Invest in the Long Tail- It Will Pay Off!

Client: I noticed that visits are down but sales are up. Should I be concerned?

Me: No- you should be overjoyed!

I’ve been preaching the gospel of the long tail to my clients for years. While preparing their reports this month, I found a great example of the long tail in action.

• Transactions from organic search grew by 47%
• Revenue from organic search grew by 18%
• The number of organic search landing pages generating a sale grew by 18%
• Traffic from organic search grew by 12%

We did this using the power of the Long Tail. (Not impressed by 12% organic traffic growth Y2Y? Keep reading!)

UPDATE: I wrote this article a long time ago. Does this post hold up in an LLM world where these AI models “steal” our long-tailed, informational traffic? Yes! Read to the end to see why.

What is the Long Tail?

The idea of the Long Tail comes from Chris Anderson. He observes a particular phenomenon in modern sales.

Most people know that a small number of products generate significant revenue for any company. These are the core products. Many think of these as their company’s bread and butter. These products become the focus of most marketing efforts.

However, if you totaled the sales from every smaller product, they would generate considerable revenue. In fact, this will be even more revenue than the core products. Sure, fewer people search for each of these products. The ones that do will buy from you.

This is what the Long Tail phenomenon looks like. This graph reflects two dimensions: how specific a query is vs. how many people search for it.

Notice that many people are searching for a broad topic and a few people are searching for a specific query.

This is important from an SEO perspective. For one, many companies focus on their most important products. It makes sense: these generate a large part of their revenue. Unfortunately, this can make them blind. In the SEO world, they get consumed with “ranking” for these products. If they are not ranking, they look at traffic numbers. This leads them to overlook the other products that they offer. As a result, they leave a lot of money on the table.

I’ve seen it time and time again:

• An SEO campaign brings considerable revenue, but the CEO thinks it’s unsuccessful because they don’t “rank” for their favorite product.
• An SEO strategy focuses on the core products. All efforts are dedicated to those pages. Since these products are competitive, they move slowly. This leads to frustration with the SEO campaign.

These would have worked better had they embraced the Long Tail and…

• Educated the C-level employees on how to measure an SEO campaign. Focus on revenue rather than “ranking” or traffic.
• Made the core products a long-term goal, but focus on the Long Tail first. This would have produced a more profitable campaign more quickly. It would also see the core products grow as they improved the site.

There is a catch with a long-tailed SEO strategy. Traffic won’t grow as much as sales. This is because fewer people are interested in these smaller products. Despite this, they are more likely to convert. I’m excited when 12% Y2Y traffic growth generates 50% more transactions.

Will the Long Tail help my business?

My example is from a B2C ecommerce company.

Does the Long Tail apply to B2B Companies?

Yes! Instead of approaching the Long Tail with different products, you can talk about:

• All the different services you provide. 
• Different problems your services solve.
• Different ways people describe your services.
• Different industries that need your services.

This is why blogging is important to your B2B company. You will discover traffic you never expected when you talk about your industry and services. Since your pages are more specific, they will be more likely to convert. This will bring more opportunities than your bigger services.

You can chart this phenomenon, like this:

Now that Google has “not provided” most keywords in Google Analytics, this isn’t obvious. Turn to Search Analytics in Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console) instead. Look at the crazy-specific phrases that bring people to your website from search? Who would have predicted these?

Does the Long Tail apply to companies looking to develop leads, rather than sales?

Yes! Take “lawyers,” for example. There are a lot of people searching Google for your “lawyers.” Visits from this phrase will have a low conversion rate. This isn’t because your website sucks. People searching for lawyers might be searching for something else, such as “lawyer jobs.”

Fewer people search for “lawyers in Charlotte” than “lawyers.” Because fewer people are searching for that, you’ll get fewer conversions. Since it is more specific, your conversion rate will be greater.

The Long Tail takes this to the extreme. Fewer people search for “personal injury lawyers in Charlotte who make hospital calls on Saturday night.” Perhaps only one person a year searches for this term. You will be guaranteed the lead if your website comes up in a Google search for this phrase. 

How to use the Long Tail for SEO success

1. Add more content to your website. This can be landing pages or blog posts. Content will help bring specific search traffic, which will have a high conversion rate.
2. Make it easy for a website visitor to convert. This might mean adding contact forms to every page, for instance, your blog. You never know how someone might find your site. Don’t make it difficult for them to contact you, now that you’ve solved their problem!

Here’s the trick: you want to focus on queries that balance these two factors. In other words, start your campaign where these two graphs meet. That’s the sweet spot. That’s where many people are searching, which meets a good conversion rate. If you start there, you’ll use the Long Tail for SEO success.

Losing the Long Tail to LLMs

As people turn to LLMs for answers to their questions, we will see a loss of long-tail traffic (in fact, I’m already seeing it). Does this make a long-tail strategy obsolete in an LLM world?

Not at all.

We will lose informational searches to LLMs. That can be a lot of traffic, but that traffic would never convert into a customer. The LLMs now respond to the question that our blog post answered.

However, if they need a service we offer, the LLM won’t be able to provide it. Instead, the LLM will have to recommend our business to provide the solution they need.

If we put this back into the “sweet spot” chart above, it means the sweet spot is shifting to the right.

Does this mean we should no longer produce content on our website, only for LLMs to steal it? No! We want to be the answer to people’s questions. That’s how we’ll get the recommendation when someone needs our service.