Your Website Visitors Are Talking to You
Continuously improving your Web presence to increase ROI should be the goal, right? OK, but how do you get your potential customers to talk to you so you know what to improve? If you are willing to dig into a little data, you can find out how people interact with your site and where the problems are that need attention. Here are a few pieces of Google Analytics data that you can use to interpret what your visitors are trying to tell you.
Bounce Rate
With a high bounce rate, the visitor is saying, “This site isn’t relevant to me – I’m outta here.” The bounce rate number is just the percentage of single page visits, meaning that all those people left your site without looking past the page they landed on. It’s possible that this means your landing page just isn’t interesting. More likely, it means the people landing on your site were led to believe they would find something different when they clicked on your paid advertisement or organic search listing. If you are getting a high bounce rate, look at what your ads are promising. Make sure your landing page fulfills the promise in the ad.
New vs. Returning Visitors
A high number of returning visitors says, “Your site is engaging enough that I think I’ll come back for more.” New visitors are a good indicator that more people are finding your site, but getting them to return is the part that takes work. Ask yourself what you are putting out there that will bring people back again and again. A really good blog is one great way to do this.
Time on Site
A higher time on site tells you your site keeps visitors from leaving. This could mean you offer plenty of things to explore. But be careful. When I logged into analytics on one of my sites this morning, I found most people were staying for three minutes or so. Then there was this one visit that lasted for three hours. I’m guessing that somebody left their browser open on my site while they left the house for a while. So I obviously didn’t give that visit much attention.
Pages Per Visit
This says, “The first point of contact was interesting enough to make me want to look around.” If you have high average page views, you have done a good job of sending the right people to the site and presenting the information in an interesting way. It might also mean you have created a page structure conducive to further exploration.
Traffic Sources
This is very valuable because it shows you the ways customers come to your site. If they are all coming from Google, then your search engine optimization campaign is working. If you see a huge influx of website traffic from a partner site, you could look into ways to increase your visibility on that partner site.
Content
This is where your visitors tell you which content they like best. You are also able to see how they interact with their favorite content by looking at bounce rate, how many of them left the site from that page, etc. If you notice a certain topic always trends to the top, it should probably be a main focus of your content.
The best companies are those that listen to the customer. Google Analytics provides all this wonderful data to help companies do just that. We just have to be willing to dig in a little.
Image courtesy of BigTallGuy
Number One is Money — How to Prove It
One question I frequently get from people is, “how much traffic can we expect if we are in the #1 one position vs positions 2, 3, and so on?”
Is the amount of traffic you will get in the #1 position really worth the effort and cost?
The answer to this question is yes, it is generally worth the effort and cost to get in the #1 position. The stipulation, however, is that the amount of traffic return you will receive depends on your industry. Some keywords are able to bring in traffic percentages close to that top position, according to this study done on traffic percentage differences when they reach positions 1, 2, and 3 in Google. Unfortunately, some are not even close.
To sum up, the study suggests:
- Position one gets 34% of the projected traffic for the selected term.
- Position two gets 17% of the projected traffic for the selected term.
- Position three gets 11% of the projected traffic for the selected term.
How to Compare Your Industry to the Study
To know how your industry compares to the above projected percentages, do the following:
- Dive into your analytics and gather historical data that shows how much traffic you were averaging each month when you were in positions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on.
- Go to the Google Adword Keyword tool (or some other reliable keyword traffic estimator) and get the estimated number of searches for that single term in exact match.
- Do a little Algebra.
For example:
This example is from an actual client. Let’s take one of their terms that is projected to bring in 33,100 visitors a month in exact match. If we are to assume that this keyword is in the same industry as the study above, they would get roughly 11,254 visitors a month from that one term alone (if they are number 1).
But, it is not in the same industry. It is actually a completely different industry. So, from their historical analytics data I gathered, when they were in position 6 they were getting 1,006 visits per month from that term (3% of the projected search volume for that term). The study suggests that position 6 should be getting 5.05%. When they were in position 3 they were getting 1,728 visits per month (5% of the projected search volume for that term). The study suggests that position 3 should be getting 11%.
Now the Algebra:
|
Position 3 |
They got 5% |
Study says 11% |
|
Position 2 |
x |
Study says 17% |
|
Position 1 |
x |
Study says 34% |
To solve for x in position 2, I simply took 5, multiplied it by 17 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position 2) and divided that number by 11 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position 3). This equaled 7.7%. To solve for position 1, I took 7.7, multiplied it by 34 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position one) and divided that number by 17 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position 2). This equaled 15.4%.
