Long Tail Keywords

Long tail is a term first coined by Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine, 2004). Typically long tail keywords may account for a large portion of the organic search visits, and can exhibit higher conversion rate by up to 200%. But how large is this ‘portion‘?

Interestingly, it has been proven a number of times that search does not exactly follow the Pareto principle 80:20 distribution (i.e., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers) – (Chris Anderson, Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Duncan Simester).

Instead, in a long tail distribution, typically the most frequently-occurring 20% of items represent only less than 50% of occurrences. In other words, the least-frequently-occurring 80% of items are more important as a proportion of the total population. In the graph below, the tail becomes bigger and longer in new markets (depicted in red) such as Internet retail. In other words, whereas traditional retailers have focused on the area to the left of the chart, online bookstores derive more sales from the area to the right.

Traditional vs. Long Tail

An interesting insight by Alan Mitchell on PPC long tail:

The Performance of Search Phrase by Number of Word

Due to the volume of keywords, targeting long tail keywords require a hollistic sitewide approach. Rather than manually targeting different search phrases on different pages, an example of smarter and cost-effective long tail keyword SEO on a template level is shown by WordPress by serving server-generated virtual pages via permalinks for every important phrase (e.g., tags, article titles, etc). Recording the performed site searches by your users also provide you with intelligence on what content/phrases are deemed important without you having to perform a manual keyword research.

There are other variations of targeting the long tail keywords. But the principles are the same:

1. knowing what your users want.
2. actively generating content on that topic/phrase using the easiest way possible, be it automated and/or manual.
3. ensuring such contents get indexed.
4. SEO on the content template.

As the search technology evolves, I personally expect targeting long tail keywords will get even easier. In fact, long tail keywords are probably the real future of search.

First Rate announces exclusive New Zealand and Australian partnership with SearchIgnite.

New Zealand Online Marketing scene just about to get a bit busier.

What is Google Caffeine Update and how it may impact your online business?

This is from my blog about Google Caffeine Update on First Rate NZ website. Read the complete article on http://www.firstrate.co.nz/blog/the-caffeine-google-search-algorithm-update/

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Is Google now:

1. Implemented real-time search indexing? or,
2. Implemented on-demand indexing that the admin can trigger anytime? or,
3. Handranking websites with Google Pigeons technology?

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Blog spammers for link building purpose is true and live.

Just in case you don’t believe me, believe this KattyBlackyard with a .cn (China?) email address and Moldovan IP address.

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Microsoft is set to launch Bing tomorrow. Touted as “potential Google killer” by some media, Bing has received a mix of reviews (CNet, Wired).

But will it change the SEO landscape?

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Is doing Online Free Press Release (PR) worth the effort from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) perspective?
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As what you would do with most websites, I decided to implement Google Analytics tracking onto this Wordpress blog.
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