Keywords Long Tail Vs. Short Tail Defined

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Forty-Fifth E-Webstyle.com Internet Marketing Podcast Feb. 11th 2010.  Second page of Transcription

Paul: Portal. Maybe, just maybe. They are a world-class portal, which happened to be Netscape, which happen to be a diamond dozen.

Chris: Thank you. I remember Netscape. I hope Yahoo. doesn’t take that.

Paul: Are they even around anymore? Netscape?

Chris: I think they are. I don’t know.

Paul: And there are some people out there like, “Net who?” Netscape was the bomb back in the day.

Chris: When we started doing web design, we actually designed, and I know I’ve mentioned this one other podcast, we actually designed our websites for Netscape only because that was the predominant, the dominant preeminent browser. Then, we slowly had to start designing for Netscape and IE because IE started gaining popularity. For a while there, we were only designing for IE ’cause again, it was the dominant browser, significant and by a significant margin.

And now, we’re having the transition and star, you know, accommodating Firefox ’cause there are subtle differences that can have a significant impact on the look and feel of your ‑ well, not really a feel but the look of your browser. Images can get juxtaposed and things like that. So, now, in our shop, we’ve got a design for two browsers. Thank you, Microsoft for not conforming to the specifications of HTML. Thank you very much.

I was reading a list of bizarre complaints that web people have had and one of them is like, “So, we want you to do our website. We don’t want you to use any of that HTML crap because our technical guys don’t know how to use it.” Are you sure you want a website? You sure you want a website, right? Like, here. Here’s your website. All you need to do is hand out this CD to groups of people. It’s totally not in HTML.

Paul: I want you to paint my house. I don’t want you to use paint.

Chris: No paint.

Paul: No paint. You got to get it done my way. Okay, let’s talk about some keywords. I had someone call. I want to say thank you to Tee at teespurplemartinishop.com. She called…

Chris: Tees Purple, just the letter T?

Paul: Oh, excuse me. Let me give you some background on Tee, teespurplemartinishop.com.

Chris: Cool. I like the name. I like the domain name. That’s cool.

Paul: She sells a lot of purple and a lot of cool martini glasses and stuff. She came in a while back, asked for analysis, and we talked. She gave me a call over the Christmas holiday and had some questions just about keyword selection. So, it prompted me. I said, “Oh, other people would probably benefit from this.” And I found an article actually from Ezine. I do a lot of research and reading on Ezine. A guy by the name of Kelvin Johnstone had an article that says Most Searched Keywords ‑ Not Always the Best Approach.

Chris: What?

Paul: The basic concept is, you know, okay, let’s say, I’m a plumber and I go after plumber. I’m going to select plumber as my keyword.

Chris: Let’s use the example of say, let’s say you’re a hypnotist who knows how to help people quit smoking. So, the first thing that comes to your mind is what keyword you’ve got.

Paul: Stop smoking or quit smoking.

Chris: Stop smoking or quit smoking.

Paul: Yes.

Chris: So, yeah.

Paul: I’m going to optimize my website for those words.

Chris: And you’re saying that’s wrong.

Paul: Yeah, that’s wrong. And here’s why. Well, unless you got a staff or you hire E-Webstyle, that’s going to be tough, you know. And when Tee and I were talking, I said, “Well, here’s basically what you’re going to have to do. You got to look at your keyword. How competitive is that keyword?” Stop smoking. How many. It was millions. Was it even millions?

Chris: Yeah. It’s millions. Yeah.

Paul: If you’re going to select a keyword that has ‑ gets a million plus searches per month, everybody else in their mama is going after that same keyword. Here’s another suggestion. Here’s what I’ll do. You want to look at your competition. So, type in stop smoking on the right hand side of Google. You want to see results. One thru ten of you make it 35,000,000 results, okay. You are competing with every single person that’s on that list for ten spots, you know. So, think about that. And I’ve said this on a previous podcast. You know, if you want to go after stop smoking, Google stop smoking and look at everybody on the first page. You’re going to have to knock one of them out essentially. You’re going to have to outSEO them. So, outkeyword them, outlink them. So, you want to look at all those people. And then look, you know, if it’s 1 to 10 of 35,000,000, you know.

Chris: Yeah. It’s a tough road and even, you know, in the particular case of Patrick Wanis, we are working on some of the quit smoking keywords and we’ve opted for something more specific like quit smoking hypnosis as opposed to quit smoking and we have even gotten down into cities, quit smoking hypnosis Miami, quit smoking hypnosis Houston, those names. So, because we’re more likely to have success on those with the budget that we’re given, right? Given an unlimited budget, we’ll get it done. That’s not our problem. The challenge is, “Okay, within the budget constraints if somebody comes to us.

So, like in the case of Tees Purple Martini, you know, she’s going to do it herself is what I’m understanding or eventually hire us ’cause she appreciates the help we’ve been giving her. And, you know, she’s obviously ‑ that’s not her job. Her job is to run her business, not to be optimizing her website doing search engine optimization. So, she doesn’t have the budget to go after the really big terms.

Paul: I mean, and she could go after martini. Again, that’s going to be a lot ‑ that’s going to be much more competitive than purple martini glasses ’cause that’s much more specific. It’s ‑ and that kind of segueways onto the next one. He had another good point on this article.

Chris: Well, before you go there, you know, even our campaigns are designed with 15 keywords and part of that reason is because we know sometimes clients are going to be angering for like the quit smoking. And yes, we’re going to work on those and we’re going to get there eventually. The challenge is that we also want to show ‑ well, we definitely want to show you results quickly and the way to show you results quickly that are going to bring return on investment are to go after what are called long tail keywords. So, we do that intentionally, those 15 keywords so that we can give you immediate results, and then long-term more valuable results.

Paul: Yeah. And people will come to us and say things like I want to quit smoking or I want a national term. And we’ll say, “Hey, yeah. We’ll do that, but here’s the budget.” You know what I’m saying. I’ll have no problem telling someone, “Hey, we’ll do this, but we would recommend X, Y, and Z. How about if we go after a local term like we do with Patrick? Let’s get some results for local terms, maybe a statewide term, then go there ’cause your national or worldwide terms, they’re going to take much more time, more man hours, and you’ve got to invest more money into getting those terms.”

So, you want to really think about. When you’re looking at what keywords to select, look at how many searches they’re getting in the keywords selector tool. Look at how many other people are listed under those keywords. And then, think. Can I outSEO these guys? That’s a strategy you should take now that is going to be consuming. You are going to have to invest some time in this. Sorry.

Chris: Yeah.

Paul: Or you could make an SEO company invest their time in it, like E-Webstyle.

Chris: For those of you who are listening, I’m pointing at myself.