The Decisive Advantage Of Optimizing For The Long Tail
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by Eric Enge
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The long tail is something that has been written about many times, by
many people, including this article by me on Search Engine Land
<http://searchengineland.com/chasing-the-long-tail-16300>
. In spite of all this coverage, the great majority of publishers
(that Ive encountered at any rate) arent aware of what I call the
decisive long tail advantage. This is the notion that publishers who
effectively chase long tail traffic have something like a 50x
advantage in obtaining ROI from their SEO efforts over their
competition. In the most extreme situations I hear people focus 100%
of their SEO efforts on climbing the rankings on one or two terms.
With rare exceptions, this is generally a bad idea. In todays column
I will offer up a model for why this is the case. First lets start
with some basic assumptions:
The site owner most likely wants the fastest possible revenue growth
from the web site.
Competition is also investing in SEO, so the market is competitive.
The long tail for the site is typical. In other words, 10% of the
traffic goes to the head terms, 20% to the chunky middle, and 70%
resides in the long tail.
Of course, the above assumptions are probably true for very nearly
any business operating a web site. This means that the long tail of
search offers seven times as much opportunity as head terms, and more
than double the opportunity of the rest. But now lets take the
discussion a bit further, by looking at the keyword competitiveness in
one market. To do this we will look at three different stats for a set
of keywords: search volumes, the number of results returned for an
inanchor: query (e.g. words appearing in anchor text of links) and
the number of results returned for an intitle: query (e.g. words
appearing in title tags). Here is some data for some keywords in the
health insurance market:
Keyword
Daily query volume
Inanchor results
Intitle results
health care
1,985
136,000,000
31,800,000
health care problems
239
158,000
124,000
single payer health care
197
286,000
51,500
Christian health care
14
25,900
103,000
cultural competency for health care professionals
12
1
1
health care reform pros and cons
11
0
50
Daily keyword volume in the above table is courtesy of Wordtracker
<http://www.wordtracker.com>
, and the inanchor and intitle results are from Google.
In our table we see that the combined inanchor and intitle results
for health care is a touch greater than 167M, whereas the
corresponding total for health care reforms pros and cons is 50. If
we divide 50 into 167M, you might conclude that the phrase health
care is 3.34M times more competitive than the phrase health care
reforms pros and cons. This is probably a bit of an extreme
conclusion, but a page with health care reforms pros and cons in its
title, and/or links pointing to it with that anchor text, will clearly
have an excellent chance of ranking highly for that search term. For
purposes of this article, we are going to guess that the average
competitiveness of a long tail is one quarter that of the head (a
figure which is probably low).
This is already pretty compelling, but now lets take it one step
further, by considering keywords in relation to where a user is in the
purchase cycle. Many head tail terms are used by searchers who are at
the beginning of the purchase process. They are still in research
mode, and are not quite ready to buy. With (relevant) long tail terms
the conversion rate tends to be much higher.
To illustrate, take the example of someone who searches on digital
camera to start a search session. A bit later they search on canon
digital camera, and after that they search on Canon PowerShot SX20
IS . This is a process that has been documented many times, where the
user starts with a general term because they are still in research
mode. As they learn more and more about what they want, their searches
get more specific. By the time they get to Canon PowerShot SX20 IS
they are much closer to making a purchase decision.
I have seen articles that suggest that the conversion rate of
relevant long tail terms is 2x that of head terms, but unfortunately,
could not find hard data to support that. Yet this does make intuitive
sense.
Now for some math. We have seen that the long tail has 7x the traffic
of the head. We have estimated that it is 4 times easier to rank in
the long tail (a figure which I believe is low), and that the
conversion rate is 2x higher. This would suggest that extracting cash
from search is 56 times easier with a focus on the long tail. Thats
pretty compelling.
There is no doubt that there is brand value in ranking highly on head
terms. Users in research mode will see your site if you rank for head
terms. That serves as a brand impression, and thats a good thing.
But, the reality is that branding is expensive. It has always been
expensive, and this is unchanged in the world of search. You can
pursue branding as a first priority, but you will need to make sure
you budget for it.
I realize I have not provided empirical proof for my estimates in
this article. But our experiences with clients confirm that businesses
that proactively implement a long tail strategy on the web have a
significant advantage over their competitors. Cash is strategic. Few
businesses are in a position to ignore an approach to revenue that is
50+ times easier than the alternatives. Money in your pocket puts you
in a position to increase your investment from cash flow, even as you
are able to show results from your SEO activities. Better still, you
can implement your SEO strategies to chase all the relevant search
terms (head, chunky middle, and long tail), as these strategies do not
have to be mutually exclusive. But, whatever you do, dont ignore the
long tail.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author, and not
necessarily Search Engine Land.
Eric Enge <http://searchengineland.com/author/eric-enge/>
is the president of Stone Temple Consulting
<http://www.stonetemple.com>
, an SEO consultancy outside of Boston. Eric is also co-founder of
Moving Traffic Inc., the publisher of Custom Search Guide
<http://www.customsearchguide.com>
.
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