The true value of long tail search words
Long tail search phrases are often seen like a bonus, the one’s you don’t go after, the longer phrases and search strings that you rank for and get traffic for but never set out to achieve.
If you want a recap and some reading on what long tail search is I’d recommend this post and the one’s it links to. Al also did a specific post on it previously, long tail keywords have been explained very well before yet I still see webmasters getting hung up on top rankings for a few prized keywords which is an easy trap to fall into.
Checking your ranking for your top 3 keywords may make you feel better but by improving content and getting user submitted content you can glean more traffic through long tail search than you can from your main keywords.
Over the last 12 months the stats for my tattoo site help illustrate the long tail keyword benefits available by adding content, the main problem I had was my site is image based, not great for any keywords never mind long tail, this was something I had to and did address.
The main area I could address is the rate my tattoo area, this area lets users submit their own images which adds content but usually people are lazy and it’s easy to stay hands off and be lazy too, when people upload an image they often don’t give it a descriptive heading and lack clarity in the description, they just want to upload their image and have it rated like any other site.
So all images submitted are now moderated, thankfully my wife agreed to update this are of the site and before going live the title and descriptions are sometimes edited to make them reflect the image better, so when someone uploads an image called ‘tattoo’ which is one of my main keywords but doesn’t really describe the image, my wife now edits it in the admin area to call it ‘wolf with blue eyes’.
Time consuming? yes, but it really does make an overall difference for something that takes a few minutes everyday, when you get hundreds of images with good titles and descriptions you can increase your traffic by thousands. I also implemented a comments system, again moderated and being mainly image based this can add text and get users more involved.
To show the power of long tail search I will quote some numbers from July ‘07 to July ‘08
From the 9 million visitors, search sent 5,516,749 total visits.
My main keywords being tattoo, tattoos, tattoo designs account for 2,134,324 of these visits.
So without the long tail I could have had less than half as much traffic as I did!
I have 3 main keywords which bring in less than 50% of the search traffic, so how many keywords did the site rank for in last year remembering most of my content is image based?
Search sent 5,516,749 total visits via 157,337 keywords
Related Posts:
Did you ever come across fellow science writer Carl Zimmer’s science tattoos emporium
He’s just moved his blog to Discover magazine so the tats went with him
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/science-tattoo-emporium/
David Bradley’s last blog post..Sunbathing, Frozen Fleas, and Heavy Metal
I have actually David, an interesting read with a wonderful selection of thought provoking imagery & meanings, I do enjoy science as a reading subject.
Good stuff. He’s a good friend of mine, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to know
David Bradley’s last blog post..Sunbathing, Frozen Fleas, and Heavy Metal
Hi Scott,
What else can you do to attract long tail searches ? For example would it be a good idea to put posts / articles based on the long tail keywords ?
If so, would it be worth the effort ? Since each long tail kw brings only a few searches ?
ATT
att’s last blog post..How to prepare for CCNA / CCNP or any similar exam
Long tail bring in a few searches individually but those searched add up to huge numbers which is what I was trying to say in this post. My long tail search brought in 3 millions visitors while my main top keywords brought in 2 million visitors, it’s more than worth it!
Excellent example given, for my blog too even if i rank in the top for highly searched keywords, the long tail search words are always the winners because they are suffixed/prefixed with best, top, reviews, ratings, sucks, coupons etc
Amit Bhawani’s last blog post..Kodak W820 Wireless Digital Photo Frame
Even if your comments are in moderation dont you think, a message showing “Your Comment is in Moderation” should be displayed to make sure the commentors dont refresh the page and try to resubmit.
Amit Bhawani’s last blog post..Kodak W820 Wireless Digital Photo Frame
Not really been an issue to date Amit, if lot’s of dup comments were submitted I’d look at it but it isn’t something that has caused issues.
I’m banking on long tail searches to boost my site - if Google would only hurry up and index it properly that is! Would you guys recommend looking for the top 10 or 20 search terms and making landing pages for them?
