Long Tail – The Power Of Small Quantities

The term long tail describes a frequency distribution where there are large number of items that each generate only marginal interest/traffic/sales. However, the sum of these small quantities can add up to substantial amounts. Both in search engine marketing and in search engine optimization, advertisers usually aim for big numbers but the long tail can play an important role in both cases.

Long Tail in Search Engine Marketing

When you commence the keyword research and try to find the best keywords and phrases, you might tend to focus on high volume keywords as those keywords bring usually the traffic in bulk. But once the initial results start to arrive, if you used a wide-enough keyword list, after careful inspection, you can find keywords that attract small traffic but the conversion rates are excellent which means that the keyword or phrase in question is exceptionally relevant. If you manage to find enough keywords, it can increase the return on investment significantly.

Long Tail in Search Engine Optimization

The inital step in this case is keyword research again, where you aim to identify all those keywords that would drive relevant traffic to your website. Popular keywords can drive massive traffic but they have the tendency to attract competitors hence it becomes very hard to reach good ranking. There might be, however, keywords or phrases that can attract moderate traffic but for one reason or another it is not especially popular among your competitors and hence it wouldn’t require much effort from you to achieve good ranking for that keyword. Using tools, like Google’s Keyword Tool can help you to size up the popularity of keywords and give you an idea of its traffic driving capabilities.