The Prehensile Long Tail
darren on July 27th, 2006
A long time before the long tail is wagging the web
A few people have sent me that link today. I’ve been long supporter of the long tail…for SEM. The long tail in the WSJ article is really in terms of products (hits & best sellers vs. misses.) I guess you can make the correlation from SEM to what they are discussing in the article, but I wouldn’t take that leap. Here’s whyI will not poo poo the long tail:
1. It’s big.
Maybe it’s not 98% (did he really claim this?), but it’s at least 20% as with the old 80/20 rule. And even at that level why dismiss such a big chunk?
Maybe it’s not 98% (did he really claim this?), but it’s at least 20% as with the old 80/20 rule. And even at that level why dismiss such a big chunk?
2. It’s easy.
At that long end of the tail, you have less competition. Think in terms of SEO: “shoes” vs. “buy men’s nike air max online.” The latter is an example of the long tail and much much easier to rank for than “shoes”
At that long end of the tail, you have less competition. Think in terms of SEO: “shoes” vs. “buy men’s nike air max online.” The latter is an example of the long tail and much much easier to rank for than “shoes”
3. It’s better.
Would you rather have a visitor that says “i’m just browsing for shoes” or “i’m looking to buy nike air max’s in size 10 from this store”. duh. conversions are going to be exponentially higher for the more detailed phrase. Those people are much further along in the buying process. Dan Boberg had a great slide back at Orlando pubcon that I wish I could find online. I hear Yahoo has an ebook that has all that data, but I’m yet to find it.
Would you rather have a visitor that says “i’m just browsing for shoes” or “i’m looking to buy nike air max’s in size 10 from this store”. duh. conversions are going to be exponentially higher for the more detailed phrase. Those people are much further along in the buying process. Dan Boberg had a great slide back at Orlando pubcon that I wish I could find online. I hear Yahoo has an ebook that has all that data, but I’m yet to find it.
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