Long Tail
SEO / Search Marketing
Phrase describing how for any category of product being sold there is much more aggregate demand for the non-hits than there is for the hits.
How does the long tail applies to keywords? Long Tail keywords are more precise and specific, thus have a higher value. As of writing this definition in the middle of October 2006 my leading keywords for this month are as follows:
| #reqs | search term |
|---|---|
| 1504 | seo book |
| 512 | seobook |
| 501 | seo |
| 214 | google auctions |
| 116 | link bait |
| 95 | aaron wall |
| 94 | gmail uk |
| 89 | search engine optimization |
| 86 | trustrank |
| 78 | adsense tracker |
| 73 | latent semantic indexing |
| 71 | seo books |
| 69 | john t reed |
| 67 | dear sir |
| 67 | book.com |
| 64 | link harvester |
| 64 | google adwords coupon |
| 58 | seobook.com |
| 55 | adwords coupon |
| 15056 | [not listed: 9,584 search terms] |
Notice how the nearly 10,000 unlisted terms account for roughly 10 times as much traffic as I got from my core brand related term (and this site only has a couple thousand pages and has a rather strong brand).
See also:
- The Long Tail - official blog
- The Long Tail - the book