You need to use your visitors and get them searching on your site and using that if you really want the long tail, my long tail consistend of over 150,000 keywords in the last year.
I hae already implemented that tweak from couple months with great results
Thanks to Al for helping me with a small tweak in setting it up.
Amit Bhawani’s last blog post..BlackBerry 9500 Mobile Phone Review
Scott, are you saying that you’re creating pages from the searches that your visitors have done on your page?
Mikael
Mikael’s last blog post..Linkbuilding With Niche Forums
yes it does mean that but i dont think its possible in most CMS, as the current plugins are only available to couple blogging CMS only.
Amit Bhawani’s last blog post..BlackBerry 9500 Mobile Phone Review
Thanks all
I hate to sound stupid, but I still don’t understand how to exploit the long tail !
For example for CG, would you write separate articles targeting individual long tail kws ?
Or
Would you write a single article to cover a number of long tail kws ?
Sorry about the very basic questions, both Scott and Al have explained it all very well in a number of posts, it’s just me !
Ps: I might have posted this here http://selfmademinds.com/200706/long-tail-searches-by-example/
if so, please delete.
att’s last blog post..How to prepare for CCNA / CCNP or any similar exam
I agree. It’s not always easy to figure out what you should be doing to get long-tail traffic, but I’ve found that you often don’t have to. By getting links and optimizing for high-traffic terms, the rest sort of works itself out.
I think if you create great content and the site is popular, you will get a lot of traffic for long tail words even without intending to. By focussing too much on particular long tail words means you may create custom content geared towards those longtail words, which, in my opinion at least, is not the way to go and results in slightly unnatural content.
Yeah, I’ve found the very same with my sites. I used to skip over things like alt tags and captions, etc, as a picture should speak 1000 words. But after a short while I realized that a picture doesn’t speak at all to search spiders!
Justin Cook’s last blog post..What to do when you’re dropped from Google’s index
I can’t beat your numbers, but I can beat your ratio. On one of my sites, the long tail is the source of *all* the visitors: 42,324 total visits via 16,624 keywords! I think only the first 100 or so phrases have more than 1 visitor per month.
That’s an impressive ratio! just proves the amount of traffic outside the normal targetted terms.
Do you rely on just the content to bring the longtail searches or do you do anything offsite to help? How many pages of content do you have on your tatoo site? Great post BTW.
I implemented http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/use-google-images-and-hotlinkers-to-build-links/ which helps for deeper links from people wanting to use the images but mainly on site creating content which does it.
Just installed this looks really good thanks for the tips Scott
Hi Scott, thanks for the reply. I guessed that it would all be mainly onsite by means of adding content, but thought I would ask just in case.
I always try to name my images and then use appropriate descriptions (usually the same as the name), but never seem to get any traffic from this - or at least that I’m aware of.
Maybe it will build up over time - the blog part of the site is just over a year old?
Zath’s last blog post..Perpetual Gamer: Free Fantasy Football
I dont get much traffic from images either, there’s an option in googles webmaster tools for enhanced image search - I’ve just turned it on so will see if this generates any extra traffic.
I get tons of traffic from images. Not sure what I do different to get that traffic though. I just try the same as Zath I believe. Drop me an email Simon and we can see if we can work the image problem out.
Matthew’s last blog post..Build your own Mesh Network
I’ve check that I have Enhanced Image Search enabled in Google Webmaster Tools and I do - so not sure about this.
I only ever see Google referrals from standard searches - weird???
Zath’s last blog post..SanDisk Sansa Fuze Review
What a wonderful article. Thanks for your job!
[...] Long Tail Keywords are those odd little search phrases users type in to find your website. If you give them a little consideration, you should be able to boost your website traffic by focusing on non-competitive keyword combinations. [...]
Well to start with that is an impressive number of visitors, wow, you know your stuff. As for long tail I am slowly starting to understand the benefits that it brings, I mean I would not search tattoo as the Scottish Tattoo will come up. Great post, thanks Goran