SEO Tycoon

**freetraff** · 08-23-2006, 08:11 AM

Colin McDougall (my aff link) and Andy Jenkins (no aff link) talk a lot about *long tail* - working with keyphrases that have 3+ words and thus give a more prequalified visitors.

Do you think that lower number but better quality is worth the effort?

Actually it makes some sense because those how search for "forex trading system" are definitely more interested in getting a trading system for free than those who search for "forex" and maybe need a forex broker.

Plus, it is much easier to score on longer keyphrase and see your site at the top organic results in a matter of few weeks.

I feel that soon people will buzz about long tail a lot, just because people love to talk about something.

I want to hear your fair thoughts. Will this long tail wave get invelved with you? Do you feel passion for it? It's not just curiousity and marketing research. It's also about possible future for one of my projects - so I am really interested to see where this road is going to with AdSense masses.

Thanks.

**handsome rob** · 08-23-2006, 10:19 AM

I play the long tail with PPC more than organic. We're talking hundreds to thousands of combos, though. You can't just make 50 long-tail keyword combos and expect to unearth some hidden gem. This is precisely why I find it easier and more effective to use this strategy for PPC campaigns. For organic (depending on the site/company), I will more often aim for local keywords.

**imported_Michael** · 08-23-2006, 11:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by freetraff

I want to hear your fair thoughts. Will this long tail wave get invelved with you? Do you feel passion for it? It's not just curiousity and marketing research. It's also about possible future for one of my projects - so I am really interested to see where this road is going to with AdSense masses.Thanks.

Definitely a good thing if you have moderate traffic already.

We used to call it mining your server logs

and I have been using a bespoke automated process which I incorporated into a commercial log file analyzer to do just that, for years.

The idea was to look at the logs and find the less common but targeted keyphrases users are actually using to find your site. Then write new content (pages) using the search terms found. Then rinse and repeat because it is an iterative procedure and the more content you add the more you find in the logs.

Since Chris Anderson’s original article in Wired magazine the technique has become more widely known and now there is even some simple free online software to help the novice mylongtail.com. I beta tested it and it's actually quite good...

- Michael

**JDDunn9** · 08-23-2006, 12:35 PM

Optimally you should target longtail phrases on specially optimized subpages and keep the main keywords on the home page. It also depends on if you are making money from ads or selling products. If you are selling products and there is too much competition to rank for the short phrases, or want a higher conversion rate, go for a longer phrase.

**freetraff** · 08-23-2006, 01:17 PM

It's great I am not out of the track. All your words put much confidence into what I think.

I DO agree that having kind of specialized content (JDDunn9 was talking about subpages, but not necessarly like this) will help a lot.

But I have a better way/solution. You just need to be able to keep your hand on the pulse of link building and be able to play multiple anchors at a time :thumbup: with smart link bulding you get very quickly to the top of SERPs because on longer keyphrases it much easier, TONS more easier. Thus you get that traffic.

EF rocks and thanks for sharing mylongtail.com and your experiences.

**A.N.Onym** · 08-28-2006, 08:47 AM

The thing is that you not only need to mine your logs for traffic, but the traffic research tools, such as WordTracker, KeywordDiscovery, Google Keyword Tool, etc. You can mine topics for your articles as well.

Keep in mind, though, that you'll need to have pages strictly focused on the long tail phrases. Diluting them with other unrelated keywords will spoil the fun.

Btw, mining the logs is almost inefficient (it works, but not what you do when you mine the search data at WT/KD), because you analyze only keywords that people used to find you only.

**Bookworm-SEO** · 08-28-2006, 03:09 PM

Most people play with the long tail by brainstorming rather than active keyword research. However, I find that hittail.com is a great tool to this effect. I'm hoping to use it for a potential travel industry client.

Matt Cutts has a good piece on longtail too

**Lerchmo** · 08-28-2006, 10:44 PM

I looked at some google analytics stats for a pretty high volume ecommerce site and interestingly enough if you look at the organic search hits that convert and order them by conversion per hit it looks like a funnel with the converting keywords on top and the non converting on bottom. I think its because people who buy type in exactly what they want:

Nikon Coolpix 7600
or
cheap nikon coolpix
or
nikon coolpix discount

where as people who are researching and just kinda looking around are more likely to type in shorter phrases like

nikon
nikon models
nikon camera

**Bookworm-SEO** · 08-28-2006, 11:56 PM

You got it Lerchmo. That's why people are so interested in the Long tail!
The thing is though, that if you dominate nikon, ranking for nikon coolpix 7600 isn't too difficult.

**Ed_bloggo** · 08-31-2006, 02:09 AM

Longtail =niche

whats new about that please explain

**Jason Webb** · 08-31-2006, 10:19 AM

I find that the majority of my traffic comes from "long tail" searches.

Although when you look at search popularity from things Overture you see that
1 and 2 word phrases are always the most searched for, more likely than not,
the majority of those people refined their searches by adding more words before
they actually found a usable list of search results.

So, I think that you can't really afford to overlook the traffic that can come
from long tail searches. In fact, for quite a while I've read SEO experts telling
people to try and combine several 2 or 3 word keyphrases in order to create
these longer phrases.

For example, put together "home based business" and "business opportunity"
and use "home based business opportunity" instead. That way you cover more
of the bases. It may sound obvious but it's surprising how many people still
seem to just scatter highly competitive 2 or 3 word phrases about then wonder
why they can't get much traffic.

Best Regards

**freetraff** · 08-31-2006, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Webb

For example, put together "home based business" and "business opportunity"
and use "home based business opportunity" instead.