Here is the client’s projected percentage of traffic for positions 1, 2, and 3:
|
Position 3 |
They got 5% |
Study says 11% |
|
Position 2 |
They should get 7.7% |
Study says 17% |
|
Position 1 |
They should get 15.4% |
Study says 34% |
This is great! According to this calculation, although we are not getting the same percentages of traffic as in the study, the client’s traffic will still double from position 2 to position 1. However, because their traffic numbers from when they were in position 6 differ from the study less than their position 3 numbers differed, I had to do this calculation again based on their position 6 numbers and then take the average of the two calculations.
Take a breath (if you’re still reading this)…
|
Position 6 |
They got 3% |
Study says 5% |
|
Position 5 |
They should get 3.7% |
Study says 6.19% |
|
Position 4 |
They should get 4.62% |
Study says 7.73% |
|
Position 3 |
They should get 6.57% |
Study says 11% |
|
Position 2 |
They should get 10.15% |
Study says 17% |
|
Position 1 |
They should get 20.3% |
Study says 34% |
Average the two for positions 1,2, and 3:
|
Position 3 |
They should get 5.7% |
Study says 11% |
|
Position 2 |
They should get 8.9% |
Study says 17% |
|
Position 1 |
They should get 17.85% |
Study says 34% |
Because this is an actual case, I already know the results and how they compare to these calculations. When this client started with us they were in position 6 for this term. As of yesterday they are in position 1 and I will be able to compare the accuracy of my number 1 position estimations after a month of occupying that top spot.
When they were in position 3, they got about 1,728 visits from that one term alone, about 5% of the visits. My calculations say it should have been 5.7%. Last month they were number 2 and they received about 2,200 visits from that one term alone, about 7% of the visits. My calculations say it should have been 8.9%. So I’m a little off, but it’s safe to assume that over this next month (since they are number 1), their traffic should almost double for that one term.
It’s hard to project exact numbers for ranking positions, there are so many factors at play. Just as I’ve done here, you can kind of get a feel for what to expect when you reach number 1. I have a rank-checking tool that is funny. After showing that you are ranked number 234 it says, “Keep trying, you can beat Google one day!”
Visualize More Links and Traffic — Ranking the Best SEO Infographics
Creating and publishing infographics has become the new fad for attracting linkbait and traffic. In the last year, we’ve watched the craze for infographics skyrocket as can be seen by this screenshot from Google trends below for the keywords ‘infographic’ and ‘infographics.’
Not only have social media marketers taken up the infographic craze, but SEOs as well. Infographics, done well, can build a large portfolio of quality links. I’ve since noticed many SEO companies who are developing infographics for their clients and pushing them in the social media sphere.
When I discovered that so many SEO infographics already exist, I decided to rate them. David McCandless, at informationisbeautiful.net, revealed four criteria when evaluating information design:
- Interestingness - Is the content relevant and original, such that the viewer sees value in it?
- Integrity - Can I trust the content?
- Form - Is it pleasing to the eye?
- Function - Is this information useful and useable?
Take a look at his infographic about infographics:
Below, you’ll see some of the best infographics I could find about online marketing. I’ve rated them by giving pluses (+) for each category discussed above.
SEO Infographics
Elliance has, by far, the most search marketing infographics. The infographics cover everything from PDF Optimization to Keyword Clustering. I found most of the infographics contained quality graphics and interesting ideas, but they slightly lacked in functionality — meaning, most of the concepts presented are low-level, basic concepts that most SEOs should already know.
SEO Factors
- Interestingness: +
- Integrity: +
- Form: +
- Function: +
Long Tail SEO
- Interestingness: +
- Integrity: +
- Form: +
- Function: ++
Link Juice
- Interestingness: +
- Integrity:
- Form: +++
- Function: +
Google PageRank Explained
I found this infographic very beneficial in visualizing the Internet in terms of PageRank. PageRank is valued exponentially. While it’s easy to increase PageRank by 1 at the bottom of the mountain (e.g., from 2 to 3), it becomes much harder to increase by 1 (e.g., from 6 to 7) as you move up the mountain.
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: +
- Form: +
- Function: +++
Wired Magazine published an interactive infographic about the life of a blog post. With a flash-based, interactive spin, Wired has covered all the avenues of blogging as it moves around the Web, being picked up by search engines, data miners, and social bookmarks. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you check it out.
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: +++
- Function: +
Similar to Wired’s infographic above, The Social Media Effect by Infographicworld.com, shows the travels of content as it makes it’s way through the social media world. My favorite part of this particular infographic is how all the arrows, eventually, point to a Google search engine result for that story. It’s a nice way of showing that great content will bring in lots of quality links.
The Social Media Effect
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: +
- Form: ++
- Function: +
Rank Fishkin, from SEOMoz.org, created some pretty creative infographics. Although they are not the most visually appealing, they share some really creative insights about SEO. Great job, Rand.
Professions at the Intersection of Technology, Marketing & Statistics
This is true that SEOs need to wear many hats.
- Interestingness: +++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: +
- Function: ++
How SEOs Spend Their Time
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: +++! Those of you working directly with clients know how true this infographic is
- Form: +
- Function: +
Scatterplot of SEO Tactics
This is one of my favorite infographics as it is really helpful for SEOs to know how to spend their time.
- Interestingness: +++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: +
- Function: ++
The Size of the Mobile Market
We’ve seen the mobile market skyrocket in the last few years. Astonishingly, there are only 1.4 billion internet users compared with 4 billion mobile phone users. Any business would do well to understand how to tap into the mobile market. With the influx of smart phones, we’re making sure our clients show up on mobile searches.
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: +
- Form: ++
- Function: +
Individuals and Their Online Identities
Flowtown created an interesting infographic about how people utilize the Internet to manage their personal identities. Interesting quote: “Search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one’s identity online.”
- Interestingness: +++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: ++
- Function: +
Google Facts and Figures
Although Pingdom’s infographic about Google doesn’t entirely pertain to SEO, I thought it was a great visualization of numbers. It is interesting to note how Google’s innovative search technology has made it the leader among search engines.
- Interestingness: +
- Integrity: ++
- Form: ++
- Function: ++
DIYSEO has, by far, some of the most visually creative SEO infographics out there. Most of the infographics show how SEO is a must-have in Internet marketing. While I’m only showing three here, DIYSEO has lots more. Go over to the site to check them out.
The Case of Disappearing Ink
Interesting visual graph displaying search methods by demographic:
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: +++
- Function: +
Value of SEO v. PPC
This quote emphasizes the importance of SEO: “When buying, PPC links produce 25% less conversion than SEO.”
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: +++
- Function: +
SEO ROI is King
It’s nice to know that SEO holds the largest ROI.
- Interestingness: ++
- Integrity: ++
- Form: +++
- Function: +
SEO FAQs – A Guide
Datadial.net created the most comprehensive SEO infographic. While it doesn’t offer much original material, it covers everything from keyword research to SEO tactics. It’s a nice way to sum up the basics of SEO in one graphic.
- Interestingness: +
- Integrity: +
- Form: +
- Function: ++
Well, there you have it — a semi-complete list of the best SEO infographics out there.
UVEF’s Top 25 Under Five is Back Again
The local business scene will get together again, have lunch and gloat about some of the most successful young companies in Utah.
On July 8, the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum will host its 21st annual Top 25 Under 5 Awards luncheon. The awards recognize the fastest growing companies in Utah less than 5 years old. The companies are chosen based on profit, job creation, job quality and growth.
The UVEF uses the Top 25 Under 5 to promote companies that may become region, state and global leaders in their industries. Some of the past award winners include ZAGG, Agel Enterprises, Interbank FX, Seastone, Altiris, Omniture, and Xango.
UVEF promises that this year’s event will feature exciting new companies and David Bradford of Fusion-io will be the emcee. And if last year was any indication, the food will be great, too.
Last year, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert addressed the crowd and talked about the strength of entrepreneurship in the state and the positive affect it has on the entire economy. SEO.com ranked #17 a year ago, and we are pulling for a higher spot come July.
The event is on Thursday, July 8 at Novell building A. Noon to 1:30. UVEF members get in for free, non-members are $25 (including lunch).
To RSVP, go to: http://uvef.net/events/rsvp/
For more information, visit: http://uvef.net/2010/uvef-presents-top-25-under-five/
About UVEF
UVEF is a volunteer non-profit support group linking entrepreneurs to Money, Markets, and Mentors. Celebrating 20 years of new business success, UVEF empowers current and future business leaders to thrive in today’s competitive market. The organization provides real-world, practical educational and valuable resources on how to access needed capital, attract new customers and tap into industry experts. For information on upcoming meetings, speakers, and membership, visit www.uvef.net.
Your Viral Content Stinks (and How You Can Fix it)
Dive into social media and soon you’ll see the good, the bad and the could’ve-been’s out there. I want to address the latter. So many pieces out there get little attention due to one or two small things that could make a good thing, great.
Here are a list of the things I’ve seen make a piece fall short, and my own personal recommendations to remedy them.
Top 10’s are SO 2008
Don’t get me wrong here, Top X type lists are great; they do well on social news sites and they are easy to digest for your readers. However, some blogs out there overuse it. If you find that lists are your primary form of content, you may want to consider a bit of variety.
One site that pulls this off well is Cracked.com. Practically all of their most popular posts are in the form of a list. Cracked.com has taken the list-type articles and evolved them. Rather than a post about “10 Reasons Why Unicorns are Awesome” (which is a post I’m still looking for), they produce unique, well-researched ideas and top it off with stellar content.
Another new favorite site of mine that does well is ThisorThat.com. They’ve built their content focus only on comparisons. What better way to build activity on your site than to make a little controversy and pit Coke vs. Pepsi, or Madonna vs. Lady Gaga? Get your visitors to promote your site for you with a little competition.
Solution: Vary your content. Instead of lists, think of how you could produce that content into a how-to post, or a comparison-type post that puts it against a similar competitor. Some of my best pieces have been comparison posts, and, even better, ones that create a little controversy.
You rely too much on your images/video
I love pictures, especially in the blogs I read (picture books are my personal preference). I’m a huge fan and proponent of infographics as well! They’re trendy, eye-candy that just do well in the social sphere. One downside to an infographic, though, is the lack of content that could be indexed by the search engines. Sure, the added content may or may not affect whether your story hits the front page of Digg, but it does lose in the grand scheme of things (isn’t that why infographics are produced and promoted, so they can gain attention and links for better rankings?)
Solution: Add a summary to your infographics. Provide a general outline of what you are getting at with your piece. A couple of places that do this (and do well on social sites) are DegreeSearch.org & ChaCha.com. These give you all of the benefits that viral content can provide along with SEO factors that will help with better indexing from the engines.
You rely too much on your content
Building off of the previous segment, great content should be incorporated with great images to help the reader visualize your point. Images can be a great addition to any piece, and an absolute MUST if you will be putting it in list form.
Solution: There’s no need to beat a dead horse with this point, but if you’re investing a good deal of time and/or money into your content, be sure to add pretty pictures to illustrate your point.
There’s no fire under my feet!
People always say this, and maybe I’ve just come to realize it, but people can tell whether or not you believe in what you’re writing about. Now, I know some of you are asking, “Hey, Vince, I’m doing an article on people with STDs, does that mean I should get passionate about THOSE?” Absolutely (but not in the gross way)! The love for what you write doesn’t have to be in the subject itself, but the DATA behind it.
I personally am extremely happy with the results of my last physical, however, articles like STDs Across America are somehow fascinating to me. Not so much that I now know where I won’t be taking any of my future vacations, but to see the statistics and demographics of the info.
Solution: Take a boring scenario or subject and find a way to twist it and make it viral. The Oatmeal does this every time he makes a comic. Sure, your stuff doesn’t have to be so crazy or in-your-face as his, but you can create great ideas off of just about anything.
All problems, no solutions
I’m not the biggest fan of the “Why this place sucks” type of posts (personally). Some people like them, but it does nothing to add any value to my day and my time I spent reading your post seems to have been more of a waste than anything else. To be honest, when I initially started brainstorming and writing this post, it was going to be just a “Your content sucks” kind of a post. I then realized that I provided no real value to anyone reading this (all 4 of you).
Solution: How-to’s are one of the great ways to trump this. Providing a wrong and right way to do things will ring well with your readers and give them actionable items to take away after reading your post. Give them the good and the bad and help them to understand the distinction (I hope that’s something I’ve been able to do, even a little, here).
Not enough supporting data
What are they trying to say here?
Above all, this has got to be the one that irks me the most, especially when it comes to infographics! I don’t know why, maybe it’s the fact that it’s one of those pieces that “could’ve been” or was “almost there,” but didn’t have enough data to get me pass it on.
A map of the U.S. that shows the amount of foreclosures in each state isn’t THAT great of a piece. However, add another section below the map and include more information about the percentage of foreclosures compared to the previous decade, the number of abandoned homes and maybe some additional data about the amount of foreclosed homes that have sold over the past few years.
Solution: Give your readers something to digest! A simple graph that explains the fat content of a Big Mac is not going to cut it. Delve a bit further in your research and provide data that puts meaning into your piece. Adding more data, such as how a Big Mac a day would affect my body, weight and overall health would be much more appealing to read and share with those in my network. Get. Great. Data.
When creating viral content, it’s important to go the extra mile with your research and your writing. That’s what makes the difference between an article and a viral article. Let me know in the comments if you have any other pet peeve’s or recommendations about what you can do to better your work.
9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic
For the past few weeks I’ve been tasked with reviewing a few different sites that have seen a loss in traffic – their owners hoped to find out why. I love these kinds of reviews because it’s like solving a mystery or figuring out a puzzle. While it’s not always possible to determine the exact cause for the traffic loss, I can usually make some educated guesses based on what I dig up in Google Analytics.
Here are 9 steps you can take to diagnose the cause of lost search engine traffic:
1. Determine what type of traffic loss you’re dealing with.
Many people look at Google’s overview page, see a loss of overall traffic to their website, and assume that they must have lost their rankings in Google and the targeted traffic that comes with it. This may or may not be the case. Be sure to check for search engine traffic, and even more specifically Google non-paid traffic.
2. Look at the extent of the traffic loss.
Your research will be very different depending on whether there was a gradual decline in traffic or a sudden, drastic drop. I reviewed a site last week that lost all of their Google unpaid traffic overnight! This sort of loss is typically a technical issue such as a robots.txt file or a nofollow directive that keeps search engine spiders from indexing your pages. Sometimes it’s not actually a loss of traffic at all – your analytics code could have been inadvertently removed from all or most of the pages, making it appear like a traffic loss. I have seen all of the above more times than I can count in just the last couple of months!
3. Compare apples to apples.
Many businesses are cyclical or seasonal. A gift site may see huge spikes in traffic the months leading up to Christmas or the weeks before other holidays. This means that comparing any month to the previous month may not tell you the whole story. A drop in traffic in January is probably fairly normal for a gift site. If you’ve got more than a year’s worth of data, you’ll want to compare this month’s traffic to the same month in previous years. Ideally, you’d of course want to see a growth in traffic. And if you don’t, then you may very well have a problem on your hands. If you don’t have data that goes back that far, you can compare month to month, but be sure to take the data with a grain of salt.
4. Review and filter out “brand” traffic.
Most websites get a lot of Google traffic from people who’ve typed some version of the name of their company as their search query. You’ll want to note whether those visitors have significantly increased or decreased. If you receive fewer visitors for your brand, this could be caused by a decrease in marketing and advertising. Once you make note of the brand traffic, you’ll want to filter it out so you can study actual keyword traffic, which is what real SEO traffic consists of.
5. Analyze which keyword phrases have had a significant decrease in visitors.
Now that you’ve filtered out the brand traffic, you should be able to see the keyword phrases that are bringing you the most traffic. If you have lots, you may want to view 100 phrases at a time rather than the default of just 10. Are there lots of keyword phrases that seem to bring far fewer visitors over the last few months as compared to last year at the same time? You may also notice some that are bringing significantly more visitors.
6. Do a quick Google search for the phrases.
If you’re not seeing any pages from your site on the first page in Google, it may or may not be a clue (given the fact that everyone sees different search results) but it is definitely a cause to investigate further. If a page from your site does show up fairly high in the list, it could just be that fewer people are searching for that phrase now as compared to before. Or it could be that your listing isn’t quite what the searcher is looking for based on your title and descriptive snippet. There might also be other results for the keyword phrase that have images or video embedded whereas yours doesn’t. Or there might be local map results showing up that make your result less appealing.
7. Review the landing page for the keyword phrase that lost traffic.
Is there any obvious reason why it’s not bringing in as many visitors as it used to? Does it even exist anymore? Did it change substantially at some point during the year? Did it get buried deeper into the site architecture for some reason? Is the content duplicated from other pages within your site or contained on other websites? Were there links pointing to it at some point that no longer are? Does the copy read naturally, or are there a few extra instances of the keyword phrase than really makes sense to a person?
8. Review your long-tail traffic.
Since the end of April and early May 2010 a few large sites lost a substantial amount of traffic for keyword phrases that brought small numbers of visitors individually, but in aggregate they made up a lot of website traffic. You’ll want to filter your keywords to those that have only a few visitors (even just 1) and see if there are significantly fewer of those than previously. If this is the case, Google has gone on record stating that they’re doing a better job at sending long-tail traffic to more meaningful and relevant pages than they used to. Which means you’ll have to go above and beyond what you’re currently doing if you want to get that long-tail traffic back.
9. Decide if you’re dealing with a search engine penalty. For drastic drops, in the rare cases where it’s not a technical issue, you’re most likely dealing with a penalty. You can check your Google Webmaster Tools account to see if there is a notification of a penalty, but they don’t usually bother to tell you. Still, search engine penalties are much rarer than people think. In fact, most website owners know what they’ve done wrong when they have a search engine penalty. There are some cases, however, where they may have been duped by a less than scrupulous “SEO” company. The penalties I’ve seen seem to occur on sites that have no redeeming value because they have the same products and content that can be found on many other sites (often ones owned by the same company), plus they are deeply entrenched in massive link farms. It’s likely that they are also hosting part of the link farm on their own site in the form of a link directory. If this is what you find, you may be better off to start from scratch rather than trying to salvage the penalized domain.
I hope these steps help you diagnose your own loss of traffic. I imagine they will keep you busy for quite some time!
Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has been performing SEO services since 1995. Jill is the host of the High Rankings Advisor newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.
If you’ve lost search engine traffic and would like Jill to determine what the problem might be, fill out the contact form at http://www.highrankings.com/contact/ and mention it in the “Business Goals” section. She can review most sites that have Google Analytics installed for a one-time $600 fee.
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic
The Importance Of Long Tail Keywords Since The Last Google Algorithm Update
Google introduced another algorithm update in May 2010 and many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long, known as long tail keywords.
Google is now able to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. It seems that Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases until recently based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages. The new Google patent indicates that Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases on web pages instead of guessing them.
What does this mean to business owners, webmasters and SEO companies? It means that those who have taken the time to anticipate the need of their customers and Google’s customers will be rewarded.
Whether in SEO terms or in pay per click advertising terms, longtail keywords are highly valuable. Think about what your search process is yourself and you will more than likely realise this.
The average person searching at the research phase will use a competitive generic keyword such as “party dress”. Not long after searching and seeing some high prices they will modify their search to something like “cheap party dress.” Now we are already into long tail keyword territory but it can go further. As the search deepens the searcher realizes that pink is the trendy colour at the moment, or pink is what she fancies wearing on her next night out, so then she is using the long tail keyword “cheap pink party dress.”
The more experienced the searcher the more likely she will start off with this right at the beginning so as not to waste any time. And in general people are becoming far better at searching as the search engines continue to improve the results they show to us.
A long tail keyword means one of two things; either the person is close to making a buying decision or is an experienced searcher. Now with the Google algorithm update of May, combined with the buying profile of a long tail keyword searcher being stronger, and add in here the fact that a well optimised page for a long tail keyword has a far higher chance of getting to the first page of the SERPs then it is what they call a no-brainer.
Think about it logically, when you want to find information online on products, services or for research reasons, you want to find it quickly, you want it to be as precise as possible and give you something extra that other information has not up until that moment.
Long tail keywords can be optimised in this way. The trick here is getting into the mindset of your customer and pre-empting all the possible things they would like to know about whatever the subject of the long tail keyword is and then going at least one step further. You will create a page which is resource, which means customers will like it and sites which see it as an authority may link to it.
On some of the search engine forums SEOs have stated that this algorithm which was named Mayday by some and Black Tuesday by others has had a disastrous effect on some well established sites which did not have enough content in deep pages.
Whether you are a small business owner, or a medium to large business owner, all the signs show that drilling down into your site with niche information across all aspects of your site based on long tail keywords is a good way to go. Long tail keywords are important both to your customers and the search engines; ignore them at your peril!
Jackie is co-owner of CWA Europe which is an International Search Marketing Agency. If you are not already doing it she highly recommends building long tail keywords into your online marketing strategy. http://www.cwa-europe.com/search-engine-optimisation/the-importance-of-long-tail-keywords-since-the-last-google-algorithm-update/88-10.html
Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources
The Importance Of Long Tail Keywords Since The Last Google Algorithm Update