Mindy Gofton

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"Longtail traffic isn’t SEO." - Jill Whalen, High Rankings, 2011

So says one of the biggest "SEO Rockstars" in the industry. Someone who I've seen proclaiming White Hat SEO to be "The Only Way" on panels at search conferences. Someone who says any money which changes hands for links is "Evil" - not advertising. Someone who spouts at other SEOs that any content created solely for links is spam.

Jill Whalen has clearly lost touch with reality.

SEO is all about the longtail.


Anybody who tells you otherwise has their head glued to 2003. This sort of deliberately misleading statement (or downright stupid statement, if it's believed) is yet another example of industry "leaders" passing on bad advice to people who don't know any better.

SEO - search engine optimisation - is not about optimising one or two pages of a site for a few vanity terms that bring a lot of traffic but few conversions. SEO is about ensuring that the content on website pages uses language searchers use when looking for the information held on those pages. It's also about ensuring that, through good coding and good site structure, each page is found and understood by search engines.

Not every page on a website is about generic search terms.

In fact, most pages on most websites are entirely about the long tail.

For example, if you're a retailer selling women's clothing, once you've ranked for, say "Women's Clothing" and then split that down into relevant subcategories such as "women's jeans," "women's shirts," "dresses," "women's t-shirts" and "skirts" then everything below will be getting into the long tail - and believe me, if someone types in "long grey a-line skirt" and a page on a website I've optimised comes up, it's because I've optimsed that website to ensure it happens.

I will have:

  1. Created a keyword map based on keywords searchers use and their relevance to the pages
  2. Rewritten the Title and Meta description (and keywords) on every page of the site
  3. Optimised H1, headings, page content, alt text
  4. Ensured that the navigational structure made sense to both users and to search engines in order to explain the taxonomy of the site
  5. Done an audit of the code to ensure that the pages had as little code as possible, were clean, built as close to Web Standards as was achievable with the site (often we're constrained by foreign CMS/development frameworks) and that the pages loaded as quickly as possible
  6. Written or rewritten page copy on every page around targeted keywords (generic and long tail)
  7. Submitted the site to relevant authoritative directories
  8. Begun a press release campaign
  9. Begun bespoke link building

Never mind all those other things such as optimising the conversion paths, setting up social media accounts and getting the client started on creating a social buzz to pass on content and improve brand visibility, submitted the site to local search and begun obtaining local citations, perhaps begun creating videos to rank in YouTube, added a feed to Google Base, if it's applicable, etc.

We do ALL of these things for Search Engine Optimisation because all of these things will improve visibility for a wide range - WIDE, as in both generic and long tail - of keywords in the ORGANIC SEARCH RESULTS. By organic, I don't just mean the 10 traditional results. I mean EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T PAID. If it's not paid it's organic.

 The Long Tail bolsters the generic


Furthermore, let me tell you something about optimising for the long tail - it can not only help you rank for generic phrases as they are, inevitably, contained in the long tail - you can link back up to pages and use the weight of your own site structure to help yourself rank, but you can also use those great long tail inbound anchor links to help you rank for the generic phrases as well.

In some instances, when dealing with small businesses with small budgets who operate in competitive industries (travel, real estate, health insurance) it's only feasible to aim for the long tail for a good 12-18 months anyway.

Finally, in most industries (I know there's a few where this doesn't work) but in most industries, it's those long tail keywords that drive conversions - whether they are specific product names with product codes attached, or just very specific descriptive searches such as "size 10 grey a-line skirt."

Yes, it is a good idea to aim for high volume generic keywords because they get you that first click - but you also need to rank for as many long tail keywords as you can in order to get that last click.

If you're doing SEO correctly then you're optimising sites for generic keywords where they apply, working towards rankings for generic phrases and working on long tail keywords where those apply in order to nail down the conversion.

Frankly, if Jill Whalen is still stuck in the mindset that SEO is all about vanity rankings, and not about driving the user to your website at each stage of the buying cycle in order to get that conversion, then Jill Whalen shouldn't be working in SEO.
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Discussion

Posted by Rhys on Feb 15th, 2011
I remember when I was starting out in SEO & was advised by said SEO'er to not put a page on a North Wales tourism site about the history of North Wales, as it was unrelated.
Was baffled by it to be honest.
Posted by Mindy on Feb 15th, 2011
Well, I mean, tourism...history...totally unrelated.

Frankly, if it provides information to someone and it clearly answers the query - and it ties into a site, how can it be bad to put it on there? That long tail referral may end up becoming a sale down the line.
Posted by itsmartie on Feb 15th, 2011
well mindy i would say its very related as if was visiting north wales i would be interested in its history so i can see what would like to visit or not visit. you dont just go there to shop and drink, people like to admire their history
Posted by Mindy on Feb 15th, 2011
Erm, I was being sarcastic.

