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The Long Tail topics can be tough to figure out but are critical for achieving a top 3 ranking and increasing our CTR.

Here’s a suggested method for a productive keyword brainstorming session in 10 simple steps. (Let’s stick with our keyword challenge of “best iPad cases” for now.)

1. If you haven’t done it already, the first step is to lay out your user persona in a printed format. You should have a picture, name, and all the other data front and center in a narrative format make sure you’ve cross-referenced it for social media engagement. Read it over and adopt this user’s mindset.
2. On a whiteboard, make two columns with the headings: “Aspirations” and “Afflictions”. Tape your user persona in the upper left hand corner.
3. Under the “Aspiration” column, write down everything you feel your user persona is aspiring to do in life. Do not be afraid to get into the uncomfortable, squeamish emotional stuff – “Be a better husband” or “Feel better about my body image”. Remember people buy on emotion and backfill with logic. Defer any judgement on whether your product or service fits these desires. Just go for quantity.
4. Take a short break with a minimum ten minute walk to clear you and your colleagues’ heads. This is tough stuff and your brain will need a break.
5. Under the “Affliction” column, do the same thing. Focus on how the existing reality is not working for your user persona and seek to tie it into emotional responses. “No time for the gym” or “long commute”. Same rules apply for deferring judgement and always going for quantity.
6. Take another break or if possible, break for the day.
7. Get out those color-coded Post-It Notes. Look over your two columns. Do common themes start to emerge? Are there any good fits where your product or service can help make the user persona’s life easier or better? Jot these down and stick it to the whiteboard. For example, pink Post It Notes can relate just to the user’s using her iPad during the long commute (listed under Afflictions) . Maybe there are apps for reading her email? Or the top 10 podcasts for her industry that can be consumed on the go?
8. These common topics will become your area of focus for content creation in your digital marketing efforts. For example, they can become the blog categories on your website or your focus of topics for your social media stream.
9. From these two simple categories of Afflictions and Aspirations, we can work out our keyword phrase strategy. Tackling each one of these phrases, we can create a blog post, video, photos or a specific page on our website that deals with this and optimize it around that targeted keyword phrase (more on how to specifically do this later).
10. Build a simple spreadsheet with the content categories listed on the left and the split of Afflictions and Aspirations across the top. Dump your keywords into here and add rows as needed below the categories you defined in the Post It notes exercise.

Following these steps ensures that you are doing the hard work of creatively identifying with your user and thinking through the topics they would be searching on to solve their problems or get what they want.

Next up, we’ll dive into how to cross-reference this with actual keyword search data.

For understanding SERPs, we need to see that it falls into two categories. Off to the side and at the top are paid text ads (more on this later). In the middle of the page are what is called organic results.

Below is a diagram of the SERPs for the keyword phrase “Best iPad Cases”:

What is a top result worth in the organic results? This can be tough to measure, as search engines have gone to instantly changing results as a user types in a keyword phrase. So, to measure the click-thru rate (CTR), it becomes tough as the result have already been fitered in real-time. And there is the question of collecting a statistically valid data set.

However, one study from 2010 for CTR based on position in the SERPs shows something like:

(Hint: Notice the shape of that graph? Remind you of another graph we just saw?)

Another chart shows something very similar:

The data here is clear:

• Showing up in the top 3rd of the SERPs for a keyword phrase is critical for driving traffic to your website.
• Achieving a number one result is worth a factor of 3X more traffic than a number two result and it simply falls from there.
• With some smart research we can find keyword phrases that hopefully we can focus on working our way to the top spot.

Key takeaway: While it may be impossible to rank as one of the first three results for the fat head of a keyword search (Ex. iPad cases), we have a good shot by targeting the Long Tail phrase and being ranked in the top three phrases.

Chances are a very highly trafficked keyword may be virtually impossible to rank on. Search engine marketers and their clients can die a lonely death of spending years trying to rank on that narrow hit term and maybe succeed one day. Yet, they awake the next day to find that the search engines changed their algorithm and in true Sysphus fashion, they fall to the bottom of the hill of search results only to push their rock to the top again.

