“The Long Tail” – The Misunderstood Phenomenon

July 3, 2011 - PRLog -- When it comes to “The Long Tail” let’s be honest, there is a lot of information about it, and let’s be honest, most of it is crap. When I first reported on The Long Tail back in 2007, it opened a lot of your eyes. The good news is, very little has changed regarding The Long Tail since then, but there are a few tweaks you want to make. So, here is the information you need to ensure your business is on the right track. No more reading “theories”, “guesses”, etc. I went deeper into my archives to uncover more about this hot topic, and the information here will not just be on target, but I will also give you an action plan so you can do something with it. The bottom line is, if you follow this, your campaigns will be more successful.

Let’s dive right in and talk about the Long Tail. You’ve heard about it (unless you’ve been living under a rock), maybe you have even read the book put out by Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson. I can probably predict that what you think you know about the Long Tail is wrong.

Now you have a better understanding of the Long Tail and you know that it isn’t about the LENGTH of the keyword phrase, it is about the keyword phrase’s ability to CONVERT.

Like anything else in your business, once you understand what you need, it is so much easier to compete in any market. The bottom line is you must test your keywords through PPC to understand which keywords to keep, which landing pages need to be changed/tweaked and which keywords to drop.

Remember the quote, “50% of all advertising is wasted. Too bad you don’t know which 50%.” Well, you can know which 50% online if you just put forth some effort in testing and tracking your traffic and campaigns. It really is simple, it is just getting it done. Most marketers just fail to get it done. Don’t be one of these marketers. Taking as little as one hour can install a tracking system so you know exactly how sales/leads are being generated and with that information, you can do great things.

Getting rid of the 50% of PPC spent that is worthless will allow you to bid higher on the terms that bring you the most customers and the most revenue … and in some markets you will be amazed that you can bid twice what you are paying now and STILL have the same profit margins, and in some cases increase your profit margins.

Testing your keywords in PPC before you launch your organic traffic campaign is vital as well. After the testing period, if you concentrate your organic campaign (on page optimization and link building) on the keywords that are the most profitable (most dollars made, not highest ROI) and have a high per click charge, great things will be in store for you.

Why go after those with a high per click charge? Easy. If you can gain a spot in the top three organically for an expensive PPC keyword phrase, you can back off with your bids and keep the same revenue, and funnel the PPC budget to other keywords to expand your reach.

For example, let’s say that I spent $2,000.00 in a two week PPC test on a large group of keywords. Following the test, it was determined that 65% of the keywords failed to convert a single visitor (we’ll throw out the landing page quality issue to make this a simple example). I immediately remove those keywords from my list (which will save me a large portion of my budget). I then go through the results of the remaining keywords and look for the keywords that made the most money and also have the highest per click charge. I use the extra funds in the budget to increase my bids, thus increasing my traffic, leads and sales.

Let’s say for the keyword “rare blue widget” I spent $500.00 and I made $550.00, a measly $50.00 profit. The per click charge was $2.50. So this example meets both criteria: 1) It made money; 2) High Per Click Charge (anything over $1.50). I can see a great opportunity here. While most would look at this as a “non-Long Tail” phrase because it is only three words, I look at it as a strong possibility as it converts well for me.

I can do a quick search in Google for the keyword phrase and look at the sites listed in the Top Ten. I do a check in the Keyword Competition Tool to see how much the keywords is stacked in the Anchor column. I then do a backlink check in Open Site Explorer and see how many links the sites have (I also check the Anchor Text to see how many links I am going to need for that targeted phrase). I then look at the WHOIS information, background of the competitors in DomainTools.com and make a fairly educated guess if I can unseat one of the sites in the top ten in 30 days or less, and a #1 ranking in six months or less. But I’m not spending a lot of time doing this research; I am using my experience and intuition to get a feel if I can. If I feel I can, I write the phrase down in my business journal and grade it, on a scale of 1-10 in order of my confidence level in achieving a top ranking.

The goal here is to get a list of 4-6 phrases to hit hard out of the gate, and if you stay focused, you should discover them in less than 90 minutes. This is always your focus. Get in and get out with your research. You need to always be marketing and getting things done instead of stuck doing research. That doesn’t make you money. Focus on a small group of keywords. Never spread yourself thin. Being on Page One is a joke. Being #5 isn’t enough. Neither is being #3. You have to be #1 organically and then work on your feeder sites to creep into the first page. Your goal for your best converting keywords is the top three. Yes, owning the entire top three organically. You do this, you will own the market. All three will be separate domains. Do this, and even when shifts happen in Google, and a site gets penalized, you still have two sites ranking.

What is doing this worth? A potential of $1,100.00 a month in pure revenue ($550.00 in sales every two weeks with no PPC cost). While these numbers are very raw, and you have to break them down much more than that, doing quick math in your head while you study the competition allows you to make a good decision. The decision whether to continue with the PPC spend long term, or to invest in an organic campaign.

If you can find five good keywords like this, you have a site that can earn $5,500.00 a month in revenue without any PPC costs because you are focusing your optimization skills on the keywords that produce. As David Bullock said, this is the definition of “Transactional Velocity”. While no one is going to brag about a business that makes $5,500.00 a month, if you had five sites that did this you are well on your way as $25k in revenue isn’t bad and you can build and scale from there as high as you want to go.

Now, a lot of people ask me if they get a #1 ranking for a keyword phrase, should they stop their PPC campaign? My answer to that is “no”. You might want to slide down to a lower position and use a different domain to save some of your budget for other keywords. You don’t want (as a general rule) the same domain showing up in both the paid and the organic listings. Most will say that having both listings will help the customer improve their trust in your site. That may have been true in the past but not currently. Having non-similar looking sites, with different company names selling the same or similar product, helps in the trust area more according to recent tests I have conducted.

Think about it. What would spur your trust in a product more? The same store, featuring the product on every corner, or the same product being featured in different stores?

Action Plan: Look at your keywords and rate them based on “Transactional Velocity”. Which keywords are producing? Which ones are not? Can you make changes to the landing pages for improvement? Remove the worst producing keywords that are costing you the most money right now.

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