What long tail means to you.
If you are in the process of researching Web 2.0 marketing strategies for your company’s blog, or if you have been speaking to potential SEO or Web 2.0 partners, you no doubt are deluged in acronyms and buzz words. SEO, SEM, PPC, long tail, AOV, ROI, CPA, CPC, conversions…these terms are delivered ad nauseum. It’s exhausting, and you can never be quite sure if the buzz words really apply to you. Small to medium businesses have a difficult challenge keeping up with the big pockets and big research budgets of the Enterprise, but search engines have exposed a loop hole where having tons of money and advertising expenses don’t always equal dominance - the long tail. If you are looking into blogging for your business, long tail is a buzz word (or words) that gets thrown around loosely, but it’s very relevant to the SMB market and could provide an opportunity for the SMB to highlight their weakness as a strength.
Traditionally, niche has meant small. Companies who were very focused were limited geographically in a brick and mortar retail world. Niche businesses were relegated to smaller stores in off-the-beaten-path locations. In the world of search engine marketing, having a niche focus gives you credibility and that laser focus results in high organic search engine rankings. Search really leveled the playing field for the niche website, and the product focus of niche sites really played into the hands of search engine spiders who look for things like meta-tags and keyword density. This means that a small, focused retailer can be MORE optimized to discuss a specific product than Best Buy or another big box retailer who has to cover more ground. This is where the term “long tail” came into play, and why it’s become an important focus for the SMB. Here is an example of how long tail benfits the small business website.
Someone does a search on “live chat” and the first hand full of rankings might be shared with business oriented live chat software, chat for single people (like personal ads,) and instant messaging products of no business use. These general terms may lead to the bulk of traffic for any of these companies, but the long tail is important. A search on “enterprise live chat software” nets a very different result - and most importantly, a very different conversion rate. According to a company on the first page of both results (live chat and enterprise live chat software,) the “enterprise” key phrase conversion percentage is much higher. While general search terms like “live chat” may create a large volume of traffic, they may actually end with a similar number of conversions to the more specific “long tail” phrase.
Your business blog is a great way to key in on long tail phrases, without adding static pages to your website. Blog posts can be written to key in on phrases that are relevant to your site, but might not be your main focus or the way you currently market your products. For long tail ideas, look at your analytics at some of the more obscure search queries. Customer search phrases are one of your best sources for long tail.
Tags: business-blogging, corporate-blogging, long-tail, niche-markets, Search Engine Visibility, SEO-Strategies