19 replies to this topic

[chuckfinley]

Hi All,

I'm hoping you can help me out here. 2 questions --

1) When I create a long-tail keyword list, should I care whether the Adwords Keyword Tool shows any search volume for the long-tail keywords I select? All of the long-tail keywords I create show zero search volume and a very low number of pages are returned on an exact match search -- low competition.

2) Is the power of the long-tail because it will rank for many orderings (permutations) of the words in the long-tail keyword phrase (4 or 5 words or more)?

2 word keyword - 2 possible orderings
3 word keyword - 6 possible orderings
4 word keyword - 24 possible orderings
5 word keyword - 120 possible orderings
6 word keyword - 720 possible orderings
7 word keyword - 5,040 possible orderings
8 word keyword - 40,320 possible orderings
9 word keyword - 362,880 possible orderings
10 word keyword - 3,628,800 possible orderings

[EGOL]

It is valuable to target keywords with search volume - at least you know that someone is using them in queries.

Long tail is my primary target and my approach to it is simply content length and word diversity. I have found that substantive content has a huge diversity of words and these can combine to bring me traffic.

[bwelford]

Long tail is my primary target and my approach to it is simply content length and word diversity.

I sing from that same hymn-sheet.

If you check the actual queries that are bringing visitors to your website, they have all sorts of stop words, mis-spellings, etc in them. How the search engine handles these is anyone's guess.

What I find useful is to do a Google search for the draft title of my post to see what competition there may be for my intended post. I want to make sure the post will stand out from that crowd. I rarely end up with the same title after checking the competition.

[EGOL]

I have GetClicky.com running on one of my sites now and the list of ...

"searches >> newst unique"

...is really interesting to watch. It shows all of the really long tail queries that are pulling traffic. I get a lot of ideas for new content by watching that list.

[chuckfinley]

Thanks EGOL & bwelford,

If I start with a 2-3 word "body keyword" that has very good search volume and turn it into many 4-6 word keywords with zero search volume, will that help me?

It seems when I expand keywords to 4-5 words, they always have zero search volume.

Edited by chuckfinley, 12 February 2012 - 12:37 AM.

[glyn]

Here's what I do.

1. goto google anlytics and create a long list of keywords.
2. then I'd put in some other kind of trigger keywords and find the synonyms for both and add those as lines to the spreadsheet.
3. create columns in excel where column 1 is a trigger word like "buy", "find" "cheap"
4. 2nd colum is your keyword dump from adwords.
5. coumn three is a location, or whatever else is relevant (reviews,coupon,offers,promotons).

Then I'd mailmerge that with a template that also merges the keywords into certain page elements, such as the alt tag, the description field. Some keyword anchors. Then I'd use another app that would chain all those pages together.

When my pages are outputted I get a report that also spits out every 10th page.

So on a batch of 10,000 I would have 1000 pages.

I'd then backlink those pages and wait.

The skill would be in getting those pages indexed and, no problems there, for each of those pages to be good content.

The data part would take about 1 hour to do.

I would then, however, spend at least 2 days writing content for those pages, so that when they are published they feature unique content.

<here is why I use my tool to combine and create pages>

That would be phase 1.

It gives me a good scatter of pages on many different keywords.

The in phase 2, for those keywords that work at delivering traffic, I will the create high-value pages. Which is the same approach above done in a more manual fashion.

I'd then redirect all the pages to the relevant new pages.

It's a doorway page pure and simple and probably "frowned on". But frankly it's been working for me years now.

I also like EGOL's approach. You can also look at page views on popular article directory sites to get ideas for terms that convert.

Edited by glyn, 12 February 2012 - 05:14 AM.

[bwelford]

That's an interesting approach, glyn. As you say it might be "frowned on". Would you care to comment on whether the Panda algorithm update had any effect on the rankings?

[glyn]

no change........pwanda pants had no affect because pages and content are good.

[chuckfinley]

Then I'd mailmerge that with a template that also merges the keywords into certain page elements, such as the alt tag, the description field. Some keyword anchors. Then I'd use another app that would chain all those pages together.

When my pages are outputted I get a report that also spits out every 10th page.

So on a batch of 10,000 I would have 1000 pages.

I'd then backlink those pages and wait.

Thanks Glyn,

I'm pretty new, but hungry and interested in learning.

Would you be willing to share -

1) What shopping cart and template you are using?
2) What app you use to chain all those pages together?
3) How you get a report that spits out every 10th page?

Edited by chuckfinley, 13 February 2012 - 08:30 PM.

[glyn]

I think you can do this like I did to begin with.

Excel.
MSWORD mailmerge function with html templates.

The rest is up to your imagination.

Edited by glyn, 14 February 2012 - 03:46 AM.

[Michael_Martinez]

You cannot target the long-tail. That's like saying you are focusing on everything that people discuss. It's equivalent to saying you are driving a straight path by leaping around randomly. It's essentially the same as trying to lose weight by consuming as many calories per day as you possibly can.

[jonbey]

It's essentially the same as trying to lose weight by consuming as many calories per day as you possibly can.

Damn, that is where I have been going wrong!!!!!

I was thinking the same actually, but did not say anything before as I was thinking, wow, I never thought about this! In fact, I have never compile a list of keywords for any reason.

But what came to mind first was that I once read somewhere (no idea where) that something like 20% of all search queries are unique. So that is 1 in 5 searches that you can never directly do "SEO" (in a keyword research and link anchor placement sense) for as you can never know what an individual will search for. And frankly, why would anyone care?

Longer articles, more words, more people discussing it, should in theory lead to more long tail searches. No spreadsheet required.

Although I am probably missing out on a ton of traffic .... I really must look more into SEO!

[bwelford]

Let's not forget Latent Semantic Indexing. Use that rich vocabulary you have. Your human visitors will enjoy what you write more and the search engines can still get your drift. Indeed this may be something that helps make your posts Panda-proof.

[Michael_Martinez]

Latent Semantic SEO is an age-old practice. One day the search engines will sit up and take notice. You just wait and see!

[sansonj72]

From what you all have taught me I would say you cannot target long tail at a massive level, because long tails can go on forever and ever. You simply write value adding content, and by the nature of your writings it will make long tails for you. Just write and have a master layout you are working on. If you are on a blog platform with a defined amount of topics I can only guess you will cross over and over with your blogs giving you all kinds of different long tails.

[sansonj72]

How does GetClicky compare to google analytic?

I have GetClicky.com running on one of my sites now and the list of ...

"searches >> newst unique"

...is really interesting to watch. It shows all of the really long tail queries that are pulling traffic. I get a lot of ideas for new content by watching that list.

[EGOL]

I don't know.... I doing use GA. It compares well with ClickTracks.

[sansonj72]

Kewl. I just think we all need to get off of GA. We give them way too much data.

[jonbey]

I was using Get Clicky and then ran out of freebie service. Then they deleted my data without asking. Went off them pretty quick - they did not even give me chance to consider the paid option!

[sansonj72]

I would love a high quality software I owner that gives me all of this date and compiles it into value adding information, so that no third party can have my search info.