The Long Tail of Internet Search
At BarCamp this weekend, I sat in on a half-hour presentation on what the presenter, Jason Billingsley (can’t find his name on his site he dropped by to comment, below) called Seo and the Long Tail (with a nod to Chris Anderson).
His message was pretty simple: You have access to only a few meta-tags and description for SEO, so make them count for you. Then, fill in ALL of the gaps with content, by becoming an expert on the topics that are related to your business. And wherever possible, those that are unique to your business. An example he used was that a search time like “digital camcorder” would be impossible (and extremely expensive) to rank #1 on, but a “long tail” term like “the best digital camcorder for scuba diving” will not only be easier to own, but will convert better than the more broad terms.
Just to explain that really quickly, the concept is simple: If someone searches for “digital camcorders,” it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what they want, so there is a snowball’s chance in hell that the first site they look at will have what they’re looking for. Whereas a search term like “how do I get people to tell ten friends about my company” is several steps closer to being a perfect match for the searcher. (Heheh)
At the presentation, there was much discussion among the brains there about the science of SEO, but I think his point was to not lose sight of the “art” of search: use words, publish relevant content, and people will come.
A few examples:
My Alabama buddy Mack Collier is #1 for the search term “why companies should blog.” Lucky devil.
Here’s some terms people used to find me this week:
1. “breakfast social networking toronto” -Huh? Qu’est-ce que c’est?
2. “meet pr guys” -Okay, this one is cool, and proves my point some.
3. “need glasses myspace” -They were searching for a video, and found me. Who knew?
4 “tell friends about products through myspace” -Not a topic I’ve covered, but certainly words I’ve used.
5. “friends of katherine mcphee” -I can’t help but think this one has more to do with my friendship with JD than anything else, (I was a closet Soul Patrol member, after all) which reinforces the importance of links too.
Anyway, I think you begin to get the point. Speak, dear friends, and the world will listen. And I do mean the world. This week, my humble rag saw traffic from Meeandah, Rome, Istanbul, Contern, Theux, Wolfsheim, Alameda, Brittania and one of “the other” Surreys, just to name a few. And I’ve never heard of most of those places. If you’re reading and you hail from any of these wonderful locales (or something equally obscure to a West Coast Canadian), leave a comment and tell us more about your corner of the earth. We’d love to hear from you.
Update: Andre took better notes from Jason’s presentation than I did, and Jason has done a follow-up on his blog as well.
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I keep getting hits from people who do a search for “kenny rogers facelift picture.” Go figure. Some are more obvious. And obviously somebody likes a picture of the Swedish Chef I posted a few millenia ago.
What’s more interesting are the splogs that I end up with links from. They’re generally pretty bizarre.
That was my exact point – content is the horse that pulls the cart. I always get wrapped up in a topic and who really cares who I am or what my name is right? But for those interested… Jason Billingsley, VP Marketing at Elastic Path Software. The session was more about strategy than tactics, but I will be delivering a full course covering the tactical side of SEO for ecommerce in September – watch http://www.getelastic.com for exact dates. Thanks for sitting in on the session.
Thanks Jason.
You said your name twice in the session, I just didn’t catch it. I was the one who made a point of making you repeat your url though, obv.
Thanks for the great talk, and for dropping by!
(P.S. I’ll update the post accordingly)
[...] Jordan Behan, President and Creative Director of Tell Ten Friends Marketing wrote up a good synopsis of Jason’s strategies and offers up some relevant real-world examples of the specific search terms that people look for and somehow find him. [...]
That was an interesting read.
Jimmy Dushku
http://www.jimmydushku.com/jimmypics
Kenny Rogers…
Nice comments. Well, time to take a break and go download some nice…
[...] If you are, for example, running a site about real estate it should be a hard task to push this site on the search engines front pages for this term. Sure, thousands of people are searching for this term every day. A top position would provide you with massive traffic to your site. It should be much easier to focus on other search terms being searched for less often like find homes in southern california for example. Google presents 4.75 Million results for this compared to 112 Millions for real estate. This makes it far more easier to rank your site well. [...]
[...] If you are, for example, running a site about real estate it should be a hard task to push this site on the search engines front pages for this term. Sure, thousands of people are searching for this term every day. A top position would provide you with massive traffic to your site. It should be much easier to focus on other search terms being searched for less often like find homes in southern california for example. Google presents 4.75 Million results for this compared to 112 Millions for real estate. This makes it far more easier to rank your site well. [...]