SEO

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What You Should Know about Content and the Long Tail of Search

On 02.11.10, In Article Marketing, SEO, By Carson

long-tail I just noticed a post at EzineArticles.com’s blog about the long tail of search. It includes a video from EZA’s Communication Manager, Marc. He supplies an introduction to the concept and some advice about using article marketing as a means of capturing search engine traffic by isolating lower-competition, hyper-targeted keywords in your content.

The video might be a nice introduction for those new to the idea, but it doesn’t provide any real explanation of how to uncover those keywords, assessing the level of competition for them, determining their likely real value or optimizing your articles for them. Basically, it looks like EZA is just encouraging people to write, write, write in hopes that they’ll either figure it out on their own or will accidentally stumble unto traffic-generating articles for the site.

Before anyone gets too excited about Marc’s video and starts outsourcing long tail articles or writing their own, they need to fill in those gaps.

Here are a few things you need to consider about going after long tail search traffic–whether you hope to do it with article syndication, other Web 2.0 properties or your own on-site content. It’s important to understand these factors, how they interrelate and the “mechanics” of putting that knowledge to use.

Probable Search Volume: The ideal keyword has significant search volume and low levels of competition. If those keywords were common, we’d all be rich. We’re not. As you move right on the long tail graph, generally speaking, both search volume and competition decrease. That means it becomes easier to “own” keywords in the SERPs, but that they’re actual value as a means of traffic generation will slide, too.

The trick is to find keywords that generate enough traffic to make their pursuit worthwhile. Ranking #1 for a query that’s used once a month is unlikely to justify the required effort. You need to have at least a vague idea of likely search volume so that you can protect yourself against expending effort and resources in pursuit of keywords that aren’t going to do much for you.

Competitor Quantity: In Marc’s video, he types in a hypothetical search query “as is” and looks at the number of sites that come up in the SERPs as a general means of assessing competition. There’s nothing wrong with doing that as a part of your competition analysis, but it’s far from adequate. You should also test the query “in quotation marks” to check for the total number of sites that actually contain the particular keyword under consideration.

A search for Toyota replacement parts shows over three million results. That’s an intimidating number. When you check for sites that actually use the term en toto, that number drops all the way to around 14,000 competing sites. Those exact matches are important, because you’ll be using full keyword, giving you a significant edge over the other millions of sites that show up in the SERPs that don’t.

You should also be checking the keywords in question using the ALLINTITLE command. That’s going to give you a good idea of which sites are actually trying to optimize for the keyword. You should run that check generally and “in quotation marks.”

Ability to Rank: Higher-than-usual competition numbers are never fun to discover, but they don’t necessarily spell doom for your keyword. Likewise, a low number of competitors doesn’t really tell you if you have a good chance of ranking toward the top of the SERPS, in and of itself.

You need to actually look at the search results and to determine which sites currently occupy the top slots and what it’s going to take on your end to jump above them.

While PageRank of top sites isn’t a perfect measurement tool, it’s one thing to look at. If the first page of results consists of PR5+ sites, it’s going to be hard for your little article to see the light of day, right? You should also be looking at the number and types of links pointing to those sites. Do you think your EZA submission or a blog post on a newer property can whip a page with tens of thousands of inbound links in the SERPs? It’s not very likely. You need to consider those factors and others in conjunction with the level of optimization for the keyword in the top-ranking sites to get a clear idea of your chances of ranking and how much effort in addition to the content (link acquisition, primarily) will be necessary to make it happen.

Sometimes, you’ll find that seemingly “high competition” keywords are dominated by inferior sites that you can easily beat. It does cut both ways.

Likelihood of Conversion: The EzineArticles’ video accurately observes that articles targeting the long tail tend to yield better click-through rates and a higher propensity for successful conversion. However, you don’t want to waste your efforts based on that general tendency. You need to evaluate conversion potential in light of your particular keyword and your desired final outcome.

What is the largest city in Ecuador might be a good keyword, statistically speaking, but it has limited value. The person making that search is probably looking for an answer and not much, if anything else. In order to write an article optimized for that keyword, you’ll be forced to supply the answer. That’s the end of the story. The odds of getting good resource box CTR or a link to your world travel site is minimal.

Cheap airline tickets to Ecuador, on the other hand, has some real potential. The person making that search is a potential buyer. If you can supply a good, relevant article that flows nicely into a well-constructed resource box or that waves a handy find-it-here link in the reader‘s face, you can count on securing some targeted traffic with real conversion potential.

If your end goal is to sell, you need to pursue keywords indicative of a desire to buy. Ranking #1 for terms that have little or no commercial value really shouldn’t be on your to-do list.

The Underlying Premise: All of this is built on one underlying premise–that the content itself is good enough to do the job. Ranking #1 with an utterly miserable piece of junk isn’t going to help you. If you think that’s a plug for hiring someone who knows how to write exceptionally good web content, you’re right.

Going after the long tail is a good idea in many situations. I’ve found that it has particularly awesome potential for small businesses who are hoping to maximize the value of their Internet presence. Geography-based keywords are often part of the long tail and owning top slots for them can be exceeding valuable.

