The Long, Long, Long Tail of Search
Posted by nick on November 11, 2008 at 01:12 PM
I think it's safe to say that many search engine optimization initiatives start out by focusing on a core set of keywords.
These keywords should represent a website's overall content while taking into account words and phrases that people are actually searching for. After all, bringing qualified traffic to a website is one of the goals of SEO.
Optimization efforts ensue and, if things are done correctly, the results are as plentiful as Thanksgiving dinner. At first, some may want to award all this newfound success to the initial set of chosen keywords, but not so fast.
It's time to take a much closer look at the impact long tail search terms have on your site traffic.
Image: Southern Humpback Whale at Platypus Bay by Richard.Fisher
A recent blog post from Hitwise presents us with some interesting numbers to look at while considering long tail terms.
According to the author, the Hitwise search data gathered over the last three months shows the majority of traffic coming from long tail search. The top 100 terms, which one might suspect contains those terms initially targeted through optimization, represents only about 5.7% of the total search traffic for the time period. Extend this out to the top-500 (8.9%), top-1,000 (10.6%), and top-10,000 (18.5%) terms, and we still see that the vast majority of search traffic is coming through terms other than those that are most popular.
So what does this all mean for long tail search? It means that it's massive, or rather, has the possibility to be massive for sites who manage it as best they can. Keeping in mind that everyone searches differently is important. These differences promote seemingly endless possibilities in the ways in which internet users could potentially find sites.
Optimizing a site around a core set of keywords is an important first step, but paying attention to long tail variations is crucial to the overall impact of your search optimization efforts. The benefit of these highly focused, long tail terms can bring users to your site who already know what they are looking for, which usually means there is a higher chance of them converting if they find what they want.
While every site will garner long tail traffic in its own way, and may not necessarily reflect the numbers mentioned above, understanding the potential for long tail is what is really important. It can account for so much more of a site's traffic than most think, which means it's something every webmaster should take into consideration.
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Comments (6)
Posted on November 12, 2008 04:23 AM
Without a doubt the long tail is important and it doesn't surprise me that its more important than the keywords people typically target. Its makes more sense given the way people search.
Posted on November 12, 2008 06:39 AM
A search on the long tail phrase "massive hitwise search tail" minus the "" of course has this post as number one. Now these were just four random words I picked from the screen. Long tail searches like this are random hits, would you try to "optimise" for that phrase? Of course not. But it was a long tail hit. People forget that such phrases need not be in your mind when optimising a page, so trying to do so is meaningless - how many four word phrases can we invent for this page? Thousands. So there is no need to optimise the top 10,000 of them to get high in the serps, it just happens. With the exception of including your town/city and those nearby, and your state/county, adding extra bits to optimise for four or five word searches is rather artificial, really. But it does lead to articles like this mentioning the top 10,000 long tail searches. It's not practical for most sites to optimise a page for such long tails. So let's not get too excited about it, shall we?
Posted on November 13, 2008 01:57 AM
Hey John, your comment just got me thinking. I have always tried to optimize for these long tail phrases with no luck really. I guess the best thing to do is just have the words in the long tail phrase be present in the page one is optimizing for.
Posted on November 13, 2008 03:37 AM
Absoultely right. Long tail is important for the good traffic.
Posted on November 17, 2008 07:50 AM
I always get surprised sometimes on what phrases the searchers use to get to my website. One thing I notice is that if the phrase is in the url and title of the page, they are most likely to get the top spot of the search result.
Posted on November 12, 2008 03:46 AM
I love the long tail. These are the 'buying terms', while the main keywords just bring browsers. Good post.