Yeah, I see it in your link. You play longtail

Jason, can you give a rough % of how much traffic you get from longtail? Compared with the whole bulk of traffic that you get.

**Jason Webb** · 08-31-2006, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by freetraff

Yeah, I see it in your link. You play longtail

:yes: I wondered if anybody would pick up on that. Lol!

Quote:

Originally Posted by freetraff

Jason, can you give a rough % of how much traffic you get from longtail? Compared with the whole bulk of traffic that you get.

Just checking the recent stats for one site, I would say that about 48% of
the total search engine traffic has come from keyphrases of 4 words or more.
On another one of my sites it works out at about 24% and on another it's 22%.

I suppose that if you were lucky enough to rank highly for one of the shorter
phrases then obviously the majority of your traffic would come from there but
you can still get a steady stream of traffic from a number of these longer, less popular
search phrases.

Best Regards

**steubing** · 08-31-2006, 03:25 PM

Why would anyone not want to use long tail terms?

**handsome rob** · 08-31-2006, 03:34 PM

Long tail is responsible for me taking a certain client's PPC keyword list from around 250 kw's to 6000+. You wouldn't BELIEVE how much money that saved.

**ergophobe** · 08-31-2006, 06:34 PM

The original poster was talking about targetting the long tail, while some responses have to do with randomly getting long tail traffic. Seems like an important difference.

For example, those of us who don't know jack about SEO are pretty much by definition playing the long tail right? If you write without any SEO in mind, you are likely to only bring in long tail phrases, and eventually bring in some surprising ones.

Those phrases are often worth the work that went into them it seems (i.e. nothing). For example, I was looking at my logs a while back for my blog (we're talking double digit visits per day... on a GOOD day). It has precisely one backlink. And I noticed while looking at the logs that people were coming there searching on "nation of sheep" (I did a book review on a forty-year old book by that title). Quick little look and I was #1 in MSN for that phrase.

Great. The thing is, what do people searching on that phrase want? What would you do with it? If anyone knows, it's easy pickings! Any SEO worth anything should be able to get #1 without any effort. However, since in my case it's a non-targeted long-tail phrase, it brings in random traffic, many not in the least interested in what they find and I'm just not creative enough to figure out what I would do to give them something that they would want to buy.

Also, it must take thousands and thousand of long-tail phrases (I guess handsome rob is using 6000 and I've heard some people have 250,000 in PPC campaigns) to get much traffic, since by definition these will be relatively rare searches.

For PPC I understand the cost/benefit breakdown for the long tail: cheaper terms, more targetted traffic. But for natural search, it seems like it could take forever to get enough long-tail pages to bring in decent traffic.

**Bookworm-SEO** · 08-31-2006, 10:33 PM

Keep blogging for a while and the longtail adds up. Also, you can do keyword research before you write to make a list of X keyword topics you'd like traffic from. then look for longtail in there.
I just blogged about a guy I met Tuesday: manages $2.5 mil PPC, and he's gotten to 6-word tails. The post also mentions another keyword strategy for those of you who are interested.

Jason, I liked your technique for finding long tails. Nice tip/knowledge, you home business opportunity SEO you! lol

**Ed_bloggo** · 09-01-2006, 01:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bookworm-SEO

Keep blogging for a while and the longtail adds up. Also, you can do keyword research before you write to make a list of X keyword topics you'd like traffic from. then look for longtail in there.
I just blogged about a guy I met Tuesday: manages $2.5 mil PPC, and he's gotten to 6-word tails. The post also mentions another keyword strategy for those of you who are interested.

Jason, I liked your technique for finding long tails. Nice tip/knowledge, you home business opportunity SEO you! lol

Bookeorrmy, you are using the term 'long tail' incorrectly. You should do more research before you post because you made several inaccurate statements. Thanks.

**freetraff** · 09-03-2006, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ergophobe

But for natural search, it seems like it could take forever to get enough long-tail pages to bring in decent traffic.

It's the same to knowing longtail phrases - and it's easy = to get nice analysis combine a keyword reasearch tool with demands stats and allinanchor + allintitle data - and you geta a picture of keywords to play on.

And the rest is a matter of technique. For example, I save much time by randomizing my anchor text with special solution. Let's say - I need 10 longtail keyphrases, I just submit all of them to alternative text boxes, and grow on all of them. Surely, it's not about 1 day or 1 week to get that traffic - but not that difficult at all.

And thanks for bringing up non-targeted long-tail phrase issue, ergophobe. Knowing how people behave I believe many would rush to play on all longtails in their niche, losing the sense of reality. So your post will prevent those who are EF members.

**Bookworm-SEO** · 09-04-2006, 01:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by freetraff

It's the same to knowing longtail phrases - and it's easy = to get nice analysis combine a keyword reasearch tool with demands stats and allinanchor + allintitle data - and you geta a picture of keywords to play on.

And the rest is a matter of technique. For example, I save much time by randomizing my anchor text with special solution. Let's say - I need 10 longtail keyphrases, I just submit all of them to alternative text boxes, and grow on all of them. Surely, it's not about 1 day or 1 week to get that traffic - but not that difficult at all.

And thanks for bringing up non-targeted long-tail phrase issue, ergophobe. Knowing how people behave I believe many would rush to play on all longtails in their niche, losing the sense of reality. So your post will prevent those who are EF members.

You sound like you have some good ideas in there, but I can't understand you at all. In particular, this phrase has me scratching my head:

Quote:

For example, I save much time by randomizing my anchor text with special solution. Let's say - I need 10 longtail keyphrases, I just submit all of them to alternative text boxes, and grow on all of them.