Last year, I worked on a project that involved uncovering a nice collection of geography-based keywords for a business, generating on-site content optimized for those keywords and creating off-site anchor text links utilizing the keywords. The result? I just ran no-quotation marks searches for the three best keywords and the client site is ranking #1 for all of them.

Ranking #1 for Name-of-city type-of-business keywords is just one of the many ways that targeting the long tail can be profitable when done correctly.

I’ve also had great success targeting long tails in specific niches in a few affiliate marketing projects, so it’s not a strategy limited to brick and mortar success. It’s good stuff.

However, you can’t just decide to bang out a stack of articles/posts/pages based on what you assume would be good keywords. That might be a good way to increase the mass of article directories, but it isn’t likely to do much for your business.

Completely shameless plug: If you’re interested in exploring long tail search traffic as an option for you business, get in touch. We can come up with a strategy that will produce results.

Writing for Residuals the Right Way

On 01.14.10, In Article Marketing, Industry, Link building, SEO, Strategy, Testing, By Carson

copy I recently read another writer’s blog post that ripped the idea of making a living out of writing for content mill sites that pay via ongoing ad-sharing arrangements or residuals based on page views into tiny little shreds. The author reported the results of some limited testing and concluded that it just doesn’t make sense to write for residuals.

That’s an argument we’ve seen elsewhere, too. You read things like, “I submitted twenty articles and I made $2 in residual earnings after a month. The articles will need to produce like that for years to make it worthwhile.” When you realize that the likely per month payout is marginal, consider the time value of money and realize that the sites you’re using could call it quits or change their terms at any moment, it becomes fairly obvious that writing for residuals is a poor way to spend your time.

I’d never write anything with the primary intention of securing residual earnings. I could make much better money doing just about anything other than shopping. I’ve tested several sites that pay this way over the years and I’ve only experienced one situation that even hints that the practice has legitimate earnings potential.

Several years ago, I wrote an article that I submitted to Associated Content as part of an experiment. In addition to a modest up-front payment, the article continues to rake in the page views month after month. Since 2006, that article has been earning me a few dollars per month in residuals on a consistent basis. Four years of that adds up. That article is an exception to the rule, though. I hit the right keywords for the right demographic and was lucky enough to have the article receive some big fat link love from a few other well-trafficked sites. It was a residual perfect storm and it would be extremely tough to duplicate the experience.

In most cases, my results look a lot like those usually reported. Each article submitted for page view-based ongoing payments generates well under a buck per month. Those admitted with Adsense revenue sharing usually do even worse. I should mention that I’ve never bothered trying to promote the content (with the exception of a new, ongoing experiment utilizing an homegrown automated system).

So, does that mean you should never, ever submit an article for residual payments? Not really.

It means you shouldn’t use those mill sites as a primary means of content monetization. You shouldn’t write an article with the intention of putting it up at Bukisa or anything like that. However, there is space to use residual mills to your advantage.

That’s because many of those sites don’t have an exclusivity policy. You can publish your articles for residual earnings at a series of different sites. Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in earnings between content submitted exclusively to one site and that which is self-syndicated across multiple mills. That’s either evidence that Google isn’t quite as tough on repeated content or let’s us know that these mills can produce some level of traffic internally, allowing your material to get views regardless of search engine performance.

Here’s a scenario for you… You write an article that doesn’t end up being used for some reason and it’s a poor fit for your site or those of your existing clients. Instead of letting it gather dust, you could sell it with non-exclusive rights and ongoing residual payments to Associated Content. Once they’ve published it, you could then place the same content on 10-15 other sites that don’t require exclusive materials. You won’t get rich this way, but you’ll probably make more from the content over time than you would writing a $15 DS piece.

The problem with that is the time involved in submitting the content to multiple sites. That’s why the technique would really only work if you could efficiently submit a relatively large number of articles at one time. Many writers will never be in that situation.

Here’s a personal example. I have a nice little marketing business that chugs along in the background. I primarily do affiliate marketing, promoting a handful of Clickbank projects and several Amazon items. One method I use to drive traffic and to develop links for those projects is article marketing. I publish the articles to EzineArticles.com and other directories.

The volume of content I produce justifies using those residual sites. I usually submit in blocks of ten articles. I can publish the articles at the directories and all of those residual sites (many of which will happily allow you to create outbound links to my money site).

Under those circumstances, it makes sense to use those little residual mills. I make enough overall due to sheer volume to justify the time expenditure. The content already exists, I’m not sinking any time into the writing process. I can drive more traffic to my affiliate pre-sells using the syndicated content and I create a few links for my money sites in the process.

The bottom line? Writing for residuals is silly. Using the opportunity for residual earnings to increase the overall value of existing content, on the other hand, isn’t always a bad idea.

Unfortunately the fact that those sites can have some genuine value is often lost in the argument about rates. Most arguments against residual sites are based on faulty assumptions. Critics think in terms of one-site submissions written for the purpose of residual earning and don’t consider the possibility of wider distribution and the other potential benefits of utilizing the sites.

I’ve found real value in submitting to sites that pay based on content page views even though I agree that treating them as a primary means of income generation is unwise.