another new blog post, hope people find it useful. I think there's a huge misconception among people new to SEO that ranking for specific, high-volume keyphrases are the only way (or the best way) to get traffic. hopefully this'll help get rid of that idea. if you have any questions, comments, or want clarification on something I said, let me know, I'm more than willing to help. and if there's something in particular you'd like to see my take on in the future, let me know (probably via PM would be best).
Long tail is awesome stuff. I have one site that gets primarily long tail searches. A few hundred unique keyphrases per month, many are only repeated 2 or 3 times, lots only once. I have a huge log of search strings which i place into a spreadsheet then sort alphabetically. This tends to group the similar ones together. Gives me more insight into keyword combinations to try to target with new pages. If you optimize your pages for 3 word phrases you end up hitting lots of 3, 4 and 5 word combinations. And some people use some whacked word order combinations when they search. And many ask questions like "how do I..........", "what is .........", etc.
yeah, things like "how to" and "tutorial" etc are like the bait words I mentioned. it's crazy how much extra traffic they can get you
Good article. You hit the nail on the head when you said "webmasters get disappointed" when they get tha coveted spot only to discover it wasn't half of what they expected. They want to go for the big stuff but don't realize keeping that spot is alot harder and less fruitful than going long tail. Good advice!
Very true. The web is all about communication and viral activity. We need others for a real exchange of knowledge and that is the beauty of the internet. If we do not embrace that fact as webmasters then we might as well just print a newspaper and be done with it. The sooner we realize the web is for the exchange of ideas the sooner we can do our online ventures with intelligence. I enjoyed your article.
Hi Disgust, Dont you think long tail will help in the long run but only for specific result set. I had optimized most of the sites according to LSI model and keeping a track of the long tail analysis. For some site i get a good traffic but for some i see specific keyowrds coming up every now and then. I will go through your article and then we can discuss over it. Thanks for such a post.
are you asking if I think long tail traffic only works for the niche for the specific site I mentioned? that was the site it had the biggest impact on out of my sites, but it's by no means the only site where long tail traffic is a significant portion of the traffic coming in to me from google. it does vary by niche, but in almost every niche there are long tail queries that you can snag up with some effort.
thanks I'm pretty bad at updating regularly but when I do update I try to make it something worthwhile rather than just regurgitating news like a lot of blogs do.
If I am understaning the long tail correctly lucky me. My site is still pretty new in google terms, july 2006, so searching for the word "Poll" would unfortunately not bring my site up on page 1. I run a polling site. But....over the last couple of week I have noticed that I am starting to get more and more hits from google for keywords I never thought of. The polls that members are creating about whatever topic is getting found. You would think that my #1 keyword search would be poll to find my site, but right now it's thanksgiving! I'm getting hits on all sorts of words, and am starting to love it. As long as the members keep creating polls, and Google keeps up the good work I will be loving it! October I had about 100 hits from google, and now I am getting at least 30 a day.
yeah, that's exactly what you should be doing. look for other polls people may be looking for as well and try to throw those keywords in. mix synonymous or similar words in as well. (people looking for polls will also probably be looking for quizes, for example)
[off topic]you should link your blog in your DP profile. It's really on topic for this crowd (mine isn't and it even gets visitors through here). [/off topic] As for the long tail: it's absolutely essential. Most primary keywords are covered by big shots online. But the long tail is wide open to very specific user questions. New websites should definitely opt for the long tail - and even popular websites should expect most of their traffic coming from long tail queries.
again, glad people liked it. I'm not linking to it in my profile, sig, or recent blog entries for a reason, which I may go into in a future update at some point