Yet, if they take their fixation off this one perceived “ideal phrase” and instead focus on longer keyword phrases, the Long Tail goes to work in their favor for maximizing their search engine strategy.

Remember, most of their competitors are focused on these narrow keyword phrases as well.

Incumbents are hard to unseat, especially if they have been around awhile and have tons of links from reputable sites. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been”.

But we now know that 70% of search traffic around our niche will be on these multiple search queries and as a result, we have a much better chance to rank on these longer phrased queries. When added up, the volume of traffic these could send to our website can easily outpace that of a highly competitive term. The Long Tail’s distribution works in their favor now.

The caveat?

Creating all this content and optimizing it for search engines takes a lot of work and a bit of technical expertise. An entire niche of digital marketing has sprung up in this area called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Why a User Persona helps with Maximizing Search Strategy

Our user persona helps us brainstorm relevant keyword phrases that in turn we can plug into our web page to give us the best chance to rank for that phrase. It can incredibly difficult to come up with unique Long Tail keyword phrases without having the empathy of your ideal user.

However, when a solid user persona is flushed out, the emotional triggers are hypothesized. They might be wrong but if we have done a good job of interviewing our users and cross-referencing this with their Social Technographics, we have a good starting point. As we’ll see later, we will track the performance of our content online and measure its engagement. Over time, we will get better and better at producing relevant material with a real-time feedback loop.

For now, we can set about brainstorming what our user persona is after when they search.

Hopefully, you now know that it is scientifically proven to be a waste of time to focus purely on the fat head of the Tail. The sucker punch is that it is way easier to brainstorm keyword phrases around the big hits in the head than it is to go after the Long Tail.

Let’s dig into how to get into finding keyword phrases for the Tail.

Wired magazine editor, Chris Anderson, was one of the first to notice this trend and his book The Long Tail is a must read for an in-depth understanding of the topic. It originated out of this Wired article back in 2004.

In the book, Anderson identifies three fundamental forces for why the Long Tail exists (p. 54-58):

1. Democratize production – The tools to produce content have become easier and easier to use and thanks to Moore’s Law much more affordable. As we saw with the Social Technographics profiles last chapter, younger demographics are much more likely to be Creators. Which means they can publish blog content, make music, cut videos, and upload online for next to nothing. This reason is why the tail get very long.
2. Democratize Distribution – The web removes geography as a constraint. So, we no longer need a physical store location which drives down cost. We can instead set up a store inside Amazon or eBay to sell our goods and have access to a market around the world. The economics of cheap distribution means its more affordable to reach more people and thus more niches pop up. This reason is why the tail gets fatter.
3. Connect Supply and Demand – Google connects us to these new goods and content and in turn drives demand farther down the Tail. iTunes would be another example for music. Consumers talk amongst themselves via reviews and forums and discover new things. We see that all this diversity causes a growing fracturing over time, as ever more targeted niches pop up. This demand only increases and flattens the curve, shifting its center of gravity to the right.

What This Means for Digital Marketing

For the digital marketer, it means that the opportunity to connect and draw users into your brand ecosystem is in the Long Tail. It is now cheaper than ever to produce content and have it available for free. Which means, chances are there is an audience that would be interested in consuming it (the Spectators that make up 75% of online adults in the U.S.). When all these potential customers are aggregated together, it can make up a sizable market. In fact, it can easily dwarf the big “hits” on the front of the curve when the distribution channel of the web is fully tapped.

The above video from 2006 shows Chris Anderson explaining how the Long Tail was undiscovered in things like movies and music – until the web came about.

If we think back to our example problem of a user searching for “Paris” and determining the user’s true intent, we notice another one of our Fundamental Online Laws (So far, we’ve seen Metcalfe’s, Moore’s, and Diffusion of Innovations).

Our next law is called “The Long Tail” and if we consider what most people would want when they search for the keyword “Paris”, chances are it would be the city in France and not the hotel heiress.

