The Long Tail: Not Just for Paid Search Anymore!

by Herndon Hasty on 06/25/2009 at 3:45 pm in Online Strategies, SEO, SEO Best Practices

I started my life in search engine marketing on the paid side of the search equation. With ROI being at the bottom line of every decision made from keyword selection, match type strategies, campaign organization and, of course, bidding, amassing wins using long tail keywords was one of my favorite approaches. Good paid practitioners are constantly fighting to find ways to get those one or two keywords that drive huge traffic a little more efficient, but there’s really nothing like coming in to see a line like this in the previous day’s results:

• Keyword: (random 7-term keyword)
• Impressions: 1
• Clicks: 1
• Cost: $.25
• Conversions: 1
• Revenue: $1,256.37
• ROI: Hahahahahaha

It may be the only impression that particular keyword gets for the next 6 months. But if you can create a campaign that reaches out effectively enough to reach customers looking for very specific things, these one-click wonders can easily leverage investment in wider ranges of nonbrand keywords – i.e. make you look super smart.

With a solid SEO program and smart keyword selection, you can accomplish the same thing – only exponentially larger, given the volume of clicks that natural results drive versus paid ones. All it takes is a readable site and the time, patience and courage to see it through (though having an award-winning SEO department at your back can really help), via opportunities like:

• Taking your meta data beyond single-word targets based on what you’ve named your categories or products
• Taking your product names and descriptions beyond what your branding team or manufacturers provide you
• Taking your internal linking beyond a three-clicks-to-a-product mentality and finding ways to get engines from your most authoritative pages to your most valuable content faster

Combining these efforts will open up your site to the ability to rank for a much wider range of keywords, in much the same way that a six-digit keyword buildout can, with much the same effect – only without those pesky click costs!