A page on the history of Wales is, as Rhys suggests, clearly a really good resource for the page as it encourages visitors to the site to see all the historical sites they could visit.

It will also answer a lot of LONG TAIL queries - which will end up converting for the tourism site.

Funny how that works.
Posted by Peter Young on Feb 15th, 2011
Sorry Mindy but to a certain degree I have to disagree with your article above on two counts

1) It depends hugely on the sector in which you are operating. You will know as well as I do that in certain sectors there are absolute jackpot terms that drive vast proportions of the traffic and conversions. Many of these existing in areas like car insurance, home insurance, some specialist retail sectors etc. As such the long tail can be significantly reduced and thus the opportunity to exploit significantly diminished.

2) Client expectations. THis obviously varies by client to client, however what works for Peter may not work for Paul (sorry for the analogy). For example, using Pannone for example. THey will have a level of expectation which cannot be met of fuelled by the volume of long tail available (not saying that arent merely for indicative purposes) - and thus pursuing a higher proportion of head terms may be the only way of generating sufficient traffic volumes (often magnified if conversion rates are poor)

3) Long tail doesnt always drive conversion. I will caveat that this is often the case however I would suggest indiscriminately targeting the long tail without first understanding the role those keywords play is almost as dangerous as targeting solely the vanity terms.

My point here, is whilst I dont wholly agree with Jill,I dont necessarily agree with the blank long tail approach either. Each campaign and client is unique and one has to tailor the expecations and needs of the client with realistic budget available!
Posted by Mindy on Feb 16th, 2011
Thanks for the considered response Pete. I'd agree with point 1 (and said so...). Point 2, you'd be surprised.

Pannone's strategy has always been to target the long tail and they've been far happier with what they've gotten from that than from the traffic they've received for their generic listings. This isn't to say the generics aren't important for getting that first click and for promoting the brand, but that is our prime case study of the long tail delivering far more of value for the client's money.

Point 3, perhaps not, but my overall assertion remains the same - every page on a website is a landing page and not every page can target a generic term and in almost every long term SEO campaign in my experience it would have been remiss to only try and drive traffic to certain pages on the site - hence the long tail has always played an important role in the strategy. If you can optimise each page of a website for the most relevant keyword, then why wouldn't you do so?

In terms of Jill's misleading remark, it turns out she was referring to a blog post she wrote a year ago in which she decided to create her own definition of 'long tail' and basically said the best SEO strategy is to pile content onto a site in hopes of bringing in any possible traffic - which comes back to Matt's recent post (http://www.i-com.net/blog/a-man-whod-read-every-online-marketing-blog-today-would-be-more-stupid-than-a-man-whod-read-nothing-449/) about experts offering deliberately misleading advice as linkbait becoming more and more an issue. There's enough problems with bad SEOs offering bad SEO advice without the so-called industry leaders adding to the melee by saying something controvertial in hopes it'll get them more speaking engagements, inbound links, or something.
Posted by Peter Young on Feb 16th, 2011
Cheers Mindy

As mentioned in my response, I am not aware of the finer details of Pannones strategy, and I am by no means saying that short tail or hybrid short/long tail is the way to go for all clients - merely that the broad brush long tail approach can be just as limiting as the short tail only approach...

As regards your response to point 3. I guess lets agree to disagree on that one. Previous experience tells me expanding a site exponentially to mine an ever increasing long tail (ie blinds > vertical blinds > yellow vertical blinds > yellow vertical blinds manchester) may not be the best use of ones time if conversion sits between levels 2 and 3 of the above hierarchy.

To conclude - I don't disagree with your thoughts regarding a lot of bad advice being round in the industry, just wanted to balance the argument a bit......
Posted by Mindy on Feb 16th, 2011
Hey, the idea of something like "blinds > vertical blinds > yellow vertical blinds > yellow vertical blinds manchester" didn't even cross my mind while writing the post as it's not an SEO strategy, it's just a load of garbage.

Although...oddly...on a couple of occasions when we've seen short tail not converting, we've built up a bunch of location-based pages which seemed a bit samey to us, but which converted at a shockingly good rate - because they were so targeted at the users' queries. It was in a couple of industries where people thought they required a local service and didn't realise they could get the same thing online from a national supplier with the same ease.

I'm in agreement though, wouldn't normally recommend that sort of strategy. Content should always be useful to the visitor, however they access the page.

Although, if you do sell yellow vertical blinds then by all means add that info into your product description. And if you're based in Manchester, get the address into the footer....
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