Heads or Tails: This is Massive

There are good things and bad things about the internet. If you have been keeping up with your reading, you will know that Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail has shaken up and stirred many in the internet marketing world, especially big players like Google and Yahoo.

Why? Because the logic is simply irrefutable.

Most people would ignore a fantastic book like that, but I’d encourage you to go get it from your nearest bookstore.

I think my answer to the question of “traffic” lies in the Long Tail. A number of people I know are actually tapping into the long tail to get traffic. Massive amounts of traffic, so huge that you will laugh in order to get a hold of yourself.

Long tail keywords (defined as keywords that are more nichified or market specific) far outnumbers “hit” keywords. This means that if you spent X effort getting 1000 searches for a short head keyword, you really could have been spending just X/100 effort getting 100 searches for a long tail keyword. Your effort would have been reduced by 10 times.

The amazing thing is that I’ve been optimizing for several keywords, and the jump in the number of page 1 and page 2 rankings I’ve received on Yahoo and Google are definitely encouraging. Utilizing the Long Tail to rank and generate traffic is now a favorite for me for sure.