SEO Tactics & Metrics for the Long Tail
By Stephan Spencer,
Founder & President, Netconcepts
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO Tactics for Your “Head” Terms
 Focus a page on no more than 3 keyword themes –
place targeted term in the title tag, H1 tag, & high up in
the body copy
 Build link gain (PageRank) to that page through internal
links & inlinks
 Consistent keyword-rich anchor text from internal links
 For deep inlinks, vary the anchor text a bit
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
SEO Tactics for “The Long Tail”
 Focus on unbranded search markets
 Leverage your website scale & authority, brand strength
 Employ testable strategies that scale
– Site-wide optimizations to HTML templates, internal linking
structure, URLs, etc.
 Treat consumers as co-creators
 Measure against Long Tail KPIs
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Long Tail Anatomy
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
The Long Tail of Search
The Brand
“head”
The
Unbranded
“tail”
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Why Care About the Tail?
 The Retail Brand Dilemma:
– Brand keywords drive most traffic
• Merchant name, derivatives, URLs, or products
– Few unique pages yield results
• Predominantly yielding brand search traffic
• Most retail sites have tens of thousands of unique pages
 Our GravityStream proxy data reveals:
– Non-brand keywords drive most traffic
• Non-merchant terms
– Many unique pages yield results
• Predominantly unbranded keywords
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Why Care About the Tail?
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How many search terms should drive traffic?
How much traffic should any keyword drive?
How many searches are performed for such terms?
How does this compare to brand searches?
How could we estimate such market potential?
What kinds of SEO strategies can help capture the long
tail opportunity?
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
How Long Should It Be?
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Ways to Size the Tail
 Keyword Research
– Tools like Keyword Discovery, Google Insights for Search
– Random combinations = unpredictable research
 PPC Extrapolation
– Multiply PPC results by 5-6 to estimate potential
– Buying cycle and mapping ratios = incomparable estimates
 Page Yield Theory
– Estimates long tail potential as a function of website size
– A more relevant and objective metric
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Applying Page Yield Theory
 Requires special data, across significant sampling of
websites:
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Total unique pages
Percentage of pages that did / not yield keyword traffic
Average number of keywords yielded per page
Average number of visits received for each yielded keyword
Effective click through rate per keyword to estimate total
searches
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Key Research* Findings
 Average merchant profile:
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73,000 unique pages (210,000 indexed in Google)
14% yield search traffic
Each page produced 2.4 keywords which yielded 1.9 visits/month
189,000 brand searches per month
Total potential for unbranded keyword traffic exceeds 7,000,000
 Nearly 40 unbranded searches for every brand search
 For large dynamic sites, nearly 100 searches for every unique
page
* From Netconcepts study “The Long Tail of Natural Search”
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Key Findings - Words Per Search
 Evaluating 1.2 Million Unbranded Searches
– 3 word search terms
accounted for 36% of
searches
– 2 to 4 word searches
accounted for 81% of
searches.
– 95% of these terms were referrals generated from Google, MSN Search,
or Yahoo Search.
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Key Findings – Size of the Tail
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Estimating Your Tail
 Multiply brand searches by a factor of 40
– eg 100,000 brand x 40 = 4,000,000 unbranded searches
 Multiply pages of site by 100 searches per page / mo
– eg 100,000 pages x 100 = 10,000,000 unbranded searches
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Attack Your Freeloaders
 Most merchants have 80%+ of their pages driving no search traffic
 Most don't even know this, or why it is a problem (no javascript
based analytics package will tell them this either)
 It’s a red light that they lack a long tail of unbranded keyword traffic
 The # of searches for unbranded keywords is nearly 40x as great
as searches for the brand name (put another way, 97x the # of
pages onsite)
 Tapping that opportunity means leveraging the size of the website
and the brand strength to convert unbranded searches into clicks
 How to achieve this tail?
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Capturing Long Tail Potential
 Measure Long Tail KPIs
 Scalable SEO Tactics
 Commit to Iterative Testing
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Long Tail KPIs
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Brand Searches: 189,000
Yielding Pages: 14%
Keywords per Page: 2.4
Visits per Keyword: 1.9
Click Through Rate: 4.7%
Index to Crawl: 3.1
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Page Yield Matrix
 Estimate your page
yield based on the
mix of brand and
non-brand keywords
presently experience
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Page Yield
 Pages yielding search traffic
– How many searchers clicked ad
– Measures ad effectiveness
– Think: Email click through
 Yield Example with Google:
– 6,600 pages (25%)
– Non performing: 19,400 (75%)
 Non-performing pages
– Need to identify and optimize
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Identifying
non-performing
pages
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Phrases per Page
 Search phrase per page
– Reflects on-page keywords and internal anchor text
– Surgical optimization
• Title, meta, content
 Total Phrase Yield: 43,300
-
4.5 phrases per ad
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Leveraging
user-generated
content
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Visitors per Phrase
 Search visitors per phrase
– Reflects brand strength and ranking
– Influenced by internal PageRank
flow, link buying / building
 Search Visits: 114,200
 Total Phrase Yield: 43,300
– 2.6 per phrase
 Search visitors per page
– 4.5 x 2.6 = 11.7
– Indicates ad reach and rank
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Visitors per Phrase
• Static URL Structure:
– Old Style:
– http://catalog.hsn.com/shop134/fa/1585/hp!sf.htm
– New Style:
– http://catalog.hsn.com/fashion.
htm
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URLs Treated: >600
PageRank: PR0 --> PR4
Traffic Increase: 550%
Top-Page Distribution: 49%
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Management Framework
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Page Yield (sub X-axis)
Keywords per Page (X axis)
Visits per Keyword (Y axis)
These combine to create
the long tail
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Sample KPIs
Sample KPI Report
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Iterative Testing and Measurement
 Only utilize the strategies/tactics that follow if you can
test and measure the effects
 You can't just quantify effects on sales alone
 Incorporate new KPIs in order to view the whole
channel more holistically (vs. just looking at your
rankings on 100 trophy keywords)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Scalable Long Tail SEO Tactics
 Page Yield Theory:
– Goal: Maximizing unbranded natural search traffic is a matter of
predictably increasing the yields of thousands of pages
 Mass optimization:
– Single techniques capable of creating cascading effects throughout large
websites – template pages for instance
 Rewriting URLs:
– Simple and static keyword URLs have a profound impact
 “Thin Slicing”:
– Touching key elements across thousands of pages quickly, monitoring,
and expanding based on results
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
“Thin Slicing”
 Make quick decisions. Don’t overthink.
 Only really works if you’re an expert
 E.g. hand-optimize title tags across hundreds of pages quickly
(prioritized)
 Focus on your title tags, H1s and URLs
 Don't obsess, doesn’t have to be perfect. Instead, iterate.
 If you don’t have an admin interface, use a spreadsheet and do a
database import
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Thin slicing
title tags
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
URLs
 URL affects
searcher
clickthrough
rates
 Short URLs
get clicked on
2X long URLs
(Source: MarketingSherpa,
used with permission)
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
URLs
 Further, long URLs appear to act as a deterrent to clicking,
drawing attention away from its listing and instead directing it to
the listing below it, which then gets clicked 2.5x more frequently.
– http://searchengineland.com/080515-084124.php
 Don’t be complacent with search-friendly URLs. Test and
optimize.
 Make iterative improvements to URLs, but don’t lose link juice to
previous URLs. 301 previous URLs to latest. No chains of 301s.
 WordPress handles 301s automatically when renaming post slugs
 Mass editing URLs (post slugs) in WordPress – via the “SEO
Title Tag” plugin!
(www.netconcepts.com/seo-title-tag-plugin)
© 2008 Stephan
M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Thin slicing
URLs
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimize Internal Linking Structure
 Anchor text is critical
 Hierarchical
– Through good site-wide navigational design in a header, sidebar or footer
 Breadcrumb navigation
– Good for users and good for search engines
– Reinforces which pages are the most important
 No flash-only navigation. Alt text on graphical links.
 Mouseover nav - CSS, not Javascript
 Most important deep pages should be minimal # of clicks from
home page
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Optimize Pagination
 Excessive pagination can cause numerous pages of product
listings to not get crawled. Reduce # of pages in pagination
system to improve crawlability & indexation
 Next/Previous vs. page number list vs. Show All
 Consider disallowing “View All” links and forcing spiders through
subcat pages. Display as many products per page as possible
(max 120) within 150K file size.
 Fewer products per subcat = fewer pagination pages to crawl at
subcat level for max product indexation
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Attribute Navigation
 Attribute navigation, a.k.a. faceted navigation, provides clickable
product inventory breakdowns, by brand, color, price range, etc.
By doing so it creates into a huge number of permutations for the
spiders to follow.
 The problem is exacerbated by having column headings
clickable for resorting
 Nofollow all links that do price range breakdown, re-sorting and
re-pagination
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Scalable Long Tail Tactics - Web 2.0
 User generated content (e.g., product reviews, forums, wikis)
– Freely append searcher vocabulary into your website
 Tagging and social bookmarking (e.g., Flickr, del.icio.us)
– Listen and create feedback loops – using search terms
– Use cloud taxonomy to flatten your structure using good link text
 RSS and Blogging
– Long tail is driven by efficient distribution of pages
 Create link bait rather than soliciting link targets
 Provide lists of most searched keywords
 Long tail optimization means outsourcing … to your users
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Tagging
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Great for deep internal linking, interlinking
Generates keyword-rich links
Display tag clouds of most popular tags
Link to "related tags”
Allow visitors to tag your stuff? (ie. “folksonomies”)
– Customers use their own terminology / vocabulary
 Mine your own weblogs to look for most frequently searched
keywords and use those as tags
 Also tag externally: reddit, delicious, digg, Technorati
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
In Summary
 Huge untapped potential lies in…
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your unbranded search markets
your website size
the Long Tail
your consumers as content creators
links
 Employ testable tactics that scale
 Measure against a new set of KPIs
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com
Q&A!
 For a research report on the Long Tail of Natural
Search, e-mail your request to seo@netconcepts.com
 To contact me: stephan@netconcepts.com
© 2008 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com