I’m at our Search Engine
Strategies conference in Chicago this week. During one of my sessions, I got
another reminder of how the trend or meme that "everyone knows" might not
actually be that widespread. In this instance, it was about "the long tail," the
phrase popularized by Wired editor Chris Anderson to describe among other things
consumer demand for products that extend well beyond the popular products that
might easily come to mind. Chris describes the long tail more on his blog
here, and his essay
that sparked everything off can be found at Wired in
The Long Tail.
I regularly present the "Introduction To Search Engine Marketing" seminar at
our conferences. I’ve been doing that session under that name or slightly
different ones since 1999. A key part of it is discussing keyword research and
how while focusing on most important terms are great, you also want the terms at
the far end of the search tail as well. My
Search’s Long
Tail post over at the SEW Blog explains this in more
depth, and how I’ve described search’s long tail in the past as going after the
"onesies and twosies."
I did a major overhaul to my presentation for our show in San Jose last
August and added in the phrase "long tail" to one of my slides, explaining how
it relates to the search tail concept. I figured it would hlep ensure I was
making points that hit with concepts my audience would probably understand.
Here’s the slide:
When I came to this slide during my presentation in San Jose, I asked the
audience how many were familiar with the long tail concept. Practically no one
was. Yesterday, the same thing happened with my Chicago audience. Of about 300
people, maybe 10 percent of the hands went up when I asked how many knew about
the long tail.
This group of people were all relatively new to search marketing, but most of
them had some familiarity with it when I did another survey. In other words,
they weren’t web/tech newbies. The vast majority of them had some degree of
experience with the internet and web commerce. Nevertheless, it still surprises
me that so few have heard of the "long tail." That’s especially so when so much
of what I personally read makes references to it. It’s easy to assume everyone
else must know about it, but that turns out not to be the case. Perhaps that
will change with Chris’s book on the topic
comes out next year.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think everyone intuitively understands the long tail. A search optimizer might sum it up as “you can’t optimize for everything”. The difference now is now that the concept has a concrete name, SEM firms have a concrete reason to try to keep their clients from taking their AdSense campaigns in-house, and natural optimizers might actually make an attempt to grow the long tail for natural search. That has always been my secret sauce for SEO. Non-competitive terms are easier to get, and can be just as valuable for conversion.
Danny - glad to read this. I’m planning a presentation that includes the Long Tail as it relates to affiliate marketing. I was hoping it wasn’t too overused, so that I can make the points I want to make and they will be fresh. Anyone here talking about the Long Tail of affiliate marketing? I’d appreciate any posts along this line. Thanks!