Comments on: Long Tail, Business Blogs and Measurement

By: sandrar

sandrar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:32:57 +0000

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

By: Rowena Patton

Rowena Patton — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:51:33 +0000

I wish I hadn’t evolved to someone who lives this stuff! I need to get a life! Couple of thoughts – apparently my site performs very well for long tail searches. I’m informed by the SEO gurus that’s because I have concentrated my efforts on writing blogs and pages that are not your average search. I think that anyone can hire an intern to do the popular search pages – they are a lot of work but straight forward – here’s a list of terms, get someone who can write, off you go. Trouble is, that’s what everyone else is doing. What’s more, the lead aggregators such as House Values, House Hunt and Realtor.com are doing it way more successfully than local firms. Your success will be based on following history (what is scoring well) rather than looking at the future tipping points and leading edge factors that are switching potential buyers (whatever industry) on NOW. I’m not suggesting ignoring what is working, just accenting it. I think building content (wherever it is) that is outside of the ordinary will over time build a large database of data that will mean more than 3 bed master on main in xyz town. I’m not suggesting not doing the ‘popular’ or using terms for listings at all – I’m just saying that is the springboard off which to build things that set you apart. Most successful ideas in business are one of two things – BGOs – blinding glimpses of the obvious – or things we didn’t realize we needed. Just like any news that people are looking for, it’s about the HOOK – the thing in the tail that is news. If it is pedestrian we are fighting with all the other people out there that manage to create content that has a low barrier to entry. I also want to say thank you for all the ideas on here – I need to practice a lot more of the everyday stuff which is not easy, instead of living outside the box all the time, so very helpful, thanks.

ps – I Confess to having a love affair with google and use all kind of google tactics to raise it up there and have spoken with a number of their staff, however on the topic of this blog – no one can keep up with how and why things rise to the top. We can speculate and then tomorrow it is different, through a different browser, algorithms or some new filter that will be out next week! If you truly have a niche, long tails will work fantastically I think to bring in the value clients not the volume clients.

By: Google Explains How to Optimize your Real Estate Site on a Small Budget | Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:16:24 +0000

[...] a real estate website on a small budget. When you watch, you will see that he is really pushing the long tail theory of optimization as a starting point for any SEO (search engine optimization) effort. This, combined with the need [...]

By: Critique of the Long Tail | Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:20:28 +0000

[...] those of you who have already read my Long Tail and business blogging strategy post, here is a review of a critique printed in the Harvard Business Review. I always like to see [...]

By: Internet Marketing for Real Estate » Bringing the Olympics home: 5 blog post ideas for Local.

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:58:38 +0000

[...] The strategy here, as you might guess, is to get the attention of readers both now (current event) and in the future (people who will make decisions based on how your neighborhood relates to the current event). This is an example of a content-planning strategy that makes use of the long tail marketing concept. [...]

By: G Dewald

G Dewald — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:55:52 +0000

Thanks for reading, Patti. Could you give us an example?

By: Patti Herrington

Patti Herrington — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:32:05 +0000

I have found longtail to be very effective. Especially in the real estate market.

By: G. Dewald

G. Dewald — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:25:51 +0000

I agree Jonathan. Setting out to target the long tail is like setting out to read your visitors’ minds. Fairly impossible.

The specificity of long tail searches is what makes them golden. They’re usually very qualified and further along a decision-making path than a more general or broad searcher.

Thanks for stopping by!

By: Jonathan Dalton

Jonathan Dalton — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:15:42 +0000

Appreciate the mention, Ryan …

Targeting the long tail’s more complicated than the short or money tail as it were. What I’ve tended to find is the long tail grows without clear design. At the end of the day, people will search for some of the oddest things. But if they’re specific in what they are looking for and you meet that specific need, you’re set.

By: G Dewald

G Dewald — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:19:56 +0000

Thanks for the compliments Ryan!

I think you’re dead on with using Long Tail strategy for publicizing businesses on the local level. Ultimately, I think that the Long Tail is just a simple way to describe (and quantify) branding efforts on the internet.

You’re right that you might not see immediate conversions from your long tail visitors. But your brand will have made some impression that will hopefully spread your brand (someone who reads your content talks about you to someone else offline or online).

Applying all of this to a local strategy is even more clever (and luckily easier and more likely to yield results sooner).

There are a variety of ways to track the health of your long tail (and more importantly, take action on what you learn by tracking it). Probably a future blog post.

If you know anyone working on licensing courses let me know. I’d love to contribute.