Search engines make some assumptions around this by looking at the history of the volume of search queries, whether users click thru to a site and immediately “bounce” back to the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and the previous factors mentioned. Using some sophisticated statistical modeling, they are able to make a pretty good guess on what you as the user is searching on.

And remember the search algorithm is always evolving and getting smarter.

The Long Tail Graph

Chances are if we were to graph the volume of queries around “Paris”, we would find that most users are looking for the city in France. In fact, the volume of these keyword searches would fall to the left in green. Google would serve up pages that most likely reflect relevant content related to the city in Europe based on its search algorithm. After all, the majority of users are interested in this topic and not the television reality star.

Google is able to brilliantly track, aggregate, and then exploit what this collective “wisdom of the crowds” is for online search results. It won the search wars in part by providing better results using some very smart engineering on a simple insight that the majority of us are looking for the same thing.

For a fascinating read on the search engine wars and Google’s history, be sure to check out John Battelle’s The Search.

On the right in yellow, our research would show something surprising. If we were to examine the search queries, we might see phrases like “Hotels in Paris”, “Paris cafes”, “Best Hostel in Paris”, “Paris in the Spring”, “Paris in the 1920s”, “Weather in Paris in winter” and of course “Paris Hilton”. Taken individually, each of these phrases would represent a very small volume of searches compared to just the term “Paris”.
Image Source: SEOmoz.org’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO

It might be impossible to rank on the first page for the popular search term “Paris”. But the Long Tail tells us that in reality it only makes up roughly 30% of the overall searches performed on the web. Yet, 70% of the search terms are the little bits that are the unique longer phrased keyword searches like we just saw.

Visually, it can be deceiving but when all of these searches in the Fat Head and Chunk Middle are added together, the volume is equal to that of the Long Tail part of the curve.

Key takeaway: The Long Tail means there is an niche for everything online. Moore’s Law removes space as a constraint, so everything has a home on the web and an audience that will likely access it through a search engine.

History

When Google set out to rank indexed pages based on a user’s query, it stole an idea from the world of academia. Its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, noticed that in some areas of academic research, specific papers were cited over and over – in essence a “vote” for that body of work. They surmised that the community of scientists in this field had determined this to be a very important piece and thus over time it was built as a foundation for that particular area of study.

Page and Brin thought what if a search engine could work the same way?

Instead of a research citation in a paper, they could weigh in a web link as a vote. And just as certain prestigious academic journals carried more influence for those that published in them, so could different websites. A link to a website from a major news source like The New York Times would carry more weight than the link from a local hometown newspaper.

Page and Brin saw the web as a true democracy, where the best content rose to the top based on the citizens online “voting” via links. The young company moved to form its mission around “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. A daunting goal to say the least.

Today, Google ranks a page on over a hundred different weighted factors and while nobody knows exactly what these factors are, aside from Google, the following play a major role with varying and shifting degrees of importance:

• Age of the domain
• Anchor text of sites linking to a page (the blue highlighted text in a link)
• The structure of the page (the code parts)
• The content on the page (how closely they match a keyword phrase)
• Social signals

Importance of User Experience in Search

As we have seen over and over, putting the user first is one of the key fundamentals to succeeding online.

Google did this with its search results. It focused on providing the very best answers to a user’s query and in turn garnered tremendous market share. The company name eventually received the holy grail of branding by the product name becoming a verb in everyday use with the phrase “just google it”.

And “google it” we have.

As of October 2011, over 18 billion searches were performed in a 30 day period in the US.
As a result of its tremendous market share, most Internet marketers focus on Google to get the most bang for their buck.

comScore reports:

• Google typically owns around 67% of searches performed in the US.
• Yahoo! around 15%
• Bing at around 14%
• Ask.com 3%
• AOL 1%

Key takeaway: The above video does a fantastic job of breaking down the infamous PageRank in detail with respect to Google’s algorithm. As a digital marketer, the important thing to remember is that there are a ton of factors that influence a ranking but by focusing on remarkable content and the key fundamentals for optimizing a page, the rankings start to take care of themselves.

Next up, we will explore how keyword phrases let us find our content.