for your search. Or maybe, "they have fresh turkeys where I buy my alien abduction books" and something about the domain helps that page rank for your term.

Things get very squirrely way down at the end of the long tail keywords list. As you learn more, you'll probably begin popping your head up a little higher on that list and figuring out how to beat the competitors, rather than trying to go for the least competitive terms. But that's OK, everyone starts there.

[BruceBarbour]

Hi Don. Thank you so much for your reply and advice.

Kind regards,

Bruce

[donsilvernail]

Google's algorithms are smart enough to know what content is on page. If the page mentions fresh turkeys for sale, your search term should return the site without that keyword on page. It is the purpose of that search to expose places where fresh turkeys could be bought. ?

Many long tail  keywords are just phrases and sometimes those phrases make no sense for humans to read. So if your force the term on page it may not allow the rest of the content to be completely coherent. This is not good. Content should be written for human consumption first and foremost.

The best advice is to produce content that is thorough, education and as complete as possible. Then those of the cuff phrases, "fresh turkey near me" "who sells fresh turkey" "fresh turkey stores" will populate search results without those phrases being